Are kids today happy?

By Jessica Kelmon, Associate Editor

Being happy is so important, its pursuit is a founding principle of our country. The idea of perpetually unhappy (or even highly stressed) children makes me want to cry. An admitted softy, I know I’m not alone: we want childhood happiness to be a given, not a nice-to-have.

Thank goodness for a recent study of child happiness around the world: “Virtually all kids claim to be happy either ‘all of the time’ or ‘most of the time.’” Researchers report that being happy is a normal state for young ones, which is a resounding relief. (Full discloser: the study, the Global Kids Happiness Index, was conducted by the Marketing Store and from the “Implications” section of the write up, it’s plain that the intent is to better hone marketing messages to children – yikes!)

A world of happy kids

Researchers looked at child happiness across 12 countries and created an index gauging child happiness. Some of what they found is really promising – like being happy is the norm for kids, some is slightly heartbreaking – like the fact that kids’ happiness starts to wane as early as age 12, and some is, unfortunately, downright depressing.

Kids answered questions like “How often do you feel happy?” and rated statements like “I sometimes feel stressed out.”  When asked to name three things that make them happy, kids’ responses ranged wildly from teddy bears and warm baths to candy and video games. But there are two reigning influencers on kids’ happiness: family and friends*. When kids feel close to their family and friends, they’re happy. Hooray!

Surprised? American kids aren’t the happiest

Of the 12 countries, U.S. ranks fifth behind Mexico, Spain, Brazil, and Germany. Researchers say this may have to do with the importance and proximity of family in Spanish and Latin American cultures.

Here’s the country-by-country breakdown:

#1 Mexico
#2 Spain
#3 Brazil
#4 Germany
#5 U.S.
#6 Canada
#7 China
#8 U.K.
#9 Australia
#10 France
#11 Japan
#12 Poland

I find this ranking surprising since Aussies repeatedly rank first in global happiness on the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development’s Better Life Index. This twist, where Aussie kids rank below stress-case nations like U.S. and Germany, puts it in perspective: what’s great for adults isn’t always great for kids. The other surprise is Mexico. U.S. media coverage – especially TV news, which lacks context to the point of leaving us ill-informed – is devoid of even the smallest positive tidbit about Mexico. That children in Mexico are among the world’s happiest is an important, stereotype-busting stat.  

Do you think the world is a good place?

I read the news and I’m appalled by atrocities the world round – but my world view remains positive. One of the biggest downers from this study: by 6 years old, only 58 percent of kids strongly see the world as a good place. And by 12 years old, it drops to 41 percent.

Adults no longer corner the market on cynicism – nor do we hold all the stress. By age 12, school’s harder both academically and socially, and kids are under pressure to do well and fit in. Two-thirds of kids feel stress “sometimes” and 83 percent report having “too much to do.” Luckily, they report feeling such stress “a little” and not “a lot” – so that’s good news. German and Japanese kids reported the highest stress levels. Researchers note that the 2011 tsunami played a role in Japanese kids’ answers, and they point to an article about a new breed of kindergarten classes in Germany focused on reducing stress.  

Who’s happiest in the U.S.?

In the U.S., African-American kids are the happiest. Caucasian kids aren’t second or third – they rank a distant fourth behind Asian kids (#2) and Hispanic kids (#3).

Across the globe, family, friends, and play are the three primary sources of happiness. But researchers note interesting cultural differences in what kids rank beyond the top three. American kids tend to say animals (e.g. pets) make them happy; Japanese kids often pick music or arts and crafts; Chinese kids often picked one that U.S. kids rarely did: competition and accomplishments.

Comparing U.S. kids’ answers to parent data, researchers found moms tend to know when their kids are happy (which, happily, is a lot of the time.) Knowing you have a good shot of being right: do you think your child is happy most of the time? And if your children are older, have you noticed a dip in your kids’ happiness as they’ve aged?

*In Japan only, kids ranked video games and playing above family and friends.

Follow @JessicaKelmon

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Is “boys will be boys” an American excuse?

By Carol Lloyd, Executive Editor

They're little boys – they can't sit still. 

Of all the gender stereotypes that sweep through our casual conversation, this one is probably the most enduring.  It's the line invoked by kindergarten teachers I know bemoaning the new standards that force them to drill academics to 4-year-olds.  It's the excuse of mothers whose little Nicos and Connors can't handle preschool circle time.  In fact, it carries such sway, many people – including this writer – never considered it a gender stereotype at all, but more of a developmental fact.  Boys are supposed to be not only more physical, but less self-controlled than their little pink-clad counterparts, right?

Snips and snails and American puppy dog tails.

But then this week, a new study came out suggesting that it's not all little boys who can't control their impulses as well as little girls. It's American little boys.  A recent study of self-control in Asian and American children found a gender gap between American girls and boys, but none between Asian kids. 

The study conducted assessments of 814 children from America, Taiwan, Korea, and China, observing them in the laboratory, as well as surveying their teachers. The results, which appear in the journal Early Childhood Research Quarterly, suggest that culture, not biology, may be the factor leading to all that squirmy behavior. 

"What can we learn from Asian cultural and teaching practices about how we can support girls and boys to be successful in school?" asked the study's lead researcher Shannon Wanless. "When we see differences in developmental patterns across countries, it suggests that we might want to look at teaching and parenting practices in those countries and think about how they might apply in the United States."

Is it really so important? Can't boys just be allowed to develop at their own rhythm?

Many parents and educators would say yes. But since early self-control is linked to academic success much later on (see details on the famous marshmallow test) and Asian high school students are regularly trouncing American kids on international tests, it's worth asking the question: Are we observing a fact of life about American boys?  Or are they just rising to meet our expectations?

Follow @Carol__Lloyd

Happy Father's Day ... for real this time

By Leslie Crawford, Senior Editor

Maybe some Chinese restaurant alchemy has been working its magic on us, because things have been all Freaky Friday in my house. Instead of a mom and her teenage daughter trading lives and perspectives, this year my husband and I have made the switch.

