Evaluate Good Times (COME ON!)

Evaluate Good Times! A Positive School Psychology Spot ************************************** I am a School Psychologist, feel free to ask me questions about what I do! I created this blog in order to share articles and resources for students, parents and teachers related to education, learning, mental health and wellness, mindfulness and compassion. Links to useful information: What does a School Psychologist do? NASP Online Like my Facebook page: EvaluateGoodTimes -------------------------------- May this space inspire and empower you to be compassionate and understanding to yourself and others. I hope to help people to better understand themselves and other people in their lives. Feel free to ask me anything! I will try my best to answer. YOU'VE GOT TO BE KIND

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Researchers: Using an iPad or smartphone can harm a toddler’s learning and social skills

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I love hearing about new research on SPD: UCSF scientists peer more deeply into sensory processing disorder

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Boost your happiness... Here are 5 activities you can do, or practice with your children.

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Here is a great visual for classroom use regarding differentiated instruction and teaching the concept of: "Fair is not always equal". Each student should get what they need to be successful in school... It doesn't mean they all get the same thing.

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Just like adults, kids get stressed out! Here are some useful strategies for turning stressful times into teachable moments. How do you connect with your kids when they're stressed? http://m.huffpost.com/us/entry/6100698?ncid=fcbklnkushpmg00000037

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Research: The results showed that the more time children spent in less structured activities, the better their self-directed executive function. Conversely, the more time children spent in more structured activities the poorer their self-directed executive function. ..."Executive function during childhood also predicts important outcomes, like academic performance, health, wealth and criminality, years and even decades later.”

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...Rewarding students for getting their schoolwork done with prizes, snacks and even grades, as most schools do, can have the unintended effect of dismantling a child’s drive to learn for its own sake. The intrinsic rewards that come from exploring interests in depth, and mastering difficult concepts and problems, can be smothered by a reward system that focuses on grades, say, rather than understanding. It also signals what’s important to the teachers. “If you start kids the wrong way — say, by rewarding them with pizza — then their intrinsic motives will vanish.”

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No parent intentionally tries to discourage their child from reading. But sometimes our actions do just that. Kids may be resilient, but they are also really sensitive, and how we handle reading in our homes can work for or against our kids’ reading attitude. Once a child writes reading off, it’s much harder to reel them back in and get them to give it a second shot. Here are eight things to avoid...

http://www.notimeforflashcards.com/2013/03/8-ways-parents-discourage-their-kids-from-reading.html

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So many reasons to practice mindfulness. Great for kids and teens too! http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/04/08/mindfulness-meditation-benefits-health_n_3016045.html

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Sharing this today- focus on mental wellness! http://www2.sandyhookpromise.org/the_truth_about_mental_illness_violence

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It's interesting to note, that kids with ADHD tend to be able to focus on what they want to focus on, like video games or a tv show.... It makes sense that the focus can be trained and generalized to other things... Brain plasticity!

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Neither retention nor social promotion are adequate strategies for meeting the needs of students who are at risk of failure.

Retention and Social Promotion (Sept 2012, "Principal Leadership"), By Shane R. Jimerson and Tyler L. Renshaw ....According to the research, grade retention and promotion of failing students has been shown in most cases to result in negative outcomes. It is far better to provide intervention at school and at home than to "punish" the child for not progressing. This is of even greater concern when the child is a slow learner or has emotional/behavioral concerns. Don't agree? What intervention ideas have you tried, what has or has not worked for you? Please stay tuned for more on this! :)

