#stress

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Thinking and Linking

Out the classroom door, but still teaching

Joanne Jacobs

Jun 15, 2022
3 min

Out the classroom door, but still teaching

While there’s little evidence of a “Big Quit” in education there may be a Significant Shift in how teachers see their options, writes Linda Jacobson on The 74. Prenda microschools are expanding . Those who leave traditional schools can find flexible jobs in new school models, such as online and microschools, she writes. As a counselor in a Vermont school district, Heather Long felt she couldn’t meet the explosion in “mental health needs” caused by pandemic restrictions. She n

Teach students to meet deadlines, handle stress

Joanne Jacobs

May 19, 2022
2 min

Teach students to meet deadlines, handle stress

When schools closed and classes went online, expectations fell. Some students had trouble accessing classes or younger siblings to tend or jobs essential for paying the family’s rent. Teachers were told to give “grace” and flexibility in a time of crisis. easier grading and lower expectations the norm, wrote Eric Wolf Welch, a Virginia teacher, in an email to Washington Post columnist Jay Mathews. It’s “dangerous,” he believes. A long-time social studies teacher at a Fairfax

The young Puritans

Joanne Jacobs

May 14, 2022
2 min

The young Puritans

Overprotected by their parents, Gen Snowflake demands that college “make them comfortable,” argued Greg Lukianoff, a First Amendment specialist, and Jonathan Haidt, a social psychologist, in The Coddling of the American Mind, which came out in 2017. That’s true for some students, writes Kathleen Stock on Substack. But not all “speech sanitizers” are child-like and passive. A skeptic on transgenderism, she was witch-hunted out of her job as a University of Sussex philosophy pr

In defense of (good) homework

Joanne Jacobs

Oct 14, 2018
2 min

In defense of (good) homework

Homework can help students learn and narrow the achievement gap, writes Janine Bempechat, clinical professor of human development at Boston University’s Wheelock College of Education and Human Development. Well-designed, appropriate homework assignments boost achievement and build learning skills, she concludes. “Busywork” — assignments designed to be done by parents — waste of time and energy. There’s a huge homework gap by social class. Children of well-to-do parents get lo

None dare call it ‘yoga’

Joanne Jacobs

Sep 24, 2018
2 min

None dare call it ‘yoga’

More schools are teaching yoga in hopes of promoting mindfulness and relieving stress, writes Alia Wong in The Atlantic. However, yoga is controversial in some parts of the country. Georgia parents who complained yoga classes “promoted a non-Christian belief system,” forced the district to remove the “namaste” greeting and coloring-book exercises involving mandalas, she writes. San Diego County parents sued on grounds the yoga program “promoted Eastern religions.” Since 1993,

Those unhappy college years

Joanne Jacobs

Sep 13, 2018
1 min

Those unhappy college years

Here’s more on the fragility theme: A quarter of college students were diagnosed with mental health conditions within the past year,” concludes a study published in Depression Anxiety. One in five students reported suicidal thoughts; nine percent had attempted suicide. Researchers surveyed 67,300 students at 108 colleges in the U.S. during the spring semester of 2015. The study found transgender and bisexual students in particular were more vulnerable to suffering from mental

Why are kids killing themselves?

Joanne Jacobs

Jun 11, 2018
2 min

Why are kids killing themselves?

The number of teens “hospitalized for thinking about or attempting suicide doubled in less than a decade,” according to a recent study. Anxiety and depression diagnoses are way up for teenagers. Suicide rates are rising for all age groups, reports the Centers for Disease Control. The deaths of Kate Spade and Anthony Bourdain have put suicide in the spotlight. What’s going on? For unhappy teens thinking about death as a solution, Netflix’s 13 Reasons Why could be glamorizing s

Joanne Jacobs

Apr 13, 2018
1 min

School gym could shelter homeless families

The principal of a K-8 school in San Francisco’s gentrifying Mission District wants to shelter homeless families in the gym, reports Jill Tucker in the San Francisco Chronicle. The proposal, spearheaded by Supervisor Hillary Ronen, involves converting the smaller of Buena Vista Horace Mann’s two gyms to a family shelter from 7 p.m. to 7 a.m. every day, including weekends, summers and holidays. The city would pay up to $900,000 per year to serve up to 20 families at a time wit

We’re scaring the kids

Joanne Jacobs

Mar 11, 2018
1 min

We’re scaring the kids

School shootings are extraordinarily rare, writes David Ropelik, author of How Risky Is It, Really? Why Our Fears Don’t Always Match the Facts. Since the Columbine massacre in 1999, “approximately 200 public school students have been shot to death while school was in session,” he writes. The “likelihood of any given public school student being killed by a gun, in school, on any given day since 1999 was roughly 1 in 614,000,000. And since the 1990s, shootings at schools have b