A corporate-world type for decades, my husband suddenly couldn’t stomach the skyscraper shuffle any more. With my blessings, my rush-off-to-the-corner-office guy – not to mention our family’s majority breadwinner – quit his job and started working from home to start his own business, which won’t garner any income for at least two years. Our roles have shifted in a way I’d wished for so long: my husband now understands the pleasures, the burdens, and 5:30 witching hour hideousness of grumpy kids that comes with being the primary caretaker. And I’m under a new kind of pressure to provide for our family as the primary breadwinner. Lickety-split, I’ve become the 1950s-era guy rushing off to work earlier than I used to, arriving home later, and asking the question that plagued me for years: “What’s for dinner?” (OK, last night it was tuna on a piece of toast, but it's food.)

The queen has fallen

But I’ve learned to beware what I wish. These days, Steve ferries our two children to and from school, jazz piano, violin, swimming, and juggling lessons; picks up crickets for the bearded dragon and food for the fish; writes notes for absences; and organizes the morning carpool with parents I couldn’t name in a line-up. I knew we’d made the complete switch the day he reminded me not to be late for our daughter’s back-to-school conference. Recently, my son called him (not me!) when he felt sick and wanted to come home from school! It’s destabilizing to have the scepter wrested from my maternal hands; I, who for these many years, long-suffering and self-righteously, silently sighed that I had to manage everything, that our world would implode without me to hold it together. Then, wonder of wonders, while he’s not the OCD housecleaner I am, my husband holds it together just fine. Lately, I’m feeling less territorial and more grateful that’s he’s taking up the slack and not being Mr. Mom, exactly, but being more of a dad.

The unexpected change is that my husband is actively there in my children’s lives in a way he hadn’t been for the past 15 years. While our household income has been more than slashed in half, the worth of his presence – and studies can back me up – has been (thank you, Mastercard) priceless.

Involved dads, happier and healthier kids

According to the Child Welfare Association, children who have a more involved father, “are more likely to be emotionally secure … [and] are less likely to get in trouble at home, school, or in the neighborhood.” They also point to studies that have found children who live with their fathers are more likely to have good physical and emotional health, achieve academically, and avoid drugs, violence, and delinquent behavior.

My husband and I aren’t alone in our Mad Men do-si-do. I can name five couples who’ve traded hats lately. According to the U.S. Census Bureau – which looked at families with children under 15 – as of 2010, 32 percent of fathers with a wife in the workforce take care of their kids at least one day a week. That’s up 26 percent since 2002. What’s more, in 2012, 18 percent of dads with preschoolers regularly cared for their children during the mothers' working hours.  

For my husband and other dads I know, the househusband shift happened by default, but the recession gave these numbers a lift. Underscored by a statistic from the Bureau of Labor Statistics, they were casualties of a recession in which 4 million men lost their jobs between 2007 and 2010; during that period, 2 million women lost their jobs. Now, in almost 40 percent of U.S. marriages, the woman makes more than the man. Thankfully, tough economic realities didn’t force our switch, but it’s been a year of growing pains nonetheless as we experience the Ma-Pa renaissance in our household. Shifting-roles struggles aside, we both parent in a way that never seemed possible just two years ago.

Watered-down Mother's Day? Not so fast.

So here we are in June, 2013, almost exactly a year after he left his office job, and Father’s Day is upon us. For so long, Father’s Day has been to Mother’s Day what Groundhog’s Day is to the Fourth of July, which is to say, almost a non-event. It falls after most kids are out of school, so dads don’t even get the ceremonial paean – the ceramic bowl, the painted candle holder – to mark the occasion. In our house, my kids might scrawl a card on Sunday morning in pencil (not even pen!) and quickly mumble, “Happy Father’s Day, Dad.” Then we might let him read the paper on the couch longer than usual.

But this year Father’s Day feels like something. I want to celebrate this man who has so graciously and seamlessly stepped up to the kitchen plate – even while launching a business. So this Sunday, it’s breakfast in bed, daddy-o, and if you’d like, a day off from all things work and family. Whatever you do, please have a happy Father's Day - you've earned it!

Follow @LeslieMCrawford

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Graduation, 2013: the good, the bad, and the unprintable

by Connie Matthiessen, Associate Editor

                                                                                                Photo by: Flickr_keithusc

Two of my kids graduated last week — my eldest son from high school, my daughter from middle school — so I’m awash in commencement sentiments:  “Reach for the stars!” “Be true to yourself!”  “Carpe Diem!” — and, of course, countless sports metaphors.

Don’t get me wrong, I enjoyed every minute of both ceremonies, and went through many tissues. But this year’s graduation double-header gave me plenty of time to think about the time-honored tradition of the commencement speech — and increased respect for the form.  In fact, a truly great graduation speech — one that entertains, inspires, and says something original — is a remarkable feat. (Although it's true that as a speaker you’ll rarely have a less judgmental audience: fond and foolish parents, over the moon with pride and prepared to be pleased by ever word.)

Ayn Rand and Thomas Jefferson

So how do this season's commencement speeches stack up? It turns out that a number of speakers managed to put a fresh spin on a well-worn tradition. A few highlights:

Michelle Obama took a swipe at the current grade-grubbing academic climate in a speech at a Tennessee high school:

"Do not waste a minute living someone else's dream. It takes a lot of real work to discover what brings you joy ... and you won't find what you love simply by checking boxes or padding your GPA.”

Stephen Colbert brought the house down at the University of Virginia with an irreverent joke about Thomas Jefferson:

“If anyone can do this, it is the graduates of the university that Jefferson founded. You are his intellectual heirs. In fact, some of you may be his actual heirs — we’re still testing the DNA.”

