Phihttp://pdk.sagepub.com/ Delta Kappan Social-emotional learning is essential to classroom management Stephanie M. Jones, Rebecca Bailey and Robin Jacob Phi Delta Kappan 2014 96: 19 DOI: 10.1177/0031721714553405 The online version of this article can be found at: http://pdk.sagepub.com/content/96/2/19 Published by: http://www.sagepublications.com Additional services and information for Phi Delta Kappan can be found at: Email Alerts: http://pdk.sagepub.com/cgi/alerts Subscriptions: http://pdk.sagepub.com/subscriptions Reprints: http://www.sagepub.com/journalsReprints.nav Permissions: http://www.sagepub.com/journalsPermissions.nav >> Version of Record - Sep 22, 2014 What is This? Downloaded from pdk.sagepub.com by guest on November 19, 2014 Comments? Like PDK at www. facebook.com/pdkintl Classroom management Social-emotional learning is essential to classroom management R&D Research tells us that children’s social-emotional development can propel learning. A new program embeds that research into classroom management strategies that improve teaching and learning. R&D appears in each issue of Kappan with the assistance of the Deans Alliance, which is composed of the deans of the education schools/colleges at the following universities: George Washington University, Harvard University, Michigan State University, Northwestern University, Stanford University, Teachers College Columbia University, University of California, Berkeley, University of California, Los Angeles, University of Michigan, University of Pennsylvania, and University of Wisconsin. By Stephanie M. Jones, Rebecca Bailey, and Robin Jacob “By incorporating . . . strategies into daily routines, my students now have a means to express their feelings and act appropriately when faced with a situation that involves others. My students now are able to use those strategies to remind each other and me to ‘cool down,’ ‘be patient,’ ‘count to five,’ ‘take turns,’ etc.” “I just realized the more you use it, the more they [kids] use it as well.” — Teachers using a new, self-regulation strategy Classroom management is central to teacher practice. Successful student learning depends on a teacher’s ability to manage the group as a whole — keeping the attention of 30 or more students, redirecting negative or distracting behavior, and continually assessing the pulse of the room to optimize student motivation and engagement. Despite the size and importance of the task, classroom management is perhaps the most underdeveloped area of teacher education. Rarely do new teachers feel that their classroom management skills are a match for their students. But what is effective classroom management? In our view, two items are essential: Teachers need knowledge about children’s behavior and development, and they need familiarity and practice with strategies that have been proven to work. Strategies embedded in most high-quality, social-emotional learning programs can provide teachers with both of these things. Four principles Classroom management is not about controlling students or demanding perfect behavior. Instead, effective management is about supporting students to manage themselves throughout daily learning and activities. Part of the teacher’s role is to give students the tools they need to interact with and meet the demands of the social and instructional environment of school. Different STEPhANIE M. JONES (stephanie_m_jones@gse.harvard.edu) is an associate professor in human development and urban education advancement at the Harvard Graduate School of Education, Cambridge, Mass., where REBECCA BAILEy is research manager. ROBIN JACOB is an assistant research professor at the Institute for Social Research at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, Mich. V96 N2 Thinkstock/iStock Downloaded from pdk.sagepub.com by guest on November 19, 2014 kappanmagazine.org 19 activities and different children will require different types of support, so teachers need a diverse set of strategies. Effective classroom management will look different in different grade levels. But across all classrooms and grade levels, four principles of effective management are constant. 1. Effective classroom management is based in planning and preparation. Effective classroom managers map the day’s learning activities as well as transitions between activities and think deliberately about what is likely to be difficult for specific individuals, groups, or the class as a whole. Teachers who make time for such managementoriented planning are less likely to be caught off guard when things go awry, and they’re more likely to have a strategy prepared in advance and to implement it quickly, enabling them to steer students back on track when disruptions occur. Disruptions are inevitable in every classroom. This type of planning acknowledges that and enables teachers to handle problems in responsive, not reactive, ways. Responsive classroom management is more likely to be thoughtful, concrete, consistent, and implemented in a calm and supportive way. In contrast, reactive management can be angry, punitive, inconsistent or unclear, and tends to escalate the problem behavior (Lesaux, Jones, Russ, & Kane, 2014). 2. Effective classroom management is an extension of the quality of relationships in the room (Marzano, 2003). * Deepen your understanding of this article with questions and activities in this month’s Kappan Professional Development Discussion Guide by Lois Brown Easton. Download a PDF of the guide at kappan magazine.org. 20 Kappan Teachers who establish and maintain high-quality, trusting relationships with students can draw on their history of positive interactions in order to address classroom management challenges as they arise. In contrast, teachers regularly engaged in conflict with students are less able to respond effectively to classroom disruptions. This is especially true for unanticipated problems that demand “on the fly” action from teachers. High-quality relationships are characterized by warmth and responsiveness to student needs on one hand and by clear boundaries and consistent consequences on the other hand. Striking the right balance between warmth and discipline is a common challenge. In some settings, discipline looks like overcontrol with too much emphasis on rigid rules, which can lead teachers to be inflexible and unresponsive to student needs. This approach offers students no opportunity for building skills in self-management or autonomy, and it represents an unreasonable expectation of perfect behavior from students. In other settings, there may be an emphasis on warmth or autonomy, but the boundaries are not consistently enforced, or they’re missing altogether. Teacherstudent relationships that balance these two needs provide the best foundation for effective classroom management. 