Tag: empathy

What I wish teachers knew about “what I wish my teacher knew”

Alex Shevrin VenetLeave a comment

As the school year gets underway this fall, many teachers are wondering how to address the mental health repercussions of the past two years. How can we show up for our students with care at the center? How should we start to get a sense of the magnitude of trauma?

One activity that might be tempting to teachers is called “what I wish my teacher knew.” The activity went viral after a teacher asked her students to finish the prompt: “I wish my teacher knew,” and then posted the student’s responses on social media. Kids disclosed family struggles, personal interests, hopes and aspirations. The takeaway I saw from many educators was this: Wow, our students will share so much if we only ask them. 

To a degree, I agree with the spirit of the activity. We should ask students what’s going on in their lives and what they want and hope for in the classroom. We should position ourselves as listeners. Being a listener is different than being a trauma detective, though. We have to be careful about whether the activities we create to “get to know you” are actually invasive and might compromise the trusting relationship we are trying to build. The truth is that we don’t need to know the details of a kid’s hardships in order to show up for them with care. 

To unpack some of these dynamics, this post is about the specific activity in which students anonymously fill in the prompt “what my teacher knew.” editing to add: I heard from the originator of the activity and encourage folks to check out her book which sounds like it has a lot of similar nuance to what I write below. As with many viral teaching activities, this one has a life of its own and so my post may not reflect the version of the activity she intended, but rather the version that exists for teachers on TPT and social media.

You may be able to apply a lot of this to other activities where students are asked to share something deeply personal with teachers or the whole class. But as always, your experience is your own – take what you can from this post and I recognize I’m not speaking to every single teacher or situation.  

Building or breaking trust

How long do you need to know someone to tell them something personal about yourself? My guess is that for most people, the answer is “it depends.” Context matters a lot, right? What you share with a random person you just met at a party is probably different than what you might share with a new doctor, who is bound by confidentiality laws and practices. I would also venture to guess that you have learned hard lessons about trust throughout your lifetime. Maybe you shared something with someone too soon, and it impacted your relationship. Maybe you decided to trust someone who didn’t prove themselves to be trustworthy and broke your confidence. Maybe you didn’t share enough, and found that you built too high of a wall.

All of this is to say that trust is hard, and it’s even harder when we are considering disclosure of something really important to us. “Something really important” doesn’t have to mean trauma – it can also feel scary to share things we’re happy about, proud of. Now take all of that complexity and stir in developing brains, student-teacher power dynamics, and mandated reporting laws. Things are getting a little messy, aren’t they?

When we ask students in the first days or weeks of school, “What do you wish your teacher knew?” we’re essentially asking for a disclosure. The question itself implies a secret. It acknowledges that there are things that are hidden between student and teacher, things that aren’t shared for some reason or another. The question asks students to vault over those barriers and share anyway.

Why, though? What do students gain out of being asked to disclose personal things to someone they don’t yet trust? Shouldn’t we be helping students build skills such as  discernment and agency? Shouldn’t we help them make their own evaluations about who to trust and why, who to tell and when? Asking students to reveal personal stories early on reinforces an unequal power dynamic between student and teacher. 

This is not to say you shouldn’t ask students things about themselves in the first weeks of school. But be mindful that trust takes time. Diving too deep, too soon can have harmful repercussions for your relationship down the line. 

What will you do with the information? 

Picture this: you are a restaurant and your server drops off a piece of paper at your table. “Write down what you wish your server knew about you.” You write “I am deathly allergic to ketchup” on the paper. Your server picks it up from your table and walks away. On their next pass by your table, they drop off your appetizer, complete with a giant dollop of ketchup.    

When we ask for disclosure but then ignore the content of those disclosures, we can undermine trust and do real harm to students. If we ask for students to share their concerns, we have to then address those concerns. It can be deeply invaliding to ask for someone’s perspective and then blatantly ignore it. If you ask someone to disclose something, you are making a commitment to act on it. This gets complicated when you’re asking for anonymous disclosure in a classroom environment where you have a great deal of power over the students’ material conditions for a huge chunk of their time. 