Federal Reserve Chairman  Ben Bernanke’s speech at Princeton has been called the best of the season:

“The only way for even a putative meritocracy to hope to pass ethical muster, to be considered fair, is if those who are the luckiest in all of those respects also have the greatest responsibility to work hard, to contribute to the betterment of the world, and to share their luck with others … In so many words: You, Princeton Class of 2013, got lucky, and never forget it. You might end up Masters of the Universe, but you are not Randian supermen. You're here because you're smart, but you're smart because you're fortunate.”

Against the odds

My favorite graduation speech of all was given by a girl who wasn't so lucky. Chelesa Fearce was validictorian of Charles Drew High School in Riverdale, GA.  Fearce, who graduated with a 4.66 GPA,  spent most of her high school years living in homeless shelters with her family. That’s not all: her sister, who also graduated this year, was salutatorian at a different high school.  

In her speech, Fearce touched on universal themes, quoting Gandhi and praising her school and her classmates. But she also talked about her circumstances growing up:  “My family slept on mats on the floor and we were lucky if we got more than one full meal a day. Getting a shower, food and clean clothes was an everyday struggle.”

Listen to her speech:

 

Learn more about Fearce and her family, and send us your favorite 2013 graduation speeches, memorable moments, and personal stories!

Follow @CMMatthiessen

 

By Carol Lloyd, Executive Editor

                                                                                                                       Flickr_krossbow

“I want to go to THAT school, Mommy.”

I remember it like yesterday. My fifth grade daughter slamming the car door and declaring her intention to attend a small private middle school while we were driving home from her shadow day. Not the spanking new charter school where all her friends were going or the old-fashioned public school just three blocks from our house. No, she had to pick the school that would cost us thousands, and thousands, of dollars a year. So… what exactly made this school worth the hole in the parental pocketbook?

Dutifully, she cited the intensive focus of the teachers on each kid, students that seemed to really care about learning and the rigorous math curriculum. What an awesome virtuous GreatSchoolsy kinda kid I thought! It wasn’t long before I signed on the dotted line and begin happily shelling out those monthly checks.  Then another truth came out. 

The big attraction for this school? More recess, more PE. Unlike many of the other schools where she’d shadowed, she later confessed, this one sent kids outside to play… a lot. In addition to PE every day, there were two generous recesses. She’d even added up the minutes of recess at the various school days to find the one that let her outside the most.

Are you kidding me????

Turns out my daughter had a point – though she was smart enough not to use it in school choice discussions with her mother. According to a new report from the Institute of Medicine, physical activity shouldn’t be treated like an extraneous frill or some extracurricular that gets whittled down for more back-to-basics drill and kill or budgetary hari kari. Instead, says this venerable scientific institution, sweating, running, jumping, and cavorting should be an integral part of every school day.

And not just a little activity, sprinkled throughout the week.The report, Educating the Student Body: Taking Physical Activity and Physical Education to School, recommends that schools help students engage in at least 60 minutes of vigorous or moderate intensity activity every school day. (The definition of vigorous? Try to catch your 7-year-old in a game of tag and you’ll have an intimate sense of its meaning.) For any parent familiar with the exigencies of teaching to standardized tests or the loss of enrichment classes like PE, this is far from common. My younger daughter at the local elementary school get one hour of PE a week, paid for by the PTO. According to the report, only half of American youth meet current evidence-based guidelines of at least an hour of vigorous or moderate intensity physical activity daily – and as all of us Tai Quon Do dads and soccer mothers know, the majority of this sweat isn’t being spilled on the school playground.

The report urges the U.S. Department of Education to include physical education as a core subject. The report suggests schools encourage any activity such as walking or riding a bike to school, as well as offering substantial recess, lunch, and frequent classroom breaks. Perhaps most important, such time for physical activity, says the report, shouldn’t be taken away as punishment. (Amen. How many millions of boys with ADHD or just plain ants in their pants are benched for recess every day because they misbehaved in class?)

The report mentions the vast and growing childhood obesity epidemic – which has tripled the number of obese kids since 1980 – but perhaps the most valuable message in the report is the notion that exercise adds to learning, not just healthy living. 

As Harold Kohl, professor of epidemiology and kinesiology at The University of Texas School of Public Health and lead author of the report, put it: “Research shows that physical activity helps children think faster, improves their cognitive performance and helps them reach their academic potential.”

Next time it’s time to choose a school, along with looking for engaged students and great teachers, I’ll be adding up recess minutes right along with my daughter.  

 

by Connie Matthiessen, Associate Editor

The setting is innocuous — a middle school classroom in San Francisco — but the scene is wildly disturbing. Disorder reigns as boys and girls talk loudly, roughhouse, and launch paper missiles, oblivious to the teacher at the front of the room. The teacher, in turn, seems oblivious to the mayhem: he toils through his lesson, doggedly changing slides on an overhead projector, even though none of his students are paying attention. 

Later we see the same teacher, Tom Ehnle, sitting with a boy named Omar. As Ehnle tries to persuade Omar to do his work, the boy silently turns his back on his teacher, his expression both stony and resigned. 

Involved parents, indifferent kids

The school is Marina Middle School, a low-income school that has one of the highest suspension rates in San Francisco. Many of the students at Marina “don’t do school,” according to the school's vice principal, and these are the kids who show up in Mr. Ehnle’s 7th grade classroom, and in Room to Breathe, a new documentary about mindfulness meditation and its impact on learning.

The film, produced by Gail Mallimson and Russell Long, introduces us to a group of students who don’t think school can make a difference in their lives. Along with Omar we meet Gerardo, a bright and articulate Latino boy who frequently skips school; Jacqueline, a quintessential “mean girl,” and her gentler friend Lesly, who is more interested in teen dramas than doing her homework. We also meet the kids' families, and they counter the comfortable assumption that kids go adrift because their parents aren’t involved. These parents all care and want their kids to achieve; they’re as baffled by their indifference to school as the teachers are.

Dangerous Minds

Enter Megan Cowan, co-founder and executive director of programs at Mindful Schools, who introduces the kids to mindfulness mediation. If this sounds like an unlikely plot — Dangerous Minds meets the Dali Lama — I hope it won’t be a spoiler to say that it works and the results are astonishing.