3. Effective classroom management is embedded in the environment. A well-managed classroom includes direct material supports as well as a consistent set of routines and structures throughout the day. Posters, charts, or a calm-down corner are examples of material support; they remind students of classroom expectations and provide visual or physical tools to help students achieve them. Routines might include a strategy to help students transition between activities, such as a song or signal. Structures might include a morning meeting or weekly celebration for positive behavior. Together, these features organize and define appropriate behavior at different times of the day; they make the classroom predictable. Importantly, supports that are embedded in the environment help students manage themselves by reinforcing expectations and promoting positive behavior even when the teacher is unavailable. 4. Effective classroom management includes ongoing processes of observation and documentation. Finally, classrooms are fast-paced and constantly changing; what works one day might not work the next. Teachers need to regularly reassess management strategies and adapt as needed. Disruptive behavior can test adults’ patience and make it difficult to think clearly in the heat of the moment. Documentation helps educators notice patterns and better anticipate and address recurring problems. Careful observation and documentation — writing down what happened, what you did/said, and how students responded — lets teachers continually reflect on and improve their interactions with students and their general plan for classroom management. A central theme across all four principles is that effective classroom management is not about reaction but about prevention and building skills. When teachers adopt these principles, they create an environment that enables children to manage their own behavior with increasing independence. Social-emotional learning Classroom management and social-emotional learning are related in a number of ways. Socialemotional skills are a foundation for children’s positive behavior in school (Boyd et al., 2005; Denham, 2006; Raver, 2002). Key social-emotional skills include focusing, listening attentively, following directions, managing emotions, dealing with conflicts, and working cooperatively with peers (Jones & Bouffard, 2013). Children who are strong in these skill areas are less disruptive and better able to take advantage of classroom instruction. Children who struggle in these areas are more likely to be off-task, engage in conflicts with peers or adults, and minimize learning time for themselves and others. Teachers may feel that October 2014 Downloaded from pdk.sagepub.com by guest on November 19, 2014 these children undermine their efforts to manage the classroom as a whole. Teachers also must use their own social-emotional skills to establish high-quality relationships with students (Jennings & Greenberg, 2009; Jones, Bouffard, & Weissbourd, 2013). Providing teachers — especially new teachers — with concrete socialemotional strategies can enhance their capacity for positive interactions and effective communication with students. Furthermore, when all adults in the school community use the same strategies, children experience predictability in the quality of interactions throughout the school day, which promotes their understanding and use of appropriate behavior. In our own work, we find that social-emotional development is a helpful lens for approaching children’s behavior in new and productive ways. Rather than blaming children or becoming frustrated by “bad behavior,” we encourage teachers to reframe disruptive behavior and other classroom management challenges as teaching and learning opportunities in the social-emotional domain. Research indicates that certain social-emotional skills emerge earlier than others and lay the foundation for more complex skills. For example, executive functions develop rapidly during early childhood, helping young students begin to focus their attention, ignore distractions, remember simple directions, and manage their behavior according to social norms (Center on the Developing Child, 2011). This is an ideal time to support students with simple strategies to manage attention and remember classroom rules, such as “turn on your listening ears for story time.” Young students need reminders and support from adults in order to be successful at tasks that use these newly emerging skills. During middle childhood, students develop the ability to engage in more complex social-emotional behaviors such as thinking about the consequences of their actions, anticipating or resolving conflicts with peers, and participating successfully in teamwork and group activities (Eisenberg, Fabes, & Spinrad, 2006; Saarni, Campos, Camras, & Witherington, 2007). Explicitly considering children’s social-emotional development can help teachers establish reasonable, age-appropriate expectations for classroom behavior and can help teachers identify which skills and strategies are most relevant for each age group. SECURe strategies Drawing upon and extending recent research, our team of researchers and practitioners developed a new school-based intervention in social-emotional learning called SECURe — Social, Emotional, and Cognitive Understanding and Regulation in education (Bailey et al., 2012). SECURe is grounded in supporting the development of children’s executive functions and regulatory skills, and aims to build teacher skills via improved instructional practices, organizational and management practices, and warmth and responsiveness. The goal of SECURe is to develop “a community of self-regulated learners.” At its core, SECURe is an interconnected set of strategies — professional development and support, classroom lessons, and daily structures and routines — that build and sustain adult and child skills to support learning. SECURe is designed to be implemented across grades preK-5 and used throughout the school in classrooms, hallways, gym, and cafeteria alike, and in academic content. All students, teachers, specialists, lunchroom monitors, and other school staff are trained in a common set of strategies designed to promote a well-regulated classroom and school environment. SECURe targets skills in three broad areas: cognitive regulation/executive function, emotion processes, and interpersonal skills. Within each area, students are taught skills through weekly (grades 1-5) or twice weekly (preK-K) lessons. SECURe lessons use high-quality children’s literature, songs, games, roleplay with puppets, art activities, and short videos to introduce new skills and concepts. For example, in a preK lesson, students read a Curious George book to identify basic emotions and then learn a strategy called I Messages to tell other people how they’re feeling: “I feel mad because you took my crayon.” In another lesson, students watch a short cartoon about a penguin that gets easily frustrated, and then they practice a strategy for calming down when they feel upset or angry. The strategy — Stop and Stay Cool — includes basic coping mechanisms such as counting slowly to five, taking deep breaths, and giving yourself a hug. Classroom materials like the Feelings Tree (a word wall for emotions-related vocabulary), Feelings Faces picture cards, I Messages sentence strip, and Stop and Stay Cool posters help students remember strategies and use them as situations arise throughout the day. Visual materials are included in classrooms but also in the lunchroom, hallways, gym, music room, and