Before you do an activity like “what I wish my teacher knew,” ask yourself what you will do with the information. You should be prepared with your answers to all of these related questions:

  • If a student discloses something they like or love to do, what will I do with that information?
  • If a student discloses something they hate or dislike, what will I do with that information? 
  • If a student discloses harm that is happening or has happened inside their home, what will I do with that information?
  • If a student discloses harm that is happening or has happened in school, what will I do with that information?
  • If a student discloses something that triggers my mandated reporting responsibility, how does that impact this activity and its purpose?
  • If a student chooses not to disclose anything, how does that impact this activity and its purpose?
  • What do other stakeholders think about this activity, including my school leader, counselor, and students’ families/caregivers? What are their concerns or questions? 

In short: if you open the door, you have to be ready for what comes through it. If “what I wish my teacher knew” is anonymous, how will you meaningfully follow through on the information you gather? I also don’t believe anonymity actually exists in a classroom setting. Consider the case in which you read something on one of the responses that triggers the mandated reporting process. You will likely need to figure out exactly which student wrote that response. What is the point of inviting anonymity if you can’t actually follow through on it? 

What I’m getting at here is that this activity actually sets you up to break students’ trust, not gain it. If what we’re seeking is trust, “what my teacher knew” isn’t the way. 

How will you prove yourself to be trustworthy? 

This brings us to the core question I would like teachers to consider in the first weeks of school: how are you proving yourself to be trustworthy? If the goal of “what I wish my teacher knew” is to help students share what’s important to them, consider this instead: how can I be the type of person who students would trust to share what’s important to them? Rather than, “I need this activity to find out what students typically don’t want to share with teachers,” consider, “why is it that students typically don’t share things with teachers, and what could I do about that?” 

When I reflect on how I’ve built trust with others, I think about a long, slow process. I think about how people showed me they could be trusted with little or insignificant stuff, whether that was showing up on time or remembering a minor food allergy when they invited me for dinner. Trust is also about how someone responds to you -whether they try to “fix” your pain or simply show up and acknowledge that you’re in it, whether they make things about themselves or hold space for others. If we want to authentically show up for students, we have to look at trust as a process instead of a given. When we push too hard in the first few weeks of school in the hopes that we can skip over the slowness of relationship-building, our efforts can go awry. 

The reframe: what I wish my teacher would

I was talking to the amazing Rhiannon Kim about this blog post and she dropped a pretty amazing reframe, which I’m including here with her permission. She suggested that instead of asking students to complete the phrase “I wish my teacher knew,” we could ask students to fill in “I wish my teacher would.” 

Now that’s a gorgeous reframe if I ever saw one. “I wish my teacher knew” requires students to offer up something personal in the hopes that the teacher correctly interprets what that means for learning together. By focusing instead on what we need from one another, we can build trust. If a student says “I wish my teacher would be more flexible about deadlines,” I have an opportunity to demonstrate that I am worth trusting. I can do what I can to meet their needs without requiring a payment of information in exchange. 

Rhiannon also suggested adding on “I wish my teacher wouldn’t“ and using these prompts as a jumping-off point to co-create classroom culture. She said: “This practice can generate the type of learning space that will be co-created by the youth and the educators. While not every hope or wish can be honored; it is honoring that we will take time to listen to what is needed from the people we are in a learning community with.”

A few more thoughts on start of school get-to-know-you activities

Here are a few more assorted thoughts about get-to-know-you activities for the start of the school year. The goal here is to do these activities in ways that support student agency and self-determination. 