At first the kids in the class are skeptical; some refuse to cooperate at all. ”It’s boring and stupid,” one student tells Cowan. “You’ve got to make stuff entertaining!” another chides. But over time — and after a few of the most disruptive kids are asked to leave the class — the students slowly learn to meditate, and even, over time, to enjoy it some.

Research shows that mindfulness training eases stress, boosts focus, and increases impulse control — all of which can enhance learning, and at the end of Room to Breathe we learn that many of the kids in Mr. Ehnle's classroom are doing better in school. Check out these testimonials to see  how students say mindfulness training has helped them — from improving their school performance to reducing shyness. "I do feel like I'm a stronger person now with mindfulness," says Linh, a seventh grader.

Room to Breathe

By providing a close up look at a troubled school, Room to Breathe reminds us of what many kids are up against — not just at Marina Middle School but at similar schools around the country. Omar, for example, is only in 7th grade, but he’s already lost a brother and a close friend to gun violence. Marina’s classrooms are crowded, its teachers beleaguered, 79 percent of its kids qualify for free or reduced lunch, and 29 percent are English language learners.

Mindfulness training isn’t the solution to the many challenges these kids face, but, as Room to Breathe shows, it can make a small but powerful difference — in school and out. Mindfullness meditation, observes one of the students, “Is like something in your backpack. You can always pull it out and use it.”

Follow @CMMatthiessen

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Driven to distraction

By Connie Matthiessen, Associate Editor

My kids claim they can multitask. No problem, they say, they can successfully do their homework while listening to music, replying to texts, eating a snack, checking Instagram, cuddling the cat, and squabbling with a sibling.

But a recent article by Annie Murphy Paul on Slate indicates that they’re probably getting less homework done — and doing it a lot more sloppily — than they think.

Murphy Paul cites research by Larry Rosen, a professor of psychology at California State University, Dominguez Hills, that measured how much multitasking students engage in, including texting, talking on the phone, watching TV, surfing the web, going on Facebook, and instant messaging.

For the study, the student-subjects, who were in middle school, high school and college, were instructed to engage in serious work, and knew they were being observed. Rosen was surprised by his findings. “We were amazed at how frequently [students] multitasked, even though they knew someone was watching,” Rosen says. “It really seems that they could not go for 15 minutes without engaging their devices.” He confesses: “It was kind of scary, actually.”

Cultural ADD

Kids from grade school through college are engaging in a staggering amount of technology-fueled multitasking, according to researchers like Rosen. One-third of kids from ages 8 through 18 said they engaged in other activities — like watching TV, listening to music, and texting — while they did their homework, according to a 2010 Kaiser report. In another study, 80 percent of college students surveyed said they texted during class time. Meanwhile, there is a growing body of evidence that kids who multitask while doing school work understand less, remember less, and have trouble transferring what they learn to a new context.  Of course, kids aren't the only multitaskers — plenty of adults are just as distracted at work and at home.  

Besides diminishing our effectiveness in school and on the job, what is this relentless storm of personal messages, random facts, frenetic stimulation, and constant interruption doing to our brains — and to our culture as a whole?  Nicolas Carr, author of The Shallows, suggests it's causing fundamental changes we're just beginning to understand. Writing in Harper's Magazine, teacher Garret Keizer cites the eye-popping rise in rates of  Attention Deficit Disorder (ADD) and points out: “Hearing someone say, ‘I’ve got ADD’ in a culture of such vast distractedness is a bit like having a fellow passenger on an ocean liner tell you that she feels afloat. Who doesn’t?”

Don’t eat that marshmallow!

Since technology is here to stay, kids need to learn to live with distractions – and, more importantly, to live without them when they have serious, sustained work to do. The ability to resist the lure of technological distractions  in school and on the job is likely to play an increasingly important role in determining an individual’s success. Murphy Paul draws a parallel with the famous marshmallow test. In that experiment, children were shown a marshmallow and told that if they put off eating it, they’d get a second marshmallow.  Researchers found that the children who were able to wait and not immediately gobble up their treat were more successful at school, and years later, on the job and in relationships.

So what can you do build up your kids’ marshmallow muscles when technology beckons? Here’s Murphy Paul’s advice: “Stop fretting about how much they’re on Facebook. Don’t harass them about how much they play video games. The digital native boosters are right that this is the social and emotional world in which young people live. Just make sure when they’re doing schoolwork, the cell phones are silent, the video screens are dark, and that every last window is closed but one.”

Follow @CMMatthiessen

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Close that laptop in class!

By Jessica Kelmon, Associate Editor

“I’m telling you, no one wants to teach 3rd grade in San Francisco.”

Around here, we discuss school a lot. So much that it seeps into our water cooler talk right alongside embarrassing stories and recaps of our collective favorite show, Parenthood.

This tidbit about San Francisco teachers avoiding 3rd grade comes from my colleague. It’s backed with the sort of word-of-mouth parent knowledge that, frankly, families tend to rely on. Though unproven, this eyebrow-raising nugget makes you stop and think — especially if you have an elementary schooler in the district. Her hypothesis: in San Francisco, 3rd graders (the oldest students subject to state-mandated smaller class sizes) tend to be relegated to the “trailer classrooms” that can only accommodate so many kids. They’re colder and less appealing, she says, making them unpopular among teachers who’d rather spend the year in a sunnier, larger classroom. This in turn had us all discussing our theories about why teachers ask for and avoid certain grade levels, classes, schools, districts — and how often teachers indeed get their pick.

Coincidentally, our talk comes on the heels of new research out of Stanford Graduate School of Education and the World Bank. The researchers set out to study the achievement gap — not only between different schools, but also between students at the same school. Turns out, student-teacher assignments may play a pretty big role in widening the gap.

The biggest take-away from the study is, to my dismay, at once shocking and (world-weary sigh) not: lower-achieving students often get the less-experienced teachers as well as ones who received their degrees from less-competitive colleges — and not just from school to school, but within the same school.

