Creative ways to get kids to thrive in school Olympia Della Flora
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
(Laughter)
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.
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.
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.
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?
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.
Thank you.
(Applause and cheers)