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Simple Values-Based Intervention That Reduces Learning Gaps And Discipline
Fordham Institute
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10/4/21
“The findings are striking for such a simple intervention. How simple? The writing exercises were given just three times in each school year. Pencils, paper, and one hour of time spread out over seven or eight months—even doable virtually. It’s hard to get much simpler than that. Why wouldn’t schools want to jump on this even while the mechanisms at work here are being evaluated?”
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“Adolescent Brains Are Wired to Want Status and Respect”
Scientific American
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5/1/21
“A different interpretation of adolescence emerged in the 2000s, stemming from two important new findings. Neuroscientists showed that puberty ushers in a period of exuberant neuronal growth followed by a pruning of neural connections that is second only to the similar process that occurs in the first three years of life. They also showed that the maturation of the adolescent brain is not linear. The limbic system, a collection of brain areas that are sensitive to emotion, reward, novelty, threat and peer expectations, undergoes a growth spurt while the brain areas responsible for reasoning, judgment and executive function continue their slow, steady march toward adulthood. The resulting imbalance in the developmental forces helps to explain adolescent impulsivity, risk taking, and sensitivity to social reward and learning.”
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“How Friends Influence One Another — For Better Or Worse — In High School”
KQED
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12/10/20
“By the time students reach high school, friendships become more stable. “In middle school, it’s unusual for an individual to maintain the same group of close friends over the space of 18 months,” says B. Bradford Brown, an educational psychology professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison: “In high school, that is no longer the case.” Likely because individual identities are more solidified, older teens tolerate greater dissimilarity in one another. As a result, compromise and collaboration increasingly take the place of conformity.”
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How Understanding Friendships Can Help Students Succeed
KQED
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11/30/20
“Among adults, healthy friendships are "voluntary, personal, positive, and persistent,” Lydia Denworth writes in her 2020 book Friendship, “and they usually assume some measure of equality.”… Eighty percent of adolescents experience loneliness at school, and about 12 percent of 6,000 sixth-graders in one of Juvonen’s studies were not named as a friend by anyone. Students with no friends “receive lower grades and are less academically engaged,” she says. Research has also tied friendlessness and exclusion to truancy, inability to focus, deficits in working memory, and lack of classroom participation.”
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Six Ways To Support Teenagers During the Pandemic
Harvard Graduate School of Education
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8/27/20
“Hill identified six developmental areas, in addition to academics, that schools have traditionally helped nurture. Here, we summarize her suggestions for how schools can work with families to continue to do so in a pandemic.”
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On The Challenges Of Middle School Under Quarantine
Hechinger Report
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6/19/20
“That’s why both educators and researchers who study child development say the school shutdowns resulting from the coronavirus pandemic may be particularly disruptive for middle schoolers. These kids are being sequestered at home at exactly the stage in life they need their peers and teachers most.”
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“Numb” - High Schooler Makes Extraordinary Short Film About Online School And Isolation
YouTube/Liv McNeil
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6/17/20
“This is a mini film, Numb by me. I did this for a school project but I'm really happy with how it came out, so I'm posting it here.”
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On The Adolescent Search For Relevance Through Their Online Lives
New York Times
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11/29/19
“When he got home, Rowan would turn on his laptop and sit in front of the glowing screen for hours, or flop onto his bed, his phone hovering above his face. His Instagram feed flashed before him like a slot machine. His most popular account, @Zuccccccccccc, taking its name from Facebook’s chief executive, had 1.2 million followers. If his posts were good, his account would keep growing. If he took some time off, growth would stall. Rowan, like most teenagers on the internet, wasn’t after fame or money, though he made a decent amount — at one point $10,000 a month and more, he said. What Rowan wanted was clout.”
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SEL And The Importance Of Teachers Being “Emotion Scientists”
KQED
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11/20/19
“Thankfully, there’s a science to understanding emotion. It’s not just a matter of intuition, opinion, or gut instinct. We are not born with an innate talent for recognizing what we or anyone else is feeling and why. We all have to learn it. I had to learn it. As with any science, there’s a process of discovery, a method of investigation. After three decades of research and practical experience, we at the Yale Center have identified the talents needed to become what we’ve termed an “emotion scientist.””
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How A Short Writing Intervention Helped Middle School Students Thrive
Time
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8/2/19
“As in a prior study of Wisconsin 6th graders, the 7th graders who participated in the writing exercise had fewer failing grades and better overall GPAs at the end of the school year than their peers who had not participated. The researchers found no changes in attendance or discipline, but did find that students who had participated in the writing test valued “doing well in school” more at the end of the year than their peers.”