A PsyPost article about the Stanford research explains: “According to the researchers, teachers who have been at a school for a long time may be able to influence the assignment process in order to secure their preferred classes — for instance, classes with higher-achieving students. The study found that teachers with 10 or more years of experience, as well as teachers who have held leadership positions, are assigned higher-achieving students on average.”

The Stanford study focused on the country’s fourth-largest school district, Miami-Dade County Public Schools. While these findings may not apply to all schools nationwide (or even your child’s school), they just might. And if so, it may help explain the achievement gap — not only between schools in the same district, but between students at the same school. For example, the achievement gap within my high school, a GreatSchools 9, is revealed if you look at the rating by ethnicity: it’s a 10 for white kids but a 5 for African-American kids. At other schools you might see such a divide between kids of different socioeconomic statuses, for kids with and without disabilities, or based on their parents’ education level.

Not to blame teachers — with seniority there should be perks, especially in a challenging profession. And of course the teacher with a PhD in physics from Stanford is the obvious choice to teach AP Physics, just as the published fiction author is likely the best choice for your school’s most talented student writers.

But the sad truth at the heart of this study is that new teachers just starting a tough new career are more likely to get students who are already behind (which is what “lower-achieving students” tends to mean). It also stands to reason that when a teacher’s just starting out, an easier assignment may help her ease in while building her skills. But in a profession with such high turnover — about 12 percent of teachers are in the classroom for only three years — schools risk losing talented teachers before anyone ever got a chance to see them shine. 

(Read HuffPo’s “Top 5 reasons why teacher turnover is rising.”) 

Follow @JessicaKelmon

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By Jessica Kelmon, Associate Editor

In honor of Mother’s Day, GreatSchools staffers shared the advice, sayings, and rules to live by that we can still hear our moms saying – sometimes over and over. (It turns out, we were listening!) Thanks for shaping our minds, setting us straight, and helping us navigate the world, Mom. Happy Mother’s Day!

Carol’s mom: “The world rewards the bold.”

Jessica’s mom: “You can’t hate people, you can only greatly dislike them.”

Chris’ mom: "It's just money."

Kate’s mom: "Never trust a man who doesn't wear a watch, because he has nowhere he has to be." 

Mindy’s mom: “The only person who can make you feel guilty is you.”

Connie’s mom: “Treat ‘em mean and keep ‘em keen.”

Tajalli’s mom: “Treat others the way you want to be treated – especially your sisters!”   

Vicki’s mom: “There’s nothing wrong with being different.”

Colleen’s mom: "If you have nothing nice to say, don't say anything."

Kim’s mom: “Travel the world, live in other countries, and explore before you settle down.”

Swami’s mom: "Stop taunting the bullies."

Kim’s mom: “Get a good education and keep your skills up to date. Never rely on anyone else to support you.”

Danielle’s mom: “The world is your oyster.”

Kelli’s mom: “You are young; you have all the time in the world, just do it.”

Leslie’s mom: “Get off the white carpet!”

Jim’s mom: "Don't waste your time worrying. I've wasted too much of mine worrying."

Leanna’s mom: "Of course you can. After all, if your mother could learn to fly a plane, you can learn to …"

Nzinga's mom: “Don’t take any wooden nickels.”

Alexandra's mom: “Never forget where you came from.”

Max's mom: “It is a simple task to make things complex but a complex task to make them simple.”

Jodi's mom: “Eat the crusts first.”

Karissa's mom: “All you have is your word. Always keep it.”

Pilar's mom: "Just focus on yourself, don't worry about everyone else."

Gretchen's mom: "You can always tell about someone by their shoes." But then, also, "Anyone who treats you badly because of what you wear or look like isn't worth worrying about."

Liana's mom: "Don't let anyone tell you you can't."

Vidya's mom: "Everything has a way of working out."

Jenn's mom: "I wish I had a magic wand to wave and make everything better."

What did your mom say that you’ll never forget?

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Follow @JessicaKelmon

 By Connie Matthiessen, Associate Editor

Fiction tends to deal harshly with overprotected children. Veruca Salt, the pampered rich girl in Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, is attacked by squirrels and tossed down a garbage chute. Dudley Dursley, Harry Potter’s cousin, is worshipped by his parents despite his objectionable behavior — and winds up sprouting a pig’s tail that has to be surgically removed.

Reality parenting

We don’t need fiction to tell us it’s a bad idea to overprotect our children, but most parents I know struggle with exactly how much protection is too much.

New research shows that, when it comes to bullying, overprotecting your child may make him a target. In a study published in the journal Child Abuse & Neglect, researchers at the University of Warwick reviewed 70 studies of 200,000 children and found that children  “exposed to negative parenting" are more likely to be bullied. If this seems exasperatingly obvious, here’s the rub: researchers include being overprotective right alongside being abusive and neglectful in their definition of “negative parenting behavior.”

Bad parent

It may seem unfair to put overprotective parents in the same “bad parent” category as those who abuse and neglect their kids, but this research indicates that too much sheltering can put a child at significant bullying risk. Most of us know parents who jump in on their child’s side, no matter what the circumstances, at the slightest hint of conflict or distress. In my experience, these kids often have problems with their peers. As the new research suggests, if kids don’t have the opportunity to manage social situations themselves, they may not develop the skills they'll need when a bully comes along.

Tears and targets

As the University of Warwick’s Dieter Wolke, the lead author of the study, told the BBC, bullies tend to go after the kids they perceive as vulnerable, for example, the child who runs away or crumbles into tears the first time she's bullied. That initial reaction establishes the child as a good target, and triggers a pattern of repeated torment.

Sharing these findings doesn't mean we should let bullies off the hook, blame the victims, or undermine the need for strong antibullying programs in our schools. The study shows how important it is for parents to help their kids develop communication and negotiation skills — which means letting your child practice with siblings and peers — without adult intervention. Of course, you shouldn't let your kids whale on each other and hope for the best. But it's important to let kids resolve minor conflicts without adult meddling. After the fact, you can discuss the situation with your child, talk about what worked and what didn’t, and brainstorm ways to do it better next time.

