This is an elementary school in Columbus, Ohio. And inside of this school there was a student named D. When D started school here he was six years old: cute as a button, with a smile that brightened the entire room. But after a few months in school, D became angry, and that smile faded. D began to do things like flip tables, throw desks and chairs, yell at teachers, stand in windowsills, run in and out of the classroom and even running out of the school. Sometimes these fits of anger would put the entire school into lockdown mode until D could get himself back together, which could sometimes take over an hour. No one in the school knew how to help D.
这里是美国俄亥俄州 哥伦比亚地区的一间小学。 在这间学校里, 有过一个简称D的学生。 他6岁时开始在这里上学: 很可爱, 脸上带的灿烂的微笑 仿佛可以点亮整个教室。 但在学校待了一个月后, D开始变得易怒, 那笑容也消失了。 他开始做一些不好的事情, 比如掀翻桌子, 乱扔桌椅, 对老师大吼大叫, 站在窗沿, 在教室乱跑乱窜 甚至跑出学校。 有时他这些愤怒的举动会让 整个学校进入警备状态, 直到D可以自己控制情绪, 这有时需要超过一小时。 在这个学校里,没人 知道该如何帮助D。
I know this because I was the principal at this school. And what I quickly and collectively learned with my staff was that this situation was more extreme than anything we had ever been trained for. Every time that D lashed out, I kept thinking to myself: what did I miss during my principal prep coursework? What am I supposed to do with a kid like D? And how am I going to stop him from impeding the learning of all the other students? And yet after we did everything that we thought we knew, such as talking to D and taking away privileges and parent phone calls home, the only real option we had left to do was to kick him out, and I knew that would not help him.
我清楚这些是因为我曾是 这间学校的校长。 我和我的同事们很快意识到 这种情况比我们之前受训过 的任何情况都还要极端。 每当D做出过激行为时, 我都不停地反思自己: 我在校长培训课程中 是不是错过了什么? 像D这样的孩子, 我应该做什么? 我怎么才能防止他干扰 其他所有学生的学习? 在我们做了我们认为 能做的所有事情后, 比如与他谈话, 撤销对他的优待, 打电话给他的父母外, 我们只剩下让他退学这一个选择了, 我知道那样并不能帮到他。
This scenario is not unique to D. Students all over the world are struggling with their education. And though we didn't come up with a fail-safe solution, we did come up with a simple idea: that in order for kids like D to not only survive in school but to thrive, we somehow had to figure out a way to not only teach them how to read and write but also how to help them deal with and manage their own emotions. And in doing that, we were able to move our school from one of the lowest-performing schools in the state of Ohio, with an F rating, all the way up to a C in just a matter of a few years.
这种情况不只出现在D身上。 全世界的学生都为他们的教育困扰。 虽然我们没有想出万全之策, 但我们确实想出了一个简单的主意: 要让像D这样的孩子不仅 可以在学校生存下去 而且还能茁壮成长, 我们必须要找出一种 不仅教他们如何去阅读和写作, 还能教他们如何去处理和控制 自己情绪的方法。 做了这些后,我们把我们学校的表现 从俄亥俄州表现最差的学校之一, 即被评为F级的学校, 在几年内一路上升到C级。
So it might sound obvious, right? Of course teachers should be focused on the emotional well-being of their kids. But in reality, when you're in a classroom full of 30 students and one of them's throwing tables at you, it's far easier to exclude that child than to figure out what's going on inside of his head. But what we learned about D, and for kids like D, was that small changes can make huge differences, and it's possible to start right now. You don't need bigger budgets or grand strategic plans, you simply need smarter ways of thinking about what you have and where you have it. In education, we tend to always look outside the box for answers, and we rarely spend enough time, money and effort developing what we already have inside the box. And this is how meaningful change can happen fast.
这听起来很明显,对吧? 老师当然要注重他们 学生的情绪健康。 但实际情况中, 当你在一间有着满满 30个学生的教室里, 并且其中一个学生正在向你扔桌子, 开除那个孩子会比起设法明白 他心里在想些什么要简单得多。 但我们从D身上,以及所有像他一样的 孩子身上学到的是, 小小的改变也可以产生大大的不同, 并且现在就开始是可能的。 你不需要多大的预算以及 宏大的战略计划。 你仅仅需要更聪明的方法 去思考你现在拥有的东西 以及它们在哪里。 在教育领域,我们往往 习惯从外界寻找答案, 我们很少花足够的时间,金钱与精力 去挖掘我们自身拥有的东西。 这正是为什么有意义的改变 可以发生得如此之快的方法。
So here's what I learned about D. I was wanting to dig a little bit deeper to figure out how he had become so angry. And what I learned was his father had left the home and his mother was working long shifts in order to support the family, which left no adult for D to connect with -- and he was in charge of taking care of his younger brother when he got home from school. Might I remind you that D was six years old? Can't say that I blame him for having some trouble transitioning into the school environment. But yet we had to figure out a way to help him with these big emotions all while teaching him core skills of reading and math. And three things helped us most.