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40 Interviews, 5 Findings: What Teens Say They Need
ASCD
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5/9/19
“I recently interviewed over 40 teens in grades 6 through 12 and asked them, "What do you need from schools to feel supported both academically and socially?" I share their responses, both honest and illuminating, here.”
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"Why Are Young People Having So Little Sex?”
Atlantic
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12/1/18
“From 1991 to 2017, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s Youth Risk Behavior Survey finds, the percentage of high-school students who’d had intercourse dropped from 54 to 40 percent. In other words, in the space of a generation, sex has gone from something most high-school students have experienced to something most haven’t… Now some observers are beginning to wonder whether an unambiguously good thing might have roots in less salubrious developments. Signs are gathering that the delay in teen sex may have been the first indication of a broader withdrawal from physical intimacy that extends well into adulthood.”
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“Teens Are Protesting In-Class Presentations.” Not Everyone Agrees.
Atlantic
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9/12/18
“We need to stop preaching to get rid of public speaking and we need to start preaching for better mental health support and more accessibility alternatives for students who are unable to complete presentations/classwork/etc due to health reasons.”
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FDA: Teenage Vaping Has Reached “Epidemic Proportion”
New York Times
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9/12/18
“Food and Drug Administration on Wednesday gave Juul Labs and four other makers of popular vaping devices 60 days to prove they can keep them away from minors. If they fail, the agency said, it may take the flavored products off the market… According to the agency, more than two million middle and high school students were regular users of e-cigarettes last year… E-cigarette users inhale far fewer toxic chemicals than do smokers of traditional cigarettes. But they can take in higher levels of nicotine than in cigarettes. It is nicotine which is addictive and poses a serious health threat to teenagers.”
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“Science Of Adolescent Learning”
Alliance for Excellent Education
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8/1/18
“The report recommends ways education practitioners and policymakers can support adolescent learning for all students, including historically underserved populations.”
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What Real-Life Live Streaming Tells Us About Isolated Teenage Boys
New Yorker
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7/9/18
“I was going through a tough time, and watching his streams gave me an outlet outside of reality where I could just smile and not think about my problems.”
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"45 Stories Of Sex And Consent On Campus”
New York Times
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5/10/18
“In the time of #MeToo, the debate about how to handle sexual consent has become louder than ever. Many sexual encounters seem to take place in a so-called gray zone of miscommunication, denial, rationalization and, sometimes, regret. We wanted to explore that complexity when we asked college students for their stories of navigating this gray zone: what they anticipated, how they negotiated consent and processed the aftermath, and what advice they would give their younger selves. These are their stories.”
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On the Psychological Impact Of Active Shooter Drills
Atlantic
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2/28/18
"A sense of safety and security in childhood is integrally tied to mental and physical health later in life—as well as emotional wellbeing, and the formation of the coping mechanisms that allow a person to deal with later adversity in ways that do not involve killing. It is this sense that can be undermined sometimes even by the best of intentions.”
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Most People Don’t Quite Know What Video Games Mean To Kids
New Yorker
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11/20/17
"Kongphan sat down in front of an array of four computer monitors and clicked a button to alert his followers that he was about to start streaming. Fans surged in, filling the chat window with emotes—small, emoji-like images that are Twitch’s preferred mode of expression… Kongphan put on a gaming headset and leaned in to the microphone above his keyboard. The moment the video feed kicked in, his demeanor brightened. “Hello, hello, everyone!” he called out, grinning. “What up? Twitch is alive!””
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Deep Data & Narrative About The Surge In Adolescent Anxiety
New York Times
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10/11/17
"The more she looked for explanations, the more she kept returning to two seemingly unrelated trend lines — depression in teenagers and smartphone adoption. (There is significantly more data about depression than anxiety.) Since 2011, the trend lines increased at essentially the same rate. In her recent book “iGen,” and in an article in The Atlantic, Twenge highlights a number of studies exploring the connection between social media and unhappiness. “The use of social media and smartphones look culpable for the increase in teen mental-health issues,” she told me. “It’s enough for an arrest — and as we get more data, it might be enough for a conviction.””
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Stunning Data On The Effects Of The Smart Phone On Kids
Atlantic
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9/1/17
"The Monitoring the Future survey, funded by the National Institute on Drug Abuse and designed to be nationally representative, has asked 12th-graders more than 1,000 questions every year since 1975 and queried eighth- and 10th-graders since 1991. The survey asks teens how happy they are and also how much of their leisure time they spend on various activities, including nonscreen activities such as in-person social interaction and exercise, and, in recent years, screen activities such as using social media, texting, and browsing the web.”