Dump the college interview

Joanne Jacobs

Jan 6, 2018
1 min

Dump the college interview

Interviews are of “considerable importance” to only 4.7 percent of colleges, while 46 percent of schools said interviews were irrelevant. #collegeinterviews #stress

Testing empowers parents

Joanne Jacobs

Dec 27, 2017
1 min

Testing empowers parents

Testing enables social justice, argues Keri Rodrigues, founder and CEO of Massachusetts Parents United in CommonWealth Magazine. Minority and low-income parents need to know how their children are doing in school, she writes in response to an anti-testing piece by Lisa Guisbond, who represents FairTest and Citizens for Public Schools. Testing has helped improve achievement in Massachusetts schools over the last 25 years, argues Rodrigues. The state ranks first in the nation i

If at first you fail the test …

Joanne Jacobs

Dec 7, 2017
2 min

If at first you fail the test …

When students are allowed to retake tests for a better grade, what do they learn? Julie Scagell, a Minnesota mother, wonders if her district’s liberal retake policy teaches kids they’ll always get a “do-over.” Asked if he’d finished studying for the math test, her 12-year-old son told her “it doesn’t even matter. If I don’t do well I’ll just retake it.” Retake proponents “believe they allow students who struggle with test-taking another chance to master the material, and say

Higher ed anxiety: What can colleges do?

Joanne Jacobs

Nov 2, 2017
1 min

Higher ed anxiety: What can colleges do?

Students with mental-health problems, especially anxiety and depression, are flooding college health centers. The most selective colleges have the most fragile students, writes Jonathan Zimmerman in the Chronicle of Higher Education. Zimmerman teaches education and history at the University of Pennsylvania, “where at least 14 students have taken their lives since February 2013,” he writes. “Many of our students grow up in an atmosphere of hyperachievement, so they think they

The new homework: reading

Joanne Jacobs

Aug 15, 2017
2 min

The new homework: reading

Elementary schools are dropping homework in favor of reading, reports Greg Toppo in USA Today. There’s “very little correlation between homework and achievement” in the early grades, says Duke’s Harris Cooper. However, “doing homework may bring other benefits, such as greater self-direction and self-discipline, better time organization and a better awareness of the connection between home and school.” More nine-year-olds are doing homework than in the past, concluded Brookin

Grade-free transcripts help prep-school kids

Joanne Jacobs

May 14, 2017
2 min

Grade-free transcripts help prep-school kids

High school grades are rising, even as SAT scores remain flat, reports the College Board. In 2013, the average 12th grader earned a 2.90 — nearly a B — average, yet only 43 percent of SAT takers were prepared for college work. The Mastery Transcript Consortium, a group of 100 elite prep schools, proposes to eliminate grades in favor of creating digital transcripts showing “micro-credits” earned for skills such as “analytic and creative thinking, leadership and teamwork, globa

Fidget spinners: Do they help or distract?

Joanne Jacobs

May 13, 2017
1 min

Fidget spinners: Do they help or distract?

Fidget spinners — handheld, multi-pronged tops — are supposed to help hyperactive and anxious kids stay focused. Some teachers say they’re distracting, reports Kristine Kim on Education Week Teacher. Some schools have banned the toy, required a doctor’s note or limited students to using school-provided spinners. Advocates of “fidget therapy” say under-stimulated students “may become restless” and “act out as they feel to need to increase stimulation, reports Kim. “The same

Homework ban irks some parents

Joanne Jacobs

Apr 26, 2017
2 min

Homework ban irks some parents

Banning homework for elementary school kids has divided parents, reports Kyle Spencer in the New York Times. Public School 11, a prekindergarten through fifth-grade school in Manhattan, now encourages students to read and provides a website with tips for parents on after-school activities. Some parents are happy their children have more time and less stress. But not everyone. . . . Ashley Sierra, an executive assistant and a single mother with three children at the school, sa

Stress can make kids smarter (in some ways)

Joanne Jacobs

Apr 21, 2017
2 min

Stress can make kids smarter (in some ways)

Unstable parenting, poverty, a violent environment and other “adverse childhood experiences” contribute to “toxic stress” that impairs brain development, writes Olga Khazan in The Atlantic. “As a result, poor children tend to have less gray matter in areas of the brain critical to learning and memory, which explains as much as 20 percent of the gap in test scores between poor and middle-class kids.” As adults, they may have trouble planning ahead. “In many studies, lower-inc

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