以下是我从D身上学到的。 我很想搞清楚他是如何 开始变得如此暴躁的。 然后我了解到他的父亲抛弃了家庭, 他的母亲不得不做长时间 的工作来养家糊口。 这使得D缺乏家长的照料—— 并且当他从学校回到家后, 他还要负责照顾他年幼的弟弟。 我可能跟大家提过D才6岁? 我不能责怪他在适应学校环境方面 遇到了一些困难。 但我们必须想办法在教他 阅读与数学的核心技巧时, 同时也帮助他克服这些情绪。 有三件事对我们帮助最大。
First, we had to figure out where he was struggling the most. And like most young kids, arrival at school can be a tough transition time as they're moving from a less structured home environment to a more structured school environment. So what we did for D was we created a calming area for him in our time-out room, which we had equipped with rocking chairs and soft cushions and books, and we allowed D to go to this place in the morning, away from the other kids, allowing him time to transition back into the school environment on his own terms. And as we began to learn more about D, we learned other strategies that helped him calm down. For example, D loved to help younger students, so we made him a kindergarten helper, and he went into the kindergarten classroom and taught students how to write their letters. And he was actually successful with a few of them that the teacher was unable to reach. And believe it or not, D actually helped calm some of those kindergarten students down, signalling to us that the influence of peers on behavior was far greater than anything we adults could ever do.
第一,我们必须找出 他在什么地方感到最困难。 像大多数小孩子一样, 初来学校有段艰难的过渡期, 因为他们从比较自由的家庭环境 来到了一个更制度化的学校环境。 所以我们为D所做是, 在我们的休息室里 创造一个安静的地方给他, 在那里我们装了摇椅, 柔软的靠垫还有书籍, 我们允许D早上去这个地方, 远离其他孩子, 这使他有时间以他自己的方式 去适应学校环境。 随着我们对D的了解越来越多, 我们知道了其他可以 帮助他安静的方法。 比如,D乐于帮助比他小的学生, 所以我们让他当幼儿园的小助手, 去幼儿园的教室 教学生写字母。 他很成功的教会了一些 连老师都教不会的学生。 不管你相信与否, D确实帮助一些 幼儿园的学生安静了下来, 向我们表明同伴之间 对彼此行为的影响 要远远超过大人对他们的影响。
We used humor and song with him. Yes, I know it sounds really silly that the principal and the teachers would actually laugh with kids, but you can imagine the shock on D's face when the principal's cracking a joke or singing a song from the radio station, which almost always ended in a laugh, shortening the length of his outburst and helping us to connect with him in his world.
我们用幽默与歌曲与他交流。 是的,我知道听起来这很蠢, 校长跟老师能真正的 跟孩子一起欢笑, 但是你可以想象得到D脸上的惊讶, 当校长在电台讲笑话或者唱歌, 并且几乎都是以笑声结束时, 这些做法减少了他暴躁的时间, 帮助我们与他的世界连接起来。
So I know some you are like, "It's really not practical to lay on this kind of special treatment for every student," but we actually made it happen. Because once we figured out the tools and tactics that worked for D, our teachers were able to roll that out and use them with other students. We began to proactively address student behavior instead of simply react to it. Our teachers actually took time during the lesson plan to teach kids how to identify their feelings and appropriate, healthy coping strategies for dealing with them, such as counting to 10, grabbing a fidget spinner or taking a quick walk. We incorporated brain breaks throughout the day, allowing kids to sing songs, do yoga poses and participate in structured physical activities. And for those kids that struggle with sitting for long periods of time, we invested in flexible seating, such as rocking chairs and exercise bikes, and even floor elliptical machines, allowing kids to pedal underneath their desks. These changes encouraged kids to stay in the classroom, helping them to focus and learn. And when less kids are disrupting, all kids do better.