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Care Might Be One Of The Most Important Determiners Of Success
Gallup
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8/22/17
"Further analysis revealed that having a caring adult at school is linked to a greater likelihood of self-reported excellent grades at school, and this relationship is strongest for high school students.”
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Harvard Rescinds At Least Ten Acceptances For Obscene Memes
Crimson
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6/4/17
"The description for the official Facebook group for the Class of 2021, set up and maintained by the Admissions Office, disclaims all administrative responsibility for “unofficial groups” and warns members their admissions offers can be rescinded under specific circumstances. “As a reminder, Harvard College reserves the right to withdraw an offer of admission under various conditions including if an admitted student engages in behavior that brings into question his or her honesty, maturity, or moral character,” the description reads.”
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"The Survivor’s Guide To Adulthood”
Yale Daily News
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4/28/17
"The happiness of adulthood is not as intoxicating as the rapture of youth, but is perhaps more valuable because it is not narcissistic and thus can be truly shared. After doing the dishes, my fiancee and I sit on the couch with nothing but the Christmas lights on, listening to the sound of cars of Chapel Street. We sit there with the long day finished, our shapes reflected on the window, dark masses surrounded by speckles of light inside a room of no great size. And I think, This is enough. But something pricks me from inside. The question: Will I ever change the world. I remember what I had aspired to be three years ago: a hero like Hercules or Prometheus.”
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"Are Teenagers Replacing Drugs With Smartphones?”
New York Times
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3/13/17
"The trend has been building for a decade, with no clear understanding as to why. Some experts theorize that falling cigarette-smoking rates are cutting into a key gateway to drugs, or that antidrug education campaigns, long a largely failed enterprise, have finally taken hold. But researchers are starting to ponder an intriguing question: Are teenagers using drugs less in part because they are constantly stimulated and entertained by their computers and phones?”
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How Iceland Made Massive Gains In Preventing Teen Substance Abuse
Atlantic
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1/19/17
"Today, Iceland tops the European table for the cleanest-living teens. The percentage of 15- and 16-year-olds who had been drunk in the previous month plummeted from 42 percent in 1998 to 5 percent in 2016. The percentage who have ever used cannabis is down from 17 percent to 7 percent. Those smoking cigarettes every day fell from 23 percent to just 3 percent. The way the country has achieved this turnaround has been both radical and evidence-based, but it has relied a lot on what might be termed enforced common sense.”
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Why Teens Learn Faster Than Adults
Pacific Standard
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10/4/16
“Teens… mastered the butterfly game a bit faster than adults—that is, their predictions improved faster than young adults’—apparently because they were less quick to solidify their beliefs about the butterfly’s habits. Participants also had better memories for a series of images they saw after correct choices as opposed to incorrect choices, and that effect was stronger in teens than young adults.”
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Why One Star Student Chose To Ditch College And Go Off The Grid
New York Post
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5/29/16
"Two weeks earlier, I was almost finished with my sophomore year at the Columbia University School of Engineering and Applied Science when I decided to start my new life. I skipped my final exams, changed bank accounts, got a second phone number and deleted my Facebook page. I needed to break from my old life of high pressure and unreasonable expectations.”
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Meditation On How Technology Changes Adolescence (via N. Dakota)
BackChannel
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4/19/16
"Huddled into icy plains of North Dakota, Napoleon is essentially the same place it was 25 years ago. And by most accounts, 50 and 75 years ago. The demographics and economics are static. Most of my high school classmates have taken over their family farms, tilling and planting the land of their parents’ parents’ parents. The same people drive the same block of Main Street to the same three-lane grocery store owned by the same family. The same houses have fresh coats of paint, but the grain elevator still towers over all else… Napoleon would be trapped in the amber of time, in a big glass case, if not for one thing: Access to information.”
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On Boys And Making Masculinity More Expressive
New York Times
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4/4/16
"Despite the emergence of the metrosexual and an increase in stay-at-home dads, tough-guy stereotypes die hard. As men continue to fall behind women in college, while outpacing them four to one in the suicide rate, some colleges are waking up to the fact that men may need to be taught to think beyond their own stereotypes.”