  • Be transparent about information sharing in your classroom. I write about this a little bit in my book, but some quick tips: be clear with students about the difference between secrecy and confidentiality. Explain your duty as a mandated reporter and what that means for students. Give examples of the types of information that you won’t/shouldn’t keep to yourself, and who you might tell (for example: “sometimes as a teacher I need support to best help you all. I might occasionally talk to the principal about what you tell me so she can help guide me. But I promise not to share things with other teachers without your permission.”) It might also be relevant to help students understand what their parents can and cannot access/request information about, and what information does/doesn’t go into their academic records. Essentially, help your students become informed so they can make their own choices about what to tell you. 
  • If you want to create a space for students to share things they wish you knew, do it in relationship. Do not give students an anonymous slip of paper or anonymous Google form. These leave you with no way to acknowledge and connect with students about what they shared. If what you’re asking is for students to share what they wish you knew, then it needs to be reciprocal. Here are two ways you could do this:
    • Write students a letter sharing some things about yourself, ask them to write you back, and then respond to each letter.
    • In a start-of-the-year survey, include an open-ended question like “Is there anything I should know about you as a learner to help you be successful in this class?” Embedded in the question is the purpose of the information-sharing, which helps students make choices about what to share.
  • When planning group activities in which you’re asking students to share things about themselves, or read one another’s “I am from” poems, for example, consider how you are building emotional safety. Please read this fantastic piece by Kate Bowles on safety during classroom community-building. It has some great pointers about trust and agency.
  • As you set up activities, name that students can “choose their vulnerability.” Don’t require students to share something deeply personal, and be mindful of the types of examples you give. If you share something deeply personal on day 1, students may feel an implicit pressure to do the same. 
  • Never, ever, ever share student responses to these types of activities on social media.  If you want to prove yourself to be trustworthy, do not share students’ private words for public consumption. 

Weaving it in throughout the year

Curiosity about your students’ lives isn’t a one-and-done! Build in opportunities for students to share things with you on a regular basis. In the classes I teach for undergrads, they fill out a weekly survey reflecting on their learning from the week, giving me feedback on how I did as a teacher, and adding anything else they want me to know. I frequently check in with students and have other community-building practices. A Google Form isn’t the only way that students can communicate with me, and I make sure they know that. Whether it’s circles, check-ins, or small conferences, find a way to regularly build relationships. Small, meaningful moments of connection are way more impactful than a single flashy activity at the start of the year. 

Photo by Paper Textures on Unsplash

Thank you to Dulce-Marie Flecha and Rhiannon Kim for being thought partners on this post.

Teaching Doesn’t Get Easier

Alex Shevrin Venet3 Comments

Wasn’t teaching supposed to get easier?

Didn’t someone tell me that teaching would get easier? That working with tough kids would get easier? That balance, boundaries, pedagogy, content, all of it would feel easier someday?

I’ve learned so many skills. Doesn’t skill acquisition make it easier? I know now how to assess without a survey, teach without a whiteboard/pen/computer/book, build foundation without condescending, encourage voice and choice without judgement or expectation. I’ve learned so many things through observing teachers who are smarter than I am, through asking students what they needed, through collaborating with parents and families and caregivers. And I learned a lot of things the hard way, by messing up, by disappointing students, by missing opportunities, by reflecting, reflecting, reflecting.

Soooo…isn’t it supposed to be easy by now?

I’ve immersed myself in lenses and frames and tried to incorporate the best lessons to my students’ benefit. I’ve long since dropped the pretense that I know even a fraction of all there is to know, I’ve abandoned the belief that there are silver bullets in education, I’ve embraced the mess and complexity and journey of trying to be more inclusive, anti-racist, feminist, culturally sustaining, trauma-informed. I own that I will never be perfect at any of it. I wear my vulnerability and fallibility.

So I’m comfortable being uncomfortable. I’m okay not being okay. I’m at peace with the process. But like, can it get a little less challenging yet? Don’t I get something for all this work?

Okay. I know. It doesn’t get easier. It doesn’t get easier because teaching is about being in relationship with humans, and more specifically, developing humans. In my case, even more specifically, developing humans who are facing immense challenges every single day. And humans are endlessly complex, and endlessly challenging, and endlessly amazing and resilient and wonderful. Humans are messy and get into conflict and misunderstand and hurt and hate and love and apologize and sometimes say the most astonishing things, like “thank you” and “I care about you” and “I’m proud of myself.”

Teaching will never be easy, because human relationships will never be easy, and that’s amazing. No amount of training or professional development or introspection will ever protect me from the ups and downs of being really emotionally invested in my students, and I don’t want to be numb to the process. I never want to lose the openness that allows for true relationships, those true relationships through which everything is possible.

So my new school year’s resolution is to let go of the idea of “easy.” Bye, easy. I won’t miss the idea of you. Let me embrace the mess and joy of the challenge, instead.