principal’s office. When an adult sees that a student is starting to “lose his cool,” the adult can help the student walk through the steps or use an I Message to talk about what happened. The second component of SECURe includes daily structures and routines that provide opportunities to practice skills in recurring interactions and relationship-building activities. In SECURe PreK, daily routines include Pocket Points, Brain Games, Making Choices, and Cool Kid. Pocket Points are a strategy to promote positive behavior in the classroom. Students can earn a Pocket Point when they do something kind or helpful: The teacher gives the V96 N2 Downloaded from pdk.sagepub.com by guest on November 19, 2014 Responsive classroom management is more likely to be thoughtful, concrete, consistent, and implemented in a calm and supportive way. In contrast, reactive management can be angry, punitive, inconsistent or unclear, and tends to escalate the problem behavior. kappanmagazine.org 21 By implementing management strategies that actively build children’s socialemotional and self-regulatory skills, teachers maximize their management efforts and increase the likelihood that students will be able to respond successfully to their requests for on-task behavior. student a brightly colored chip, and she puts the chip in a classroom jar. At the end of each day, Pocket Points are counted and if a certain number have been earned, the class gets a reward or special privilege. Brain Games are also used flexibly as a skill-building and classroom management tool. Brain Games are a set of fun, motivating games that require students to use their cognitive regulation and executive function skills — including Stop and Think Power, Focus Power, and Remember Power. For example, in the Freeze Game, students dance around to music in a circle. Each time the music stops, students use their Stop and Think Power to stand completely still, waiting for the music to start again. Brain Games include discussion questions for teachers to facilitate with students: What helped you be good at this game? How can you use Stop and Think Power to help you in school today? Teachers might remind students to use Stop and Think on the playground while waiting for a turn on the slide or in the classroom to raise a hand instead of shouting an answer. Students play Brain Games at a specific time each day, but teachers also use the games during transitions or other down time. SECURe routines organize the day around a predictable set of activities that help students continue to build skills in daily and ongoing interactions. (See table on p. 23). Other SECURe strategies designed to promote positive interactions include the Taking Turns Bag, Feelings Thermometer, Focus Binoculars, ThinkPair-Share, and Say It Back, among others. As with I Messages and Stop and Stay Cool Steps, students and teachers can use these strategies to address a variety of classroom challenges. They support adults to be warm and responsive and also provide language for dealing with conflicts or disruptions when they arise. What we have learned During the 2012-13 academic year, SECURe PreK was piloted in a large, urban public school district that primarily serves students from low-income and non-English speaking homes. We located our pilot work with SECURe in vulnerable contexts because there is a growing body of research documenting links between the stresses associated with poverty and challenges for children with self-regulation and behavior. Funded by the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development, the pilot study included 12 Head Start classrooms (morning and afternoon classes with six lead teachers) embedded within two elementary schools in the district. Fortytwo additional classrooms (including Head Start as well as a tuition-based preschool) from the remaining six schools in the district were also included in the study. The 12 SECURe classrooms each received training, curriculum, classroom materials, school22 Kappan year PD and coaching, technical assistance for SECURe PreK. The other 42 classrooms continued their standard practice. Implementation of SECURe PreK included daily use of the structures and routines as described above, and twice weekly lessons that each lasted about 15 minutes. Focus groups conducted with teachers in the fall and spring suggested that individual teachers varied in the degree to which they embraced different SECURe strategies, largely based on the challenges they observed and were struggling with in their classrooms. For example, in a classroom that was described by the preschool program director as having an unusually challenging group of students, the teacher used the SECURe Feelings Tree to create her own daily routine. Each day after returning from recess, the teacher organized children in a circle on the rug to discuss what went well and what didn’t go well on the playground. The teacher used the SECURe Feelings Tree, Feelings Faces picture cards, and I Messages sentence strip to encourage students to talk about what happened, how they felt about it, and what could be done in the future to create a more friendly and successful playground time. This teacher said using the SECURe strategies helped manage what was otherwise a difficult and chaotic time of day — the return from recess. She spent five to 10 minutes in this “feelings circle” each day, in addition to the prescribed program activities. This time was well spent, she said, because it enabled children to calm down, address problems and hurt feelings immediately, and then return to general instruction with everyone ready to focus on learning. At the end of the year, the program director praised her for turning around an otherwise unruly classroom. In another classroom, the teacher put less emphasis on emotion-related strategies but more on cognitive regulation skills, playing Brain Games multiple times per day and frequently using strategies like Stop and Think and Think Alouds. Stop and Think is a reminder for students to slow down and think before they act; it builds self-control and supports students to be planful and reflective about their behavior. Think Alouds are a process by which teachers narrate their own thoughts or feelings. Many cognitive and socialemotional skills involve things we say internally to ourselves in order to concentrate, maintain control, choose appropriate behavior, etc. Think Alouds make this mental activity explicit so children can build understanding as well as metacognition skills. In endof-year focus groups, this teacher commented that SECURe helped her “think about my own thinking.” Thus, it appears that individual teachers may adopt specific program components with ease, and find their own way of integrating SECURe strategies into classroom management and instructional practices. We October 2014 Downloaded from pdk.sagepub.com by guest on November 19, 2014 SECURe (PreK) routines and strategies Routine/strategy Targeted skill(s) How does it work? Making choices Planning and goal setting Flexibility and transitioning Teachers use a visual board to show students what centers are available (blocks, art, etc.). Children indicate where they will play by