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Why Are Kids Depressed? Data On Counseling, Reasons For Stress
Quartz
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3/21/16
"Researchers have a raft of explanations for why kids are so stressed out, from a breakdown in family and community relationships, to the rise of technology and increased academic stakes and competition. Inequality is rising and poverty is debilitating. Twenge has observed a notable shift away from internal, or intrinsic goals, which one can control, toward extrinsic ones, which are set by the world, and which are increasingly unforgiving. Gray has another theory: kids aren’t learning critical life-coping skills because they never get to play anymore.”
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“Screenagers” - A Documentary About Kids And Screens
New York Post
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3/12/16
"I learned that you spend on average 6.5 hours a day looking at screens. As a doctor, I decided I needed to learn the impact of all this screen time on kids. And as a mom, I needed to know what to do.”
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Teens Today Are Safer Than When You Were A Teen. Here’s Data.
Vox
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2/12/16
"Most of the survey questions show that today’s teenagers are among the best-behaved on record. They smoke less, drink less, and have sex less than the previous generation. They are, comparatively, a mild-mannered bunch who will probably shoo away from your lawn quite respectfully (and probably wouldn’t dare set foot on your lawn to begin with!). This is different from what adults typically expect.”
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Results From Pew’s Teens, Technology, And Romance Focus Groups
Pew Internet
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10/11/15
“Many teens in our focus groups described flirting with a crush by liking their photos or posting a comment on their social media profile. These interactions have their own unwritten – but widely understood – rules. Everything from one’s choice of emoji to the spelling of the word “hey” can carry a deeper meaning.”
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Five Exercises To Prompt Reflection On One’s Education
New York Times
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8/2/15
"Here are five exercises that students find particularly engaging. Each is designed to help freshmen identify their goals and reflect systematically about various aspects of their personal lives, and to connect what they discover to what they actually do at college.”
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Yes, Helicopter Parenting Is Bad For Kids. Here Are The Studies.
Slate
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7/5/15
"The data emerging about the mental health of our kids only confirms the harm done by asking so little of them when it comes to life skills yet so much of them when it comes to adhering to the academic plans we’ve made for them.”
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The New Generations: Selfie-Absorbed, But Perhaps Not Selfish
Atlantic
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6/10/15
"An older generation may have spoken loftily about morality and virtue and nobility. But many of them could be callous, cruel, and selfish in the way that they treated so many of their fellow human beings… The young today are perhaps less articulate. They search for morality and the meaning of life in more incremental and practical ways. They seek truth and justice, but through avenues quieter than the showy ones of the past. They try to combine their great urges with a good life."
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Understanding Loneliness In A Digital Age
Guardian
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4/1/15
"Hidden behind a computer screen, the lonely person has control. They can search for company without the danger of being revealed or found wanting. They can reach out or they can hide; they can lurk and they can show themselves, safe from the humiliation of face-to-face rejection… But now a problem arises, for the contact this produces is not the same thing as intimacy. Curating a perfected self might win followers or Facebook friends, but it will not necessarily cure loneliness, since the cure for loneliness is not being looked at, but being seen and accepted as a whole person – ugly, unhappy and awkward, as well as radiant and selfie-ready.”
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Understanding Sexting
Atlantic
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10/14/14
“Nighttime is the only time teens get to have intimate conversations and freely navigate their social world… that means checking up on the latest drama on Twitter—“Anyone still awake?” is a common post-midnight tweet—and filling up their Instagram accounts, or asking a girl for a pic.”
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Study Identifies Six Stressors for Teens Regarding Digital Life
Harvard
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8/1/14
“Researchers sorted the stresses into two groups: Type 1 stressors include experiences such as receiving a barrage of personal attacks, being impersonated, or being outed, shamed, or humiliated publicly. Type 2 stressors involve a controlling boyfriend, girlfriend, or friend constantly breaking into one’s social-media accounts to read digital communications with others; feeling smothered by the quantity of digital communications from friends; and feeling pressure to reveal private information.”
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Digital Adolescence Means Kids Avoid Adults More Than Ever
Financial Times
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2/28/14
“Young people have slowly been deprived of agency, spare time, and the ability to socialize in public spaces that is crucial to coming of age. Against this backdrop, social media is not so much a drip-feed of digital narcotic as a release valve for circumscribed lives.”
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Why We’re Seeing An (Affluent) Adolescent Mental Health Implosion
Psychology Today
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11/5/13
“The high rate of maladjustment among affluent adolescents is strikingly counterintuitive. There is a tacit assumption—even among those most affected—that education and money procure well-being, and that if children falter, they will swiftly get the appropriate services. Education and money may once have served as buffers against distress, but that is no longer the case. Something fundamental has changed: The evidence suggests that the privileged young are much more vulnerable today than in previous generations.”