 

 

 

Always Talk About Students As If They Were In The Room

Alex Shevrin Venet1 Comment

Unconditional positive regard doesn’t stop when my students walk out the door at 2:15.

True unconditional positive regard infuses all conversations about my students, because the way I talk about my students informs my practice when I’m with them.

Recently a comment of mine on an Edutopia post sparked someone else to write a post asking whether venting about students should be banned. This in turn is generating lots of conversation, a lot of which defends teachers’ rights to free speech and holds that venting helps teachers prevent burnout. But I think “should venting be banned” is probably the wrong question.

Here are some questions I’d rather answer:

  • How does my staff culture respect students whether or not they are in the room?
  • Where are my teachers getting emotional support for the challenging aspects of their jobs?
  • How are teachers understanding challenging student behavior? Are they left to make sense of this on their own, or are we using a trauma-informed approach, consulting and collaborating with social workers and mental health professionals, and contextualizing student behavior in our unique community?
  • Are teachers comfortable going to one another for problem-solving and support? Are my teachers willing and able to be vulnerable with one another? Are they in strong enough relationship with one another to offer feedback?
  • Do teachers feel ownership and influence over their classrooms? Their job as a whole? Are they blaming students and families because they feel powerless to make change?
  • What example is being set by school leaders?
  • Does my staff share the same values? Are we understanding one another’s positive intent, or do we question one another’s actual stance toward the students?
  • Am I talking about my students in the same way I would if they were sitting in the room with me?

 

These are tough questions, and in a tough job, sometimes it’s easier to vent and stay stuck than doing the hard work of problem-solving. There is no silver bullet for human relationships, so we are in a constant state of trial and error and more error and iteration and questioning and trying again tomorrow. When we engage one another in true conversation about these challenges, we help move one another forward; we build resiliency.

I can and do have these types of conversations about my students with my students in the room, and with them directly. I’ve said to a student, “I feel really stuck working with you lately, and I’m wondering if you feel the same way, and what we can do about it.” I’ve said to my students, “What you just said really pushed a button for me and I want to take a minute to take care of myself before we move forward in class.”  When I model vulnerability and taking ownership over my own emotions, I make it a little more okay for my students to do the same.

So, should venting be banned? Let’s ask some different questions. Let’s ask them in service of our students. Let’s ask them as if – and when – our students are in the room.

The teacher paradox: it is – and isn’t- about me

Alex Shevrin VenetLeave a comment

The core paradox of teaching is that the work requires us to be both confident and humble, self-assured and self-critical at the same time.

It isn’t about me – it’s about my students. What I need out of a learning experiences comes second to what my students need. Their needs as learners drive my pedagogy.

Yet, it is about me – I need to be a well and healthy person in order to serve my students. So I need to put myself first, find ways to fulfill my intellectual curiosity, and find joy in my day to day experience.

My student’s behavior isn’t about me – it’s about their patterns, their developing brains, their trauma, their mental health, their challenges. When my students disrupt or yell or kick over a chair, it isn’t personal.

And – it is personal. My student who says “I don’t f-ing trust you” – Did I give her enough reason to actually believe that she can trust me? My student who blows out of class again and again – did I create a classroom that was conducive to his self-regulation, or one that increased his anxiety? If I say “it’s not about me” and leave it at that, I’m letting go of my responsibility to meet each student’s needs.

My students’ growth isn’t about me: it’s about their amazing resilience, their families’ years of support, their community and culture and traditions and everything else that goes beyond the six hours a day I see them, and the years of their life they spend in my school. When they are my age, my students might not remember me, nor should I expect or need them to – what matters is that my students grow into the amazing adults I see them becoming.

But? It is about me. And I can take a few quiet moments here at the end of the year to pause and appreciate before I jump back into the work. Sometimes I do make a difference that I can see in the student: he can read more fluently than before, she can more confidently describe the emotions she’s feeling, they can say “I felt cared about this year.” I know I contributed to that and I can feel proud of our work together. And sometimes I make a difference I won’t see, and I can give myself some hope that the student who didn’t succeed while we worked together might carry away some small piece of me to use later when she needs it.