Get out of the way

It’s a lesson that many parents, myself included, need to learn over and over: sometimes the best parenting means simply getting out of the way — and letting kids figure it out for themselves.

Follow @CMMatthiessen

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Report: PE isn’t a joke anymore

By Carol Lloyd, Executive Editor

                                                                                                                       Flickr_krossbow

“I want to go to THAT school, Mommy.”

I remember it like yesterday. My fifth grade daughter slamming the car door and declaring her intention to attend a small private middle school while we were driving home from her shadow day. Not the spanking new charter school where all her friends were going or the old-fashioned public school just three blocks from our house. No, she had to pick the school that would cost us thousands, and thousands, of dollars a year. So… what exactly made this school worth the hole in the parental pocketbook?

Dutifully, she cited the intensive focus of the teachers on each kid, students that seemed to really care about learning and the rigorous math curriculum. What an awesome virtuous GreatSchoolsy kinda kid I thought! It wasn’t long before I signed on the dotted line and begin happily shelling out those monthly checks.  Then another truth came out. 

The big attraction for this school? More recess, more PE. Unlike many of the other schools where she’d shadowed, she later confessed, this one sent kids outside to play… a lot. In addition to PE every day, there were two generous recesses. She’d even added up the minutes of recess at the various school days to find the one that let her outside the most.

Are you kidding me????

Turns out my daughter had a point – though she was smart enough not to use it in school choice discussions with her mother. According to a new report from the Institute of Medicine, physical activity shouldn’t be treated like an extraneous frill or some extracurricular that gets whittled down for more back-to-basics drill and kill or budgetary hari kari. Instead, says this venerable scientific institution, sweating, running, jumping, and cavorting should be an integral part of every school day.

And not just a little activity, sprinkled throughout the week.The report, Educating the Student Body: Taking Physical Activity and Physical Education to School, recommends that schools help students engage in at least 60 minutes of vigorous or moderate intensity activity every school day. (The definition of vigorous? Try to catch your 7-year-old in a game of tag and you’ll have an intimate sense of its meaning.) For any parent familiar with the exigencies of teaching to standardized tests or the loss of enrichment classes like PE, this is far from common. My younger daughter at the local elementary school get one hour of PE a week, paid for by the PTO. According to the report, only half of American youth meet current evidence-based guidelines of at least an hour of vigorous or moderate intensity physical activity daily – and as all of us Tai Quon Do dads and soccer mothers know, the majority of this sweat isn’t being spilled on the school playground.

The report urges the U.S. Department of Education to include physical education as a core subject. The report suggests schools encourage any activity such as walking or riding a bike to school, as well as offering substantial recess, lunch, and frequent classroom breaks. Perhaps most important, such time for physical activity, says the report, shouldn’t be taken away as punishment. (Amen. How many millions of boys with ADHD or just plain ants in their pants are benched for recess every day because they misbehaved in class?)

The report mentions the vast and growing childhood obesity epidemic – which has tripled the number of obese kids since 1980 – but perhaps the most valuable message in the report is the notion that exercise adds to learning, not just healthy living. 

As Harold Kohl, professor of epidemiology and kinesiology at The University of Texas School of Public Health and lead author of the report, put it: “Research shows that physical activity helps children think faster, improves their cognitive performance and helps them reach their academic potential.”

Next time it’s time to choose a school, along with looking for engaged students and great teachers, I’ll be adding up recess minutes right along with my daughter.  

Zen and the art of succeeding in school

 

by Connie Matthiessen, Associate Editor

The setting is innocuous — a middle school classroom in San Francisco — but the scene is wildly disturbing. Disorder reigns as boys and girls talk loudly, roughhouse, and launch paper missiles, oblivious to the teacher at the front of the room. The teacher, in turn, seems oblivious to the mayhem: he toils through his lesson, doggedly changing slides on an overhead projector, even though none of his students are paying attention. 

Later we see the same teacher, Tom Ehnle, sitting with a boy named Omar. As Ehnle tries to persuade Omar to do his work, the boy silently turns his back on his teacher, his expression both stony and resigned. 

Involved parents, indifferent kids

The school is Marina Middle School, a low-income school that has one of the highest suspension rates in San Francisco. Many of the students at Marina “don’t do school,” according to the school's vice principal, and these are the kids who show up in Mr. Ehnle’s 7th grade classroom, and in Room to Breathe, a new documentary about mindfulness meditation and its impact on learning.

The film, produced by Gail Mallimson and Russell Long, introduces us to a group of students who don’t think school can make a difference in their lives. Along with Omar we meet Gerardo, a bright and articulate Latino boy who frequently skips school; Jacqueline, a quintessential “mean girl,” and her gentler friend Lesly, who is more interested in teen dramas than doing her homework. We also meet the kids' families, and they counter the comfortable assumption that kids go adrift because their parents aren’t involved. These parents all care and want their kids to achieve; they’re as baffled by their indifference to school as the teachers are.

Dangerous Minds

Enter Megan Cowan, co-founder and executive director of programs at Mindful Schools, who introduces the kids to mindfulness mediation. If this sounds like an unlikely plot — Dangerous Minds meets the Dali Lama — I hope it won’t be a spoiler to say that it works and the results are astonishing.

At first the kids in the class are skeptical; some refuse to cooperate at all. ”It’s boring and stupid,” one student tells Cowan. “You’ve got to make stuff entertaining!” another chides. But over time — and after a few of the most disruptive kids are asked to leave the class — the students slowly learn to meditate, and even, over time, to enjoy it some.