我知道你们有人会想 “这种特殊对待不是很实用, 起码不是对每个学生。“ 但是我们确实做到了。 因为一旦我们找到了 适合D的方式和策略, 我们的老师就可以把它 用到其他学生身上。 我们开始积极应对学生的表现 而不是简单应对。 在备课时,我们的老师会花时间 去教孩子们如何 认清他们的感受, 教他们用合适、健康的 应对策略去处理情绪, 比如数到十, 抓住旋转的陀螺 或者散个步。 我们把让大脑放松 环节融入一天中, 让孩子们唱唱歌, 做瑜伽动作, 参加有规划的体育活动。 对那些无法长时间坐着的孩子们, 我们投入灵活的坐椅, 比如摇椅和运动单车, 甚至是地板椭圆机, 这可以让孩子们在书桌下蹬脚。 这些改变鼓励孩子们呆在教室里, 帮助他们集中注意力学习。 当比较少的孩子捣乱时, 所有的孩子都做得更好。
And here's the magical thing: it didn't cost us a whole lot of extra money. We simply thought differently about what we had. For example, every public school has an instructional supply line. An instructional supply could be a book, it could be a whiteboard, it could be flexible seating, it could be a fidget spinner, it could even be painting the walls of a school a more calming color, allowing students to thrive. It's not that we didn't invest in the academic tools -- obviously -- but we took the social tools seriously, too. And the results speak for themselves. By taking the emotional development of our kids seriously and helping them manage their emotions, we saw huge growth in our reading and math scores, far exceeding the one year of expected growth and outscoring many schools with our same demographic.
神奇的是: 这样做并没有花费我们 很多额外的资金。 我们只是用不同的方式去 思考我们拥有的资源。 比如,每间公立学校都有 指导性的教学供应。 可以是一本书, 可以是一个白板, 可以是灵活的座位, 可以是旋转陀螺, 甚至可以把学校的墙壁 涂成更平和的颜色, 使学生们茁壮成长。 我们并非没在学术工具上投资—— 很明显—— 我们只是同样认真采取了社交手段。 效果显而易见。 通过认真对待孩子们的情绪发展 和帮助他们管理情绪, 我们看到了阅读与数学 分数上的巨大进步, 远远超过预期的年度增长, 且超过了同地区的许多学校。
The second thing we did to help our kids manage their emotions was we used leverage. As a not-so-funded public school, we didn't have the support staff to address the chaos that our kids might be facing at home, and we certainly weren't trained or funded to address it directly. So we started to reach out to local groups, community agencies, and even the Ohio State University. Our partnership with the Ohio State University afforded us college students not only studying education but also school psychology and school social work. These students were paired with our teachers to help our most struggling students. And everyone benefitted because our teachers got access to the latest college-level thinking, and those college students got real-world, life experiences in the classroom. Our partnership with our local Nationwide Children's Hospital afforded us -- they're building us a health clinic within our school, providing health and mental health resources for our students. And our kids benefitted from this, too. Our absences continued to go down, and our kids had access to counseling that they could access during the school day.
第二件我们帮助孩子们 管理情绪的事情 是利用杠杆原理。 作为一间资金不足的公立学校, 我们没有支持人员 去解决孩子们在家里的糟糕情况, 我们当然也没经过训练,也缺乏 资金支持去直接解决这些情况。 所以我们开始与当地组织, 社区中心, 甚至俄亥俄州大学接触。 我们与俄亥俄州大学的合作 不仅为学校的大学生 提供学习教育学的机会, 还有学校心理学与 学校社工的机会。 这些学生与我们的老师一起 去帮助我们在学习上最困难的学生。 每个人都受益匪浅, 因为我们的老师可以接触到 最新的大学思想, 那些大学生则可以获得教室中的 实践经验。 我们与当地国家儿童医院的合作, ——他们在我们的学校里 建立了1个健康诊所, 为学生提供健康与心理健康资源。 我们的孩子也从中受益良多。 我们的缺席率持续下降, 孩子们在教学日可以 获得咨询服务。
And perhaps the biggest change was not in D or in the kids at all. It was in the adults in the room. Teachers are typically good at planning for and delivering academic instruction, but when you throw in disruptive behavior, it can feel completely outside the scope of the job. But by us taking the emotional development of our kids seriously, we moved from a philosophy of exclusion -- you disrupt, get out -- to one of trust and respect. It wasn't easy, but we felt at heart, it was a positive way to make change, and I'm in awe at the teachers that took that leap with me.