putting their name card on a sign-in board at that center. Children can move to another center if there is an available spot on the sign-in board. Cool kid Prosocial behavior Noticing and respecting others Positive communication Cool Kid wears a button to identify him/her. Children give compliments to Cool Kid for positive (helpful, friendly) behaviors all day. At end of day, teacher writes three compliments on a certificate that the Cool Kid takes home to show his/her parents. Cool Kid is chosen at random each day; every child is chosen the same number of times throughout the year. Taking turns bag Conflict resolution Children can get the bag anytime during the day if they’re having trouble sharing a toy or object. Bag contains a coin and timer. Children flip the coin to see who goes first, then use the timer to ensure that both children get an equal turn. Feelings thermometer Emotion knowledge Emotion and behavior regulation Positive communication Feelings thermometer poster includes the numbers 1-5 to illustrate that feelings can be more or less intense/ strong. Children use the numbers to tell each other when they are about to “lose their cool.” Think-pair-share Prosocial behavior Positive communication Teamwork and partnerships (Listening, speaking, and waiting/ taking turns) Children hold a laminated strip that reminds them to first think about what they want to say, then pair up with a partner, and finally to take turns sharing their idea. I messages / Say it back Noticing and respecting others Positive communication Empathy and viewing from others’ perspectives I messages is a communication strategy for intense or escalating situations: “I feel xxx because xxx.” After an I message is given, the other person uses “say it back” to acknowledge the other person’s feelings and repeat what they heard: “You feel xxx because xxx.” Stop and think signal Focus binoculars Remember signal Self-control Attention/focusing Memory Teachers use these nonverbal hand signals to manage behavior without interrupting instruction. Children use the signals to remind each other when they need to pause or wait before doing something, when they need to look and listen carefully, and when they need to actively remember an important direction or piece of information. V96 N2 Downloaded from pdk.sagepub.com by guest on November 19, 2014 kappanmagazine.org 23 Effective classroom management is not about reaction but about prevention and building skills. 24 Kappan suggest this is ideal — that teachers are given a large toolkit of resources to address potential classroom management challenges and are able to choose the best tool to fit each situation, each teacher’s style and preferences, and the needs of particular groups of students. Our implementation data and written feedback from teachers confirms the power of routines and structures as management tools. For example, one teacher wrote, “Overall, I really enjoyed using SECURe because I do feel it helped me with behavior management. I think SECURe gives students words to express themselves in appropriate ways. It gives them ways to control their feelings and learn how to deal with them.” From this small, nonrandomized sample, the SECURe research team also collected data from children about their social-emotional skills and behaviors and from the district on classroom quality and student functioning (Jones & Bailey, 2014). Overall, we found positive effects of SECURe on classroom quality with classrooms observed to be generally more positive, emotionally supportive, and well-managed. In addition, by the end of the year, SECURe classrooms on average had more children rated as “meeting benchmarks” in the cognitive, literacy, and social-emotional domains of the Teaching Strategies Gold instrument (Jones & Bailey, 2014). Another, larger pilot study of the effects of SECURe in K-3 classrooms found similar results (Jacob, Jones, & Morrison, under review). That study, which involved over 4,000 students in six schools (half of which implemented SECURe and half that did not), demonstrated that the program increased students’ attention skills and reduced their impulsive behavior, and also had a positive effect on literacy skills, especially among the lowest-achieving students in the sample. Most teachers struggle with classroom management at some point in their career, some teachers struggle with it indefinitely, and many teachers leave the profession because of the daily stress and difficulty associated with managing children and classrooms. By implementing management strategies that actively build children’s social-emotional and self-regulatory skills, teachers maximize their management efforts and increase the likelihood that students will be able to respond successfully to their requests for on-task behavior. By providing concrete and age-appropriate strategies to help students learn to manage their attention, feelings, and behavior successfully, educators can support social-emotional development while enhancing classroom management and instruction. Addressing the needs of teachers around classroom management can have a significant effect on children’s learning and behavior outcomes as well as teacher K quality, job satisfaction, and retention.  References Bailey, R., Jones, S.M., Jacob, R., Madden, N., & Phillips, D. (2012). Social, emotional, and cognitive understanding and regulation in education (SECURe): Preschool program manual and curricula. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University. Boyd, J., Barnett, W.S., Bodrova, E., Leong, D.J., & Gomby, D. (2005). Promoting children’s social and emotional development through preschool education (NIEER policy report). Piscataway Township, NJ: National Institute for Early Education. Center on the Developing Child at Harvard University. (2011). Building the brain’s “air traffic control” system: How early experiences shape the development of executive function. (Working Paper no. 11.) www.developingchild.harvard.edu Denham, S.A. (2006). Social-emotional competence as support for school readiness: What is it and how do we assess it? Early Education and Development, 17 (1), 57-89. Eisenberg, N., Fabes, R.A., & Spinrad, T.L. (2006). Prosocial development. In W. Damon, R.M. Lerner, & N. Eisenberg (Eds.) Handbook of child psychology (6th ed., Vol. 3) Social, emotional, and personality development. New York, NY: Wiley. Jacob, R., Jones, S.M. & Morrison, F. (Under review). Evaluating the impact of a self-regulation intervention (SECURe) on self-regulation and achievement. Early Childhood Research Quarterly. Jennings, P.A. & Greenberg, M.T. (2009). The prosocial classroom: Teacher social and emotional competence in relation to student and classroom outcomes. Review of Educational Research, 79 (1), 491-525. Jones, S.M. & Bailey, R. (2014, March). Preliminary impacts of the SECURe PreK on child and classroom-level outcomes. Paper presented at the meeting of the Society for Research on Educational Effectiveness, Washington, D.C. Jones, S.M. & Bouffard, S.M. (2013). Social and emotional learning in schools: From programs to strategies. Social Policy Report, 26 (4). Jones, S.M., Bouffard, S.M., & Weissbourd, R. (2013). Educators’ social