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Creativity in Science

“They should have sent a poet,” whispers Ellie in the 1997 film Contact. She is a radio astronomer, and when she sets eyes on an alien galaxy for the first time, she has no words for its beauty. Despite being fiction, I think this interestingly highlights the need for pursuits in arts and sciences to be cross-disciplinary. Many students lose interest in science at an early age because it’s largely “taught to the test”, and so there is a decreased focus on creativity and imagination. Even practical experiments allow little room for creativity, as students are all expected to get the same results—and although this is important for teaching the scientific method, careers in science are not entirely like this: they require creativity and innovation. The infographic above shows the results of Creativity and Education: Why it Matters, a survey by research firm Edelman Berland (note: it is not specifically science-related). The research shows that that 85% of participants think creativity is crucial for problem solving in their career, yet 32% don’t feel comfortable thinking creatively. Yet, creativity is what keeps science moving forwards, because it fosters new connections and therefore gives rise to not only practical innovation, but also the creation of new knowledge. Scientists and engineers frequently encounter problems where they must use abstract, creative thinking, and they should be equipped to do this. From an early age, students should be encouraged to let their imaginations run wild, and also to use scientific reasoning to assess and test their ideas—and this approach of being open to multiple disciplines would be beneficial not only to science, but also foster innovation in other disciplines too. In Einstein’s words: “Imagination is more important than knowledge. For knowledge is limited to all we now know and understand, while imagination embraces the entire world, and all there ever will be to know and understand.”

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I used to be an industrial design major before I switched to biophysics, and in my creativity class, my professor would go on and on about designers vs. engineers, and he had this binary where you could only be one or the other. It drove me crazy, because I knew I had skills in both types of thinking. I wasn’t a bad design student, but I thought I could get stuck designing pedometers for five years and that was massively unappealing, so I switched to something that drew on my love for math and science. I’m now headed in a different path that I never thought I’d go down, but through all of it creativity has been an important factor. I’m attracted to difficult problems, which is probably why I am fascinated by healthcare and medicine. I’d hate to be at work all day with people who never approach a problem creatively, it seems like a total waste of the capabilities of the human mind.

People so strongly associate creativity with art, especially with kids. If a kid is creative, he’s encouraged to draw or write or do whatever. When I was in high school and knew (or so I thought) that I would never need to take another math class because I was going into design, I didn’t take any math or science my senior year, even though I was in honors pre-calc and AP chemistry the year before, and it’s one of my bigger educational regrets. I didn’t take a math class between the ages of 16 and 22, and I almost died in my first calculus class, and that time gap has been one of my struggles with my studies ever since I’ve been studying biophysics. Creativity does not come from a void, it comes from having a good skill set and knowledge of many things, and then expanding and growing from that. Fluency is a big aspect - being able to come up with many iterations to solve a problem - as well as applying ideas from one field into another where they seem like they wouldn’t fit. I could never be creative in science if I didn’t not only know how to work within that field, but also be able to take seemingly unrelated ideas and find new solutions to problems. The best scientists have always been creative, and creativity is not synonymous with art.

I think one of the most creative and important discoveries of our time is the periodic table. I’m not talking about the elements, I’m talking about the actual arrangement of them within a table. Some Russian dude got it into his head that he needed to figure this out, had no idea anyone else was working on periodizing the elements, and made such a good table that he accurately predicted the attributes of undiscovered elements. I mean, how awesome is that? That’s some damned good creative problem solving, but he couldn’t have done it without a very firm knowledge of chemistry to begin with.

If you ask a really good scientist or engineer about creativity, they’ll surely attest to its importance. If you ask a really great designer about the need for practical knowledge, they’ll do the same. Jony Ive may be the lead industrial designer for Apple, but he’s probably better at math and engineering concepts than I am. The result is incredible products. I don’t care if you’re not a Mac person, the engineering and design that goes into them has been basically unparalleled in the consumer electronics industry.

I ramble on.

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When will we teach creativity in schools? When will we stop "teaching to the test"? It's becoming more and more obvious that we need to prepare our children for a future of innovation, critical thinking, and specializing in skills that may not be taught in school. We're in the age of technology, why not use it to allow for self-directed learning?

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"In Florida, one of the nation's largest school districts has overhauled its discipline policies with a single purpose in mind — to reduce the number of children going into the juvenile justice system. It's a move away from so-called "zero tolerance" policies that require schools to refer even minor misdemeanors to the police. Critics call it a "school to prison pipeline." Civil rights and education activists say the policy can be a model for the nation. Under a new program adopted by the Broward County School District, non-violent misdemeanors — even those that involve alcohol, marijuana or drug paraphernalia — will now be handled by the schools instead of the police."

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Fascinating article on exposure to language in childrens' early cognitive development. There is more