The work continues. We’re never done. It can be easy for the scales to tip into one side or the other, claiming ownership where we should center our students or playing martyr when we should center ourselves. But it’s a beautiful dance to stay balanced in the middle, where the growth happens.

Getting started with trauma-informed teaching

Alex Shevrin Venet3 Comments

Hope

This post is intended to be a jumping-off point for those seeking to become more trauma-informed in their education practice. It is not meant to be an exhaustive list of resources, but rather a collection of accessible places to start to get familiar with concepts and strategies.

I would love to add onto this list, especially in some areas of intersection: trauma informed and… (specific populations, identities, and settings). Please be in touch or comment below if you have resources to share!

Start Here

The 12 Core Concepts (National Child Traumatic Stress Network) – this is a fantastic resource to give you the foundations of knowledge you need for working with students who have experienced trauma. This is also a great resource to share with coworkers, parents and other caregivers to start developing some common language and understanding of these concepts.

The Basics: Understandings and Strategies

These posts and videos will help you get a “Trauma 101” understanding of the major background information you need to start with trauma-informed practice. 

Four Core Priorities for Trauma-Informed Distance Learning (Mindshift/KQED) – although this talks about the four priorities in distance learning specifically, I developed the framework of the four priorities for educators to use in general class planning and decision-making.

8 Ways to Support Students Who Experience Trauma (Edutopia) – initial strategies for the classroom

Helping Students Who Have Experienced Trauma (Edutopia) – more strategies and some bigger-picture concepts

Understanding Trauma-Informed Education (Edutopia) – breaking down misconceptions about trauma-informed education

Learning Brain vs. Survival Brain (Jacob Ham) – short video describing what’s going on in the brain of a trauma-impacted kid

10 Things About Childhood Trauma Every Teacher Needs To Know (WeAreTeachers) –  good overview of some important points about trauma

Child Trauma Toolkit for Educators (from the National Child Traumatic Stress Network) – more comprehensive (while still being succinct and clear) guide around understanding and supporting students who have experienced trauma. Send this one to your principal!

Let’s Start with Heartbreak: The Perilous Potential of Trauma in Literacy (Elizabeth Dutro) – a little bit of a longer read, this piece digs into the challenges and contradictions in how we define trauma and what that means for us as educators.

For higher education: Trauma-Informed Practices for Post-Secondary Education: A Guide (Education Northwest) – succinct and practical!

Big Picture Approaches

While these approaches aren’t specific to students with trauma, they support a school community where trauma-affected youth can thrive. 

Restorative Practices (International Institute for Restorative Practices)  – when thinking about trauma-informed practice, “discipline” must be reimagined, and restorative practices is a great path forward.

Culturally Responsive Teaching, Anti-Racist Teaching, and Equity – trauma-informed practices need to be grounded in an overall equity approach. Find resources on the Educolor resource guide.

Teacher Self-Care and Wellness

It’s essential that educators take care of themselves while they take care of others. These resources highlight the “why” and the “how.” 

When Students Are Traumatized, Teachers Are Too (Edutopia) – information on vicarious trauma and teacher strategies for addressing it.

Wellness: A Guide for Teachers (on this site) – a breakdown of the different aspects of wellness and suggestions for incorporating each

Secondary Traumatic Stress for Educators: Understanding and Mitigating the Effects (Jessica Lander on Mindshift) – overview and resources on secondary traumatic stress in schools

Book: Trauma Stewardship by Laura van Dernoot Lipsky and Connie Burk – fantastic read for anyone who has worked in human services or education.

Background Information/Learn More

Ready to dig deeper? These resources will help you build on your basic knowledge and hopefully provide some avenues for your next steps in learning. 

ACE (Adverse Childhood Experiences) Study (CDC) – foundational research on the impact of experiences which may be traumatic. You can also watch this 5-minute explainer video about the ACE study

Beyond ACEs  (this site) – now that you know about ACEs, learn about why we need to be careful when using the language of ACEs to talk about trauma

Addressing Race and Trauma in the Classroom (NCTSN) – a guide to the intersection of race and trauma with practical tips for educators

When Schools Cause Trauma (Teaching Tolerance) – an essential perspective on how schools can perpetuate trauma and inequity, and how we might disrupt this

Toxic Stress (Harvard Center on the Developing Child) – simple explainer (with video and visuals) on the concept of toxic stress. For more on the impact of racism as it relates to chronic/toxic stress, see this article in The Atlantic by Melinda D. Anderson

Helping Students with Trauma, Tragedy and Grief (Edutopia) – collection of Edutopia resources on a variety of topics related to trauma.