and emotional skills vital to learning. Phi Delta Kappan, 94 (8), 62-65. Lesaux, N., Jones, S.M., Russ, J., & Kane, R. (2014). The R2 educator. Lead Early Educators for Success (Brief Series). http://isites.harvard.edu/icb/icb. do?keyword=lesaux&pageid=icb.page660137 Marzano, R.J. (2003). Classroom management that works. Alexandria, VA: ASCD. Raver, C.C. (2002). Emotions matter: Making the case for the role of young children’s emotional development for early school readiness. Social Policy Report, 16 (3). Saarni, C., Campos, J.J., Camras, L.A., & Witherington, D. (2007). Emotional development: Action, communication, and understanding. Handbook of Child Psychology (6th ed., Vol. 3). New York, NY: Wiley. October 2014 Downloaded from pdk.sagepub.com by guest on November 19, 2014 Copyright of Phi Delta Kappan is the property of Sage Publications, Inc. and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. photo Steve Debenport/iStock The Underutilized Potential of Teacher-Parent Communication Though still the exception rather than the rule, teacher-parent communication can have strong positive effects on students’ success in school. There is widespread agreement among educators and parents that communicating with each other benefits students. However, evidence suggests that teacher-parent communication is infrequent and unsystematic in most schools. The best information on the frequency of communication between schools, teachers, and parents comes from the nationally representative Parent and Family Involvement in Education survey.1 Data collected on the frequency and quality of school-initiated communication with public-school parents from 2003 to 2012 show that although the percentage of parents who report having ever received an email or note about their student has gone up, calls Matthew A. Kraft BROWN UNIVERSITY home have gone down since 2007, as has the percentage of parents who say they are “very satisfied with their interactions with school staff.” (See “Frequency and Quality of School-Initiated Communication with Public-School Parents.”) There are three main takeaways from the data. First, communication in any form between schools, teachers, and parents is surprisingly rare. For example, 59 percent of public-school parents report never receiving a phone call home in 2012. Second, there is considerable room for improvement in the quality of communication. About half of all parents are not “very satisfied” with their interactions with school staff. Third, overall trends across the last decade suggest schools are not making much progress in improving the frequency and quality of communication with parents. Although the use of email as a form of communication has increased steadily over the last decade, this increase has not benefitted all families equally. Email communication with families living at or below the poverty line has remained flat since 2007. The incomebased “email communication gap” between families above and Communities & Banking 15 Frequency and Quality of School-Initiated Communication with Public-School Parents 60 56% 53% 55 50 49% 51% 48% 49% 45 41% 40 2002-2003 41% 2006-2007 Academic Year 2011-2012 Percentage of parents who report receiving a school-initiated email or note about their student Percentage of parents who report being very satisfied with their interactions with school staff* Percentage of parents who report receiving a school-initiated phone call Source: Author’s calculations from the US Department of Education’s Parent and Family Involvement in Education Survey of the National Household Education Surveys Program (NHES: 2003, 2007, 2012). Data are restricted to parents with students attending assigned public schools and exclude public schools of choice. *Note: This question was not included in the 2002–2003 parent survey. Percentage of Parents Who Report Receiving a School-Initiated Email or Note About Their Student 65 59% 56% 55 50% 50 40 48% 48% 45% 2002-2003 2006-2007 Academic Year Families at or above the poverty level. 2011-2012 Families below the poverty level Source: US Department of Education, National Center for Education Statistics, Parent and Family Involvement in Education Survey of the National Household Education Surveys Program (NHES: 2003, 2007, 2012). 16 The Power of Teacher-Parent Communication These statistics should sound alarm bells, given growing causal evidence that communication can empower parents and improve students’ academic performance. For example, a small randomized control trial that Shaun Dougherty and I conducted during a charter school summer academy demonstrated that frequent phone calls home immediately increased students’ engagement in school as measured by homework completion, in-class behavior, and in-class participation.2 In a related experiment, Todd Rogers and I found that sending parents weekly one-sentence individualized messages from teachers during a high school summer credit-recovery program reduced the percentage of students who failed to earn course credit by 41 percent.3 Additionally, a fascinating experimental study conducted in France found that inviting parents to attend three two-hour meetings with school leaders to talk about how to support their students in the transition to middle school increased both parents’ and students’ engagement in school.4 Parents who were randomly chosen to receive invitations to the meetings were more likely to join the parent association and monitor their child’s schoolwork, while their students’ attendance, behavior, and performance in French class increased. Implementation Barriers 60 45 below the poverty line has more than doubled. (See “Percentage of Parents Who Report Receiving a School-Initiated Email or Note.”) spring 2016 Three primary factors are contributing to the low rate of teacherparent communication: implementation barriers, time costs, and the absence of schoolwide communication policies. Implementation barriers include the lack of easy access to parent contact information, outdated contact information records, language barriers between teachers and parents, and the lack of noninstructional time teachers have to make calls or send texts or emails during the school day. Many of these are technical challenges that schools can address with systematic efforts to update contact information, translation software and services, and data management systems with user-friendly teacher dashboards. Without formal expectations, sufficient time, and the necessary communication infrastructure, teachers often take a passive approach to communication as they shift their attention to other tasks. Promoting more transparency around the frequency with which each staff member is contacting parents could also serve to foster positive peer effects among teacher teams. It is well within our ability to make teacher-parent communication the norm rather than the exception. Matthew Kraft is an assistant professor of education and economics at Brown University in Providence. He can be contacted at mkraft@ brown.edu and on twitter @MatthewAKraft. Endnotes 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 Amber Noel, Patrick Stark, and Jeremy Redford, “Parent and Family Involvement in Education, from