Research shows that mindfulness training eases stress, boosts focus, and increases impulse control — all of which can enhance learning, and at the end of Room to Breathe we learn that many of the kids in Mr. Ehnle's classroom are doing better in school. Check out these testimonials to see  how students say mindfulness training has helped them — from improving their school performance to reducing shyness. "I do feel like I'm a stronger person now with mindfulness," says Linh, a seventh grader.

Room to Breathe

By providing a close up look at a troubled school, Room to Breathe reminds us of what many kids are up against — not just at Marina Middle School but at similar schools around the country. Omar, for example, is only in 7th grade, but he’s already lost a brother and a close friend to gun violence. Marina’s classrooms are crowded, its teachers beleaguered, 79 percent of its kids qualify for free or reduced lunch, and 29 percent are English language learners.

Mindfulness training isn’t the solution to the many challenges these kids face, but, as Room to Breathe shows, it can make a small but powerful difference — in school and out. Mindfullness meditation, observes one of the students, “Is like something in your backpack. You can always pull it out and use it.”

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Driven to distraction

Driven to distraction

By Connie Matthiessen, Associate Editor

My kids claim they can multitask. No problem, they say, they can successfully do their homework while listening to music, replying to texts, eating a snack, checking Instagram, cuddling the cat, and squabbling with a sibling.

But a recent article by Annie Murphy Paul on Slate indicates that they’re probably getting less homework done — and doing it a lot more sloppily — than they think.

Murphy Paul cites research by Larry Rosen, a professor of psychology at California State University, Dominguez Hills, that measured how much multitasking students engage in, including texting, talking on the phone, watching TV, surfing the web, going on Facebook, and instant messaging.

For the study, the student-subjects, who were in middle school, high school and college, were instructed to engage in serious work, and knew they were being observed. Rosen was surprised by his findings. “We were amazed at how frequently [students] multitasked, even though they knew someone was watching,” Rosen says. “It really seems that they could not go for 15 minutes without engaging their devices.” He confesses: “It was kind of scary, actually.”

Cultural ADD

Kids from grade school through college are engaging in a staggering amount of technology-fueled multitasking, according to researchers like Rosen. One-third of kids from ages 8 through 18 said they engaged in other activities — like watching TV, listening to music, and texting — while they did their homework, according to a 2010 Kaiser report. In another study, 80 percent of college students surveyed said they texted during class time. Meanwhile, there is a growing body of evidence that kids who multitask while doing school work understand less, remember less, and have trouble transferring what they learn to a new context.  Of course, kids aren't the only multitaskers — plenty of adults are just as distracted at work and at home.  

Besides diminishing our effectiveness in school and on the job, what is this relentless storm of personal messages, random facts, frenetic stimulation, and constant interruption doing to our brains — and to our culture as a whole?  Nicolas Carr, author of The Shallows, suggests it's causing fundamental changes we're just beginning to understand. Writing in Harper's Magazine, teacher Garret Keizer cites the eye-popping rise in rates of  Attention Deficit Disorder (ADD) and points out: “Hearing someone say, ‘I’ve got ADD’ in a culture of such vast distractedness is a bit like having a fellow passenger on an ocean liner tell you that she feels afloat. Who doesn’t?”

Don’t eat that marshmallow!

Since technology is here to stay, kids need to learn to live with distractions – and, more importantly, to live without them when they have serious, sustained work to do. The ability to resist the lure of technological distractions  in school and on the job is likely to play an increasingly important role in determining an individual’s success. Murphy Paul draws a parallel with the famous marshmallow test. In that experiment, children were shown a marshmallow and told that if they put off eating it, they’d get a second marshmallow.  Researchers found that the children who were able to wait and not immediately gobble up their treat were more successful at school, and years later, on the job and in relationships.

So what can you do build up your kids’ marshmallow muscles when technology beckons? Here’s Murphy Paul’s advice: “Stop fretting about how much they’re on Facebook. Don’t harass them about how much they play video games. The digital native boosters are right that this is the social and emotional world in which young people live. Just make sure when they’re doing schoolwork, the cell phones are silent, the video screens are dark, and that every last window is closed but one.”

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Close that laptop in class!

Who gets the best teachers?

By Jessica Kelmon, Associate Editor

“I’m telling you, no one wants to teach 3rd grade in San Francisco.”

Around here, we discuss school a lot. So much that it seeps into our water cooler talk right alongside embarrassing stories and recaps of our collective favorite show, Parenthood.

This tidbit about San Francisco teachers avoiding 3rd grade comes from my colleague. It’s backed with the sort of word-of-mouth parent knowledge that, frankly, families tend to rely on. Though unproven, this eyebrow-raising nugget makes you stop and think — especially if you have an elementary schooler in the district. Her hypothesis: in San Francisco, 3rd graders (the oldest students subject to state-mandated smaller class sizes) tend to be relegated to the “trailer classrooms” that can only accommodate so many kids. They’re colder and less appealing, she says, making them unpopular among teachers who’d rather spend the year in a sunnier, larger classroom. This in turn had us all discussing our theories about why teachers ask for and avoid certain grade levels, classes, schools, districts — and how often teachers indeed get their pick.

Coincidentally, our talk comes on the heels of new research out of Stanford Graduate School of Education and the World Bank. The researchers set out to study the achievement gap — not only between different schools, but also between students at the same school. Turns out, student-teacher assignments may play a pretty big role in widening the gap.

The biggest take-away from the study is, to my dismay, at once shocking and (world-weary sigh) not: lower-achieving students often get the less-experienced teachers as well as ones who received their degrees from less-competitive colleges — and not just from school to school, but within the same school.

A PsyPost article about the Stanford research explains: “According to the researchers, teachers who have been at a school for a long time may be able to influence the assignment process in order to secure their preferred classes — for instance, classes with higher-achieving students. The study found that teachers with 10 or more years of experience, as well as teachers who have held leadership positions, are assigned higher-achieving students on average.”