Fostering Resilient Learners: Strategies for Creating a Trauma-Sensitive Classroom (Kristin Souers and Pete Hall, ASCD) – excellent and easy-to-read book covering the fundamental elements of a trauma-informed classroom.

All Students Must Thrive (Tyrone C. Howard et al) – this is a fantastic text on the various factors that threaten student wellness and how teachers can disrupt inequality and oppression so their students can thrive.

For School Leaders

Resources to guide you as you guide your school.

Trauma and Learning Policy Initiative – download both of the free reports to learn more about whole-school approaches and how to implement a change process toward trauma-informed practices.

Trauma-Informed Teachers Need Trauma-Informed Administrators (this site) – some tips and ideas for school leaders as they consider the social-emotional needs of their teachers.

Mindfulness Won’t Save Us, Fixing the System Will (Christina Torres on ASCD) – a reminder that we need to take a systems-change lens rather than simply provide strategies for students.

Image credit: 
Steve Snodgrass, flickr Creative Commons

Breaking the script after conflict

Alex Shevrin Venet1 Comment

After something tough happens between ourselves and our students, breaking or testing the positive relationship we’ve built, it’s essential to be intentional in our next steps. This is especially important when the hard situation feels personal, for instance when a student calls me a name, breaks something I own, or otherwise targets me. In these moments when I am feeling overwhelmed or personally attacked, it would be easy to act from a place of reactivity and blame. However, these are the moments where it’s most important that I take the opportunity to “break the script” with my student and work through conflict in a different way.

The script my students expect:

Student: *does a “bad” thing*

Teacher: *reprimands student for doing bad thing*

Student: *feels shame and either gets defensive and reactive or shuts down*

What can I do instead of reprimand or drop negative consequences down on my student? After we’ve taken a moment to cool down and re-regulate our emotions, here are a few ways I try to break the script with a student who has somehow damaged our relationship.

    1. Time in instead of time out. Just when I want to avoid my student or take a break from them might be the right time to spend even more time together. This shows my student that I care about them enough to sit with the discomfort and work through it together. Maybe we spend a lunch period together or work together on a school beautification project after class. Especially for children with insecure attachment styles, time in reinforces my role as a caring adult who won’t give up. 
    2. “I bet that did NOT feel good. Are you okay?” Kids do well if they can, and so most of the time when a student has made choices that negatively impact others, I wonder what is getting in their way of doing well. When in doubt, start with empathy. When I remember to start with my genuine care for my student, we can often skip past the minutiae of the conflict and get instead to the heart of the matter. 
    3. “Oh wow, what could I have done differently to support you before we got to that point?” Whenever I ask this question, I’m surprised by the insight and thoughtfulness of my students’ responses. I almost always learn something new about the way I was structuring a class, phrasing a request, or explaining a task, and how my choices did or did not support my student. Additionally, it really breaks the script for me to ask what I could have done differently instead of jumping to what my student could have done differently.

These are just three ways to break the script and move toward collaboration instead of blame and shame. This is opening for a restorative approach to conflict, and an invitation to work through instead of stay stuck.

The most challenging part in all of this is letting go of my own feelings of hurt or defensiveness. When I struggle to do so, I try to remember the richness of the work when we let down our walls, set aside our emotionally-laden roles of “teacher” and “student,”  and open ourselves to the beauty that lives in messy, true human connection.

Supporting Students Who Experience Trauma

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I’ve been getting more involved lately on Edutopia as a volunteer community facilitator. Here’s a post I put up a couple of days ago on supporting students who experience(d) trauma:

http://www.edutopia.org/discussion/8-ways-support-students-who-experience-trauma

It’s really astounding and heart-breaking to realize just how many of our students have or will experience trauma in their lives. As important as the strategies for supporting students are, I really want to emphasize my last point on there – taking care of ourselves.