the National Household Education Surveys Program of 2012” (report, National Center for Education Statistics, US Department of Education, Washington, DC, 2015), https://nces.ed.gov/pubsearch/pubsinfo. asp?pubid=2013028rev. M.A. Kraft and S.M. Dougherty, “The Effect of Teacher–Family Communication on Student Engagement: Evidence from a Randomized Field Experiment,” Journal of Research on Educational Effectiveness 6, no. 3 (2013): http://scholar. harvard.edu/mkraft/publications/effect-teacher-family-communication-studentengagement-evidence-randomized-field. M.A. Kraft and T. Rogers, “The Underutilized Potential of Teacher-to-Parent Communication: Evidence from a Field Experiment,” Economics of Education Review 47 (2015): http://scholar.harvard.edu/mkraft/publications/underutilizedpotential-teacher-parent-communication-evidence-field-experiment. F. Avvisati et al., “Getting Parents Involved: A Field Experiment in Deprived Schools,” Review of Economic Studies 81 (2014): http://www.povertyactionlab.org/publication/getting-parents-involved-fieldexperiment-deprived-schools. James Vaznis, “Longer School Day for Boston Schools Wins Final Approval,” Boston Globe, January 29, 2015, https://www.bostonglobe.com/ metro/2015/01/28/longer-school-day-for-boston-schools-wins-final-approval/ S8FBcJqTnbA9jaZzSmVo1J/story.html. “How Washington Public School Teachers Spend Their Work Days” (report, Central Washington University, Ellensburg, Washington, 2015), http://www. cwu.edu/sites/default/files/documents/teachertimestudy.pdf. B.L. Castleman, The 160-Character Solution (Baltimore, Maryland: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2015), https://jhupbooks.press.jhu.edu/content/160-character-solution. This Communities & Banking article is copyrighted by the Federal Reserve Bank of Boston. The views expressed are not necessarily those of the Bank or the Federal Reserve System. Copies of articles may be downloaded without cost at www.bostonfed.org/commdev/c&b. photo peterspiro/iStock Providing dedicated time during the workday for teachers to reach out to parents is a more difficult challenge. One option would be to relieve teachers of noninstructional responsibilities that could be performed by less costly teachers’ aides or parent volunteers. Another would be to increase the amount of noninstructional time in teachers’ contractually obligated workdays, as Boston Public Schools recently did in their expanded school-day initiative.5 A third option is to enhance the efficiency of the time that teachers already spend communicating with parents. Detailed time-use data for educators is hard to come by. However, a time-use study of a random sample of classroom teachers in Washington State found that teachers spend approximately 8 percent of their noninstructional work hours communicating with parents—about one hour each week.6 In ongoing work, Jason Grissom and Susanna Loeb have found that principals spend even less time communicating with parents—as little as 3 percent of their workday. Although less than ideal, even secondary-school teachers who work with over 100 students would be able to speak with every parent at least once during the school year for 10 minutes if they dedicated just 30 minutes a week to making phone calls. And a growing body of research demonstrates that text messages provide an efficient and effective way to reach parents with individualized messages on a more frequent basis.7 The lack of guidance and clear expectations around teacherparent communication is arguably the most commonly overlooked factor. Beyond general encouragement by administrators to contact parents, teachers are left to determine when, how, and why they should reach out. Reducing the income-based email communication gap requires both increasing access to email and proactive communication policies designed to distribute teacher-initiated communication across all families. The rapidly increasing access to mobile phones even among low-income families presents an opportunity to connect with all families using communication technology and to increase the efficiency of the communication. Communities & Banking 17 Copyright of Communities & Banking is the property of Federal Reserve Bank of Boston and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. Due diligence D refers to paying close and reasonable attention to students who are under your supervision. You and other school personnel must oversee students at school and take reasonable care to protect them from harm (Goorian & Brown, 2002). Though of course it seems like common sense, many teachers are unaware they are required by law to keep a diligent eye on students. Your mere presence around students is not sufficient. You must watch over them carefully and follow established school policies. As a teacher, you're expected to conduct yourself as would a reasonable and prudent professional in similar circumstances. Negligence is the failure to maintain careful watch over students under your supervision. It is considered to be a serious breach of duty D, meaning a serious failure to comply with one of your legal obligations at school. If a student is injured emotionally or physically at school and the teacher on supervisory duty did not exercise due diligence, the teacher and school may be sued for negligence (Drye, 2000). You can protect yourself against charges of negligence and breach of duty by adhering to the following guidelines: • Perform your assigned duties ethically and conscientiously as directed by school policy, even when those duties might seem boring or unnecessary. Avoid assuming that "nothing will happen" or that you can trust even the best-behaved students always to behave safely and responsibly. • Be attentive in monitoring student behavior. Do not leave students unattended in your classroom, shop, or instructional area. Managing your physical proximity to students can be tricky; there are undoubtedly going to be times when you'll want to leave your group (like when you have to go to the restroom!), but you'll need to figure out supervision for them, because if something were to happen while they were unsupervised, you could be held liable. • For activities that involve physical risk, provide thorough precautions and safety instructions before you have students undertake the activities, and then monitor closely. This may seem like a no-brainer, but you can't always anticipate the ways in which students can get into trouble. • Be vigilant for signs that students might be inclined to harm themselves. Pay attention to what they do, say, and write. Be alert to changes in behavior. If you have concerns, speak with your administrator or school counselor. • Be alert to any signs that a student is being bullied or otherwise abused. Follow your school guidelines in these instances. Keep in mind that teachers are mandated by law to report any suspicions of abuse (physical, verbal, sexual, neglectful). Follow your school policies in any case where you suspect a student may be a victim of abuse. Exercise special caution regarding physical contact with students. Don't allow yourself to be alone in the classroom with a student unless you are in plain sight of others. Many