The Stanford study focused on the country’s fourth-largest school district, Miami-Dade County Public Schools. While these findings may not apply to all schools nationwide (or even your child’s school), they just might. And if so, it may help explain the achievement gap — not only between schools in the same district, but between students at the same school. For example, the achievement gap within my high school, a GreatSchools 9, is revealed if you look at the rating by ethnicity: it’s a 10 for white kids but a 5 for African-American kids. At other schools you might see such a divide between kids of different socioeconomic statuses, for kids with and without disabilities, or based on their parents’ education level.

Not to blame teachers — with seniority there should be perks, especially in a challenging profession. And of course the teacher with a PhD in physics from Stanford is the obvious choice to teach AP Physics, just as the published fiction author is likely the best choice for your school’s most talented student writers.

But the sad truth at the heart of this study is that new teachers just starting a tough new career are more likely to get students who are already behind (which is what “lower-achieving students” tends to mean). It also stands to reason that when a teacher’s just starting out, an easier assignment may help her ease in while building her skills. But in a profession with such high turnover — about 12 percent of teachers are in the classroom for only three years — schools risk losing talented teachers before anyone ever got a chance to see them shine. 

(Read HuffPo’s “Top 5 reasons why teacher turnover is rising.”) 

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Words of wisdom from my mom

By Jessica Kelmon, Associate Editor

In honor of Mother’s Day, GreatSchools staffers shared the advice, sayings, and rules to live by that we can still hear our moms saying – sometimes over and over. (It turns out, we were listening!) Thanks for shaping our minds, setting us straight, and helping us navigate the world, Mom. Happy Mother’s Day!

Carol’s mom: “The world rewards the bold.”

Jessica’s mom: “You can’t hate people, you can only greatly dislike them.”

Chris’ mom: "It's just money."

Kate’s mom: "Never trust a man who doesn't wear a watch, because he has nowhere he has to be." 

Mindy’s mom: “The only person who can make you feel guilty is you.”

Connie’s mom: “Treat ‘em mean and keep ‘em keen.”

Tajalli’s mom: “Treat others the way you want to be treated – especially your sisters!”   

Vicki’s mom: “There’s nothing wrong with being different.”

Colleen’s mom: "If you have nothing nice to say, don't say anything."

Kim’s mom: “Travel the world, live in other countries, and explore before you settle down.”

Swami’s mom: "Stop taunting the bullies."

Kim’s mom: “Get a good education and keep your skills up to date. Never rely on anyone else to support you.”

Danielle’s mom: “The world is your oyster.”

Kelli’s mom: “You are young; you have all the time in the world, just do it.”

Leslie’s mom: “Get off the white carpet!”

Jim’s mom: "Don't waste your time worrying. I've wasted too much of mine worrying."

Leanna’s mom: "Of course you can. After all, if your mother could learn to fly a plane, you can learn to …"

Nzinga's mom: “Don’t take any wooden nickels.”

Alexandra's mom: “Never forget where you came from.”

Max's mom: “It is a simple task to make things complex but a complex task to make them simple.”

Jodi's mom: “Eat the crusts first.”

Karissa's mom: “All you have is your word. Always keep it.”

Pilar's mom: "Just focus on yourself, don't worry about everyone else."

Gretchen's mom: "You can always tell about someone by their shoes." But then, also, "Anyone who treats you badly because of what you wear or look like isn't worth worrying about."

Liana's mom: "Don't let anyone tell you you can't."

Vidya's mom: "Everything has a way of working out."

Jenn's mom: "I wish I had a magic wand to wave and make everything better."

What did your mom say that you’ll never forget?

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Want to protect your child from bullies? Then back off!

Dreading Mother's Day? You have good company.

Follow @JessicaKelmon

Want to protect your child from bullies? Then back off!

 By Connie Matthiessen, Associate Editor

Fiction tends to deal harshly with overprotected children. Veruca Salt, the pampered rich girl in Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, is attacked by squirrels and tossed down a garbage chute. Dudley Dursley, Harry Potter’s cousin, is worshipped by his parents despite his objectionable behavior — and winds up sprouting a pig’s tail that has to be surgically removed.

Reality parenting

We don’t need fiction to tell us it’s a bad idea to overprotect our children, but most parents I know struggle with exactly how much protection is too much.

New research shows that, when it comes to bullying, overprotecting your child may make him a target. In a study published in the journal Child Abuse & Neglect, researchers at the University of Warwick reviewed 70 studies of 200,000 children and found that children  “exposed to negative parenting" are more likely to be bullied. If this seems exasperatingly obvious, here’s the rub: researchers include being overprotective right alongside being abusive and neglectful in their definition of “negative parenting behavior.”

Bad parent

It may seem unfair to put overprotective parents in the same “bad parent” category as those who abuse and neglect their kids, but this research indicates that too much sheltering can put a child at significant bullying risk. Most of us know parents who jump in on their child’s side, no matter what the circumstances, at the slightest hint of conflict or distress. In my experience, these kids often have problems with their peers. As the new research suggests, if kids don’t have the opportunity to manage social situations themselves, they may not develop the skills they'll need when a bully comes along.

Tears and targets

As the University of Warwick’s Dieter Wolke, the lead author of the study, told the BBC, bullies tend to go after the kids they perceive as vulnerable, for example, the child who runs away or crumbles into tears the first time she's bullied. That initial reaction establishes the child as a good target, and triggers a pattern of repeated torment.

Sharing these findings doesn't mean we should let bullies off the hook, blame the victims, or undermine the need for strong antibullying programs in our schools. The study shows how important it is for parents to help their kids develop communication and negotiation skills — which means letting your child practice with siblings and peers — without adult intervention. Of course, you shouldn't let your kids whale on each other and hope for the best. But it's important to let kids resolve minor conflicts without adult meddling. After the fact, you can discuss the situation with your child, talk about what worked and what didn’t, and brainstorm ways to do it better next time.

Get out of the way

It’s a lesson that many parents, myself included, need to learn over and over: sometimes the best parenting means simply getting out of the way — and letting kids figure it out for themselves.

Follow @CMMatthiessen

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Technology: One parent's love/hate story