When we are well, we can support our students well. When we take time to make sense of our own emotions, we can help students make sense of theirs. When we experience resilience, we help our students become more resilient themselves.

Trauma is real and present, but so is healing. When we provide safe and caring classrooms, we help our students move forward.

A New Texture of Normal

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I want to write a hundred books. No, maybe a thousand. Or just worm my way into books that are already on the shelves, dropping seeds like Hansel and Gretel wandering through the library.

The plot of these books wouldn’t matter. The protagonists? They can be anyone. What I’m interested in are the characters in the background, on the sidelines, minor characters who provide texture and contrast. I have a mission for these characters.

Right now when I read books, especially those for young adults, these side characters do a lot of things casually. They go to basketball practice. They stand at their lockers. They text their girlfriends. They drive beat-up cars. Whether a vampire or a witch or a high school student or all three, the side characters do what they do and blend into the background. They give us a backdrop of “normal” against which the protagonist shines.

So here’s my mission for these side characters. I want them to create a new “normal.” I want to see the side characters take their antidepressants with lunch. I want them to drive in their beat-up cars to their therapists’ offices. Text their social workers, go to their IEP meetings, name their anxiety.

I don’t want these routines to be the focus of these books. There are already books about struggles and hardships, about being an exception to the rule. Let the protagonists speak to the pain and drama of anxiety, depression, substance use, mental illness. They have something powerful to say.

What I want with the background characters is to create a new kind of a texture, a texture that goes unremarked and unexamined, one that creates a new “normal” backdrop for the stories our teens read. In this backdrop, it’s normal to talk about your depression meds, to go to an alternative school, and to work through difficult emotions with support from adults. If I wrote a thousand books with this new normal as a background, maybe a thousand readers would see a glimmer of their own lives and feel validated and heard. Maybe they would tell a thousand friends, and then a thousand more.

Every one of my students is different and faces different challenges. I think, though, that they would all be served by a community that accepted mental health challenges rather than shied away, by a society that embraced open dialogue about emotions rather than discouraged real conversations. How many lives would be saved if young people everywhere felt like it was okay to share what feels heavy and dark, to bring their thoughts and feelings out into the light?

The good news is that I don’t need to write a million books to get my message across. Maybe it would help, but I can save a lot of time (and paper) if you’ll help do your part. It’s not enough to tell the young people in your life that it’s okay to ask for and receive help. Model it. Show them it is. Express yourself in authentic ways to show young people that they can do it too. Hold your judgement when you hear celebrity or local gossip around someone’s mental and emotional health. Carry yourself with an accepting stance and make time to hear young people’s thoughts. It’s not always easy, but it’s essential.

So will we rise to the challenge? Will we create a new texture of normal? What stands in our way? How do you already do this in your life? I’d love to hear…let’s open the conversation.

Reflections on the case against technology integration

Alex Shevrin Venet1 Comment

Over the past several months I’ve been investigating the case against technology integration in classrooms – or more broadly, the case against internet and smartphones. Because I’m earning my master’s degree in education with a technology focus, I thought it was important to be able to address concerns and opposition to what I believe to be the great benefits of technology.

Throughout my study, I read Alone Together, The Shallows, and Last Child in the Woods. I also kept an eye open to articles and conversations in the education world either supporting or countering technology integration. At core, these readings did not change my beliefs about educational technology, but they did expose me to some fascinating research and trends that those in the field are currently exploring. My core belief is that there is no silver bullet or single answer in education. Every student learns differently and every teacher is most effective in a different way. The tool should fit the task, whether that tool is an iPad or a riverbed.

I’m worried to learn about the ways that the internet may impact our ability to do deep, sustained reading, as I learned in The Shallows. I’m concerned that the internet may push people apart rather than draw them together, as Shelly Turkel argues in Alone Together. I don’t want my children to be more connected to their tablets than to nature, as in the future painted by Richard Louv in Last Child in the Woods. However, these worries don’t outweigh my faith that the internet can help connect disenfranchised youth, that online access can spark interest and availability of higher education, or that real-audience tasks can invigorate reading and writing skill-building. I don’t think it has to be a case of one or the other, of unplugged versus plugged in, of online versus off. We can support our students in ways that make sense for each of them, and blanket acceptance or refusal of any tool doesn’t make sense for all students.