teachers simply refrain, too, from touching students; those who do touch students are careful to do it in appropriate ways. Sometimes teachers get so frustrated that they are tempted to grab or strike a student, or to intervene through other physical means; it is very difficult to justify physical contact motivated by anger, and you should avoid it at all costs. Also, make sure you never throw pencils, pens, erasers, books, desks, or chairs, no matter how strongly you are provoked; your ability to manage your own emotional reactions is critical in performing your duties acceptably and in reducing your liability in any circumstance that goes awry. As a teacher, you will act in loco parentis. In loco parentis is not an allusion to crazy parents; it is a legal term that means “in place of parents." It requires you to exercise the same duty at school as do parents at home in overseeing children's safety and security. In actual practice, you should watch over students even more carefully than their caregivers may. Professional and Ethical Behavior: You must always conduct yourself ethically, treating your students and colleagues fairly, honestly, compassionately, and supportively. You must be honest with them, but at the same time avoid, when possible, saying or doing things that hurt their feelings or stifle their desire to learn or cooperate. Effort: You must give your genuine best effort to the profession. Your obligation is to do all you reasonably can to help students benefit from their educational experience and find satisfaction in doing so. You should give that same effort to relations with administrators, colleagues, and students' caregivers. Teaching: You must teach in a manner that is conducive to success for every one of your students. You will want to give careful attention to selecting appropriate subject matter, providing interesting and worthwhile learning activities, relating effectively and helpfully with students, adjusting instruction to students' abilities and personalities, and insisting on considerate, humane treatment by and for everyone in the class. Helpfulness: Always do what you can to help students, collectively and individually. Help them succeed academically. Help them relate well with others. Help them find satisfaction in school and learning. As Haim Ginott (1971) said so many years ago, always ask yourself what you can do, at a given moment, to be most helpful to your students. He referred to continual helpfulness as "teachers' hidden asset.” Respect: Cultivate and demonstrate genuine respect for your students. Treat all of them as your social equals, worthy of your time and attention. Speak with each of them in a kindly manner as often as you can. Learn their names quickly and make an effort to remember significant things about them. Show genuine approval for effort and work done well (but skip insincere or undeserved praise). Spread your attention around evenly. Avoid causing students to lose face or to feel that you've taken away their dignity. As best you can, always treat your students as you would like to be treated in similar circumstances. Cooperation: Help your students understand that accepting each other and working together benefits everyone in the class. Emphasize that you have a plan that will help them learn and enjoy themselves. Reassure them you will be considerate of their desires and feelings. Sincerely invite them to cooperate with you and each other, and give them some responsibility in making the class enjoyable and productive. Make sure they feel part of the process. ommunication: Students need to know clearly what is expected of them. Be helpful and encouraging, and avoid preaching or moralizing. Avoid arilling students about improper behavior or Cooperation: Help your students understand that accepting each other and working together benefits everyone in the class. Emphasize that you have a plan that will help them learn and enjoy themselves. Reassure them you will be considerate of their desires and feelings. Sincerely invite them to cooperate with you and each other, and give them some responsibility in making the class enjoyable and productive. Make sure they feel part of the process. Communication: Students need to know clearly what is expected of them. Be helpful and encouraging, and avoid preaching or moralizing. Avoid grilling students about improper behavior or otherwise putting them on the defensive. When they speak, listen attentively and try to understand where they're coming from. When you reply to them, avoid criticizing their points of view. Frame your comments so that students recognize your intent to help them be successful in school. Charisma: Charisma is a quality of attractiveness that makes others want to be in your presence and interact with you. You acquire charisma by making yourself personally interesting and by being upbeat and pleasant, using humor appropriately. You can let your students see your charismatic side by occasionally sharing information about your interests, experiences, and talents. Charismatic people generally avoid sarcasm; even when sarcasm may be intended to be humorous, it is easily misinterpreted and can be hurtful. Let students see your most positive qualities. Think about what you would want your teacher to be like, and then do those things. (Unless those things mean letting you watch TV all the time and never having to do any work-don't do that, please.) Due diligence D refers to paying close and reasonable attention to students who are under your supervision. You and other school personnel must oversee students at school and take reasonable care to protect them from harm (Goorian & Brown, 2002). Though of course it seems like common sense, many teachers are unaware they are required by law to keep a diligent eye on students. Your mere presence around students is not sufficient. You must watch over them carefully and follow established school policies. As a teacher, you're expected to conduct yourself as would a reasonable and prudent professional in similar circumstances. Negligence is the failure to maintain careful watch over students under your supervision. It is considered to be a serious breach of duty D, meaning a serious failure to comply with one of your legal obligations at school. If a student is injured emotionally or physically at school and the teacher on supervisory duty did not exercise due diligence, the teacher and school may be sued for negligence (Drye, 2000). You can protect yourself against charges of negligence and breach of duty by adhering to the following guidelines: • Perform your assigned duties ethically and conscientiously as directed by school policy, even when those duties might seem boring or unnecessary. Avoid assuming that "nothing will happen" or that you can trust even the best-behaved students always to behave safely and responsibly. • Be attentive in monitoring student behavior. Do not leave students unattended in your classroom, shop, or instructional area. Managing your physical proximity to students can be tricky; there are undoubtedly going to be times when you'll want to leave your group (like when you have to go to the restroom!), but you'll need to figure out