可能发生了最大改变的 还不是D,或者其他孩子, 而是在房间里的大人。 老师们非常擅长 备课和灌输学术教导, 但当你面对破坏性行为时, 往往会觉得这项工作 超出了你的能力范围。 但通过认真地对待 孩子的情绪发展, 我们从排斥的原则—— 谁捣乱,谁出去—— 转变成一种信任与尊重的方式。 这并不容易, 但我们真心觉得, 这是一种引领改变的积极方式, 我很敬畏那些与我一起 改变的老师们。
As part of our personal professional development plan, we studied the research of Dr. Bruce Perry and his research on the effects of different childhood experiences on the developing child's brain. And what we learned was that some of our students' experiences, such as an absent parent, chaotic home life, poverty and illness, create real trauma on developing brains. Yes, trauma. I know it's a very strong word, but it helped us to reframe and understand the behaviors that we were seeing. And those difficult home experiences created real barbed-wire barriers to learning, and we had to figure out a way over it. So our teachers continued to practice with lesson plans, doing shorter lesson plans with a single focus, allowing kids to engage, and continued to incorporate these movement breaks, allowing kids to jump up and down in class and dance for two minutes straight, because we learned that taking breaks helps the learner retain new information. And might I add that the "Cha-Cha Slide" provides a perfect short dance party.
作为我们个人专业 发展计划的一部分, 我们学习了布鲁斯·佩里博士 针对不同童年经历对孩子 大脑发育影响的研究。 我们所学习到的是 学生的一些经历, 比如单亲家庭, 混乱的家庭生活, 贫穷与疾病, 会给正在发育的大脑 造成真正的创伤。 是的,创伤。 我知道这是一个很严重的词, 但是这帮助了我们重新构建 和理解我们所看到的行为。 那些糟糕的家庭经历 给学习造成了真正的障碍, 我们必须找出克服的办法。 所以我们的老师 继续改善课程计划, 缩短单方面讲解的课程计划, 允许孩子们参与进来, 继续融入课间运动休息时间, 给予孩子们两分钟的时间, 在教室里上蹿下跳和跳舞, 因为我们了解到休息 有助于学习者获取新知识。 顺便提一下,"Cha-Cha slide" (歌名) 真是完美的广场舞曲。
(Laughter)
(笑声)
I saw teachers say, "What happened to you?" instead of "What's wrong with you?" or "How can I help you?" instead of "Get out." And this investment in our kids made huge differences, and we continue to see rises in our academic scores.
我听到老师们说:“你怎么了?” 而不是 “你有什么毛病?” 或者“我可以怎么帮你?” 而不是“出去。” 在我们孩子身上的投资 取得了巨大的成功, 我们持续地看到成绩的好转。
I'm happy to say that when D got to fourth grade, he rarely got into trouble. He became a leader in the school, and this behavior became contagious with other students. We saw and felt our school climate continue to improve, making it a happy and safe place not only for children but for adults, despite any outside influence.
我可以很开心地告诉你们 当D升到四年级时, 他几乎没有惹过麻烦。 他在学校里成为了小领导, 这种行为开始影响其他学生。 我们看到也感受到我们 的学风正在持续改进, 这让它成为了一个令孩子们开心 和保障他们安全的地方。 对大人来说也是一样, 尽管有各种外界影响。
Fast-forward to today, I now work with an alternative education program with high school students who struggle to function in traditional high school setting. I recently reviewed some of their histories. Many of them are 17 to 18 years old, experimenting with drugs, in and out of the juvenile detention system and expelled from school. And what I discovered was that many of them exhibit the same behaviors that I saw in six-year-old D. So I can't help but wonder: if these kids would've learned healthy coping strategies early on when times get tough, would they now be able to survive in a regular high school? I can't say for sure, but I have to tell you I believe that it would've helped.
快进到今天, 我现在正着手针对高中生的另一个 相似的教育项目, 这些高中生在传统的 高中环境中过得非常艰难。 最近我刚了解完他们的一些情况。 他们大多数都是17到18岁, 有过吸毒, 进出少年拘留所, 被学校开除等经历。 我发现他们许多人都 表现出了我在6岁的D身上 看到的类似行为。 所以我忍不住思考: 如果这些孩子早点学到 当日子变得艰难时 的健康应对方法, 他们现在还会在普通高中挣扎吗? 我不能保证, 但我必须说我相信 这应该会有帮助的。
And it's time for all of us to take the social and emotional development of our kids seriously. The time is now for us to step up and say what we need to do for our kids. If we teach kids how to read and write, and they graduate but yet they don't know how to manage emotions, what will our communities look like?
是时候开始认真重视我们孩子 的社会与情感发展了。 现在是我们站出来说需要为 我们的孩子做些什么的时候了。 如果我们教孩子们 读书写字,他们毕业了, 但却不知道如何控制情绪, 我们的社区会变成什么样子?
I tell people: you can invest now or you will pay later. The time is now for us to invest in our kids. They're our future citizens, not just numbers that can or cannot pass a test.
我告诉人们: 你可以现在投资, 也可以以后付出代价。 现在是时候给我们的孩子投资了。 他们是我们未来的公民, 能不能通过测试不能只取决于分数。
Thank you.
谢谢。
(Applause and cheers)
(掌声与欢呼)