I appreciate the increased awareness I’ve gained over the course of my study, and I hope it will serve me well going forward. I can be more mindful of turning to the internet thoughtlessly, or how Im’ incorporating play in nature into my classes. I can be sure to balance the connections my students build online with the connections they’re making face to face. Throughout it all, I stand steady in my belief that we need to get to know our students well as individuals and then work from there. Relying on my core beliefs and balancing what I know about the drawbacks of screen dependence, I think I will serve my students well.

We Are Not Alone

Alex Shevrin Venet3 Comments

I became a vegetarian because of my love of books.

You see, my favorite author is Jonathan Safran Foer, who hooked me with Everything is Illuminated and made me a fan for life with Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close. After a long hiatus from publishing, Foer released Eating Animals a few years ago. While I’ve been ambivalent about eating meat for a long time, I was willfully ignorant about factory farming and other reasons that might push me over the fence, away from being a carnivore. However, the chance to read more from my favorite author was too tantalizing to pass up – so I read Eating Animals. I haven’t eaten meat since (with one exception for a burger made from a cow my brother raised, slaughtered and processed – an exception of which I think Foer would approve).

So this morning when I opened the New York Times to see that Foer had written an article about the drawbacks of our connected world, I was a bit worried. If Foer, an author whose work and integrity I trust, made a convincing enough argument – what would be the consequences in my life?

Of course, after reading the excerpt from Foer’s commencement speech at Middlebury College, I’m not going to turn in my smartphone or my Chromebook. But in conjunction with some other reading I’ve been doing lately, I’m definitely thinking about how to balance the authentic aspects of my life, whether they be digital or face-to-face.

In the article based on his speech, Foer describes online communication as a “diminished substitute” of true, face-to-face communication, placing texting as one step in a lineage that starts with the telephone and travels through answering machines and emails. To him, each step was “not created to be improvements upon face-to-face communication, but a declension of acceptable, if diminished, substitutes for it.”

This isn’t the first time I’ve heard this argument, and while logically it appears to make sense at the surface, there are some underlying assumptions that give me discomfort. The primary one is that face-to-face, real-time conversation is holier than all other forms of communication and the ultimate form that all people should use. You’ll never find me arguing that face-to-face communication isn’t necessary, but I also don’t think that it is necessarily better or more authentic than other forms of communication. Just as those of us who advocate for educational technology often discuss the appropriateness of a tool for a given task, I think we should also appreciate many forms of communication for their appropriateness to a task.

Online communication and social networking provide opportunities for those who have traditionally been marginalized or ostracized to connect authentically with others. Think about a gay teenager who is the ‘only one’ in his rural high school, finding a supportive community of those like him online. Think of a person with autism for whom face-to-face conversation produces debilitating anxiety, able to use non-synchronous communication to engage with others. Think of the many examples around the world of social media being used to bring together people for life-changing causes, or to spread messages far beyond one person’s typical reach.

Foer says he worries “that the closer the world gets to our fingertips, the further it gets from our hearts.” Our ever-present networks make it easier to be absent from human interactions and we run the risk of leaving one another alone. In the examples I describe, however, I believe that the network truly makes us less alone. If these online interactions lead to face-to-face connections, that’s wonderful. But if not, I think the tool has still served its purpose – true connection between humans.

In the end, I agree with Foer’s beautiful words about the need to be there for one another:

We live in a world made up more of story than stuff. We are creatures of memory more than reminders, of love more than likes. Being attentive to the needs of others might not be the point of life, but it is the work of life. It can be messy, and painful, and almost impossibly difficult. But it is not something we give. It is what we get in exchange for having to die.

I agree that it is messy and complicated and difficult to be in relationship with others. I just think we can do this messy and complicated work, and truly be present for each other, even if we are not together in the flesh.

What do you think? Does the increased use of technology to communicate make us more alone, or more together? I think we hang in the balance and each of us must decide for ourselves how to live in this messy and complicated world. Foer may not have changed my food choices with this article, but I hope that his words do change my intellectual diet, and that I become more conscious of how I am authentically present for others in my life.