supervision for them, because if something were to happen while they were unsupervised, you could be held liable. • For activities that involve physical risk, provide thorough precautions and safety instructions before you have students undertake the activities, and then monitor closely. This may seem like a no-brainer, but you can't always anticipate the ways in which students can get into trouble. • Be vigilant for signs that students might be inclined to harm themselves. Pay attention to what they do, say, and write. Be alert to changes in behavior. If you have concerns, speak with your administrator or school counselor. • Be alert to any signs that a student is being bullied or otherwise abused. Follow your school guidelines in these instances. Keep in mind that teachers are mandated by law to report any suspicions of abuse (physical, verbal, sexual, neglectful). Follow your school policies in any case where you suspect a student may be a victim of abuse. Exercise special caution regarding physical contact with students. Don't allow yourself to be alone in the classroom with a student unless you are in plain sight of others. Many teachers simply refrain, too, from touching students; those who do touch students are careful to do it in appropriate ways. Sometimes teachers get so frustrated that they are tempted to grab or strike a student, or to intervene through other physical means; it is very difficult to justify physical contact motivated by anger, and you should avoid it at all costs. Also, make sure you never throw pencils, pens, erasers, books, desks, or chairs, no matter how strongly you are provoked; your ability to manage your own emotional reactions is critical in performing your duties acceptably and in reducing your liability in any circumstance that goes awry. As a teacher, you will act in loco parentis. In loco parentis is not an allusion to crazy parents; it is a legal term that means “in place of parents." It requires you to exercise the same duty at school as do parents at home in overseeing children's safety and security. In actual practice, you should watch over students even more carefully than their caregivers may. Professional and Ethical Behavior: You must always conduct yourself ethically, treating your students and colleagues fairly, honestly, compassionately, and supportively. You must be honest with them, but at the same time avoid, when possible, saying or doing things that hurt their feelings or stifle their desire to learn or cooperate. Effort: You must give your genuine best effort to the profession. Your obligation is to do all you reasonably can to help students benefit from their educational experience and find satisfaction in doing so. You should give that same effort to relations with administrators, colleagues, and students' caregivers. Teaching: You must teach in a manner that is conducive to success for every one of your students. You will want to give careful attention to selecting appropriate subject matter, providing interesting and worthwhile learning activities, relating effectively and helpfully with students, adjusting instruction to students' abilities and personalities, and insisting on considerate, humane treatment by and for everyone in the class. Helpfulness: Always do what you can to help students, collectively and individually. Help them succeed academically. Help them relate well with others. Help them find satisfaction in school and learning. As Haim Ginott (1971) said so many years ago, always ask yourself what you can do, at a given moment, to be most helpful to your students. He referred to continual helpfulness as "teachers' hidden asset.” Respect: Cultivate and demonstrate genuine respect for your students. Treat all of them as your social equals, worthy of your time and attention. Speak with each of them in a kindly manner as often as you can. Learn their names quickly and make an effort to remember significant things about them. Show genuine approval for effort and work done well (but skip insincere or undeserved praise). Spread your attention around evenly. Avoid causing students to lose face or to feel that you've taken away their dignity. As best you can, always treat your students as you would like to be treated in similar circumstances. Cooperation: Help your students understand that accepting each other and working together benefits everyone in the class. Emphasize that you have a plan that will help them learn and enjoy themselves. Reassure them you will be considerate of their desires and feelings. Sincerely invite them to cooperate with you and each other, and give them some responsibility in making the class enjoyable and productive. Make sure they feel part of the process. ommunication: Students need to know clearly what is expected of them. Be helpful and encouraging, and avoid preaching or moralizing. Avoid arilling students about improper behavior or What Are My Obligations to Students? Undoubtedly you have some ideas about what behaviors are expected of teachers; after all, you yourself have been a student for years, and have probably internalized the "rules of the game” to a greater or lesser degree. That's good. But it's not enough. Teachers must be intentional in considering their own responsibilities and obligations, both legally mandated and implied; failure to pay attention to what is expected is one way to end up in potentially problematic situations, and, perhaps, on the national news! You undoubtedly know that teachers are supposed to do certain things, and to avoid doing other things. You've probably seen stories in the news about teachers who either decided not to adhere to their obligations or who didn't stop to think about the way their own behavior might affect them and their students. Please don't let this be you. Effective teachers are reflective teachers, and they carefully consider the possible outcomes of each decision they make and each action they take. A first step in being able to reflect in this way is to make sure you know what obligations schools and teachers have to their students. Keep in mind that teachers are expected to adhere to certain professional standards, regardless of the classroom management system they utilize. Teachers are expected to maintain a safe, secure, and supportive environment for learning, and to recognize their own roles as professionals and as role models for their students. Teachers must be committed to being sensitive to and understanding of students' personalities, backgrounds, and needs, carefully considering the role of these characteristics in the classroom environment. It goes without saying that teachers are responsible for helping students acquire important knowledge and skills; equally important, though more difficult to concretely define, are the behaviors and attitudes that teachers should foster among their students. Teachers are expected to provide their students with engaging, meaningful, and worthwhile activities that lead students to accomplish content and skill objectives. And, of course, teachers must help students learn to behave responsibly and, ideally, to strive for excellence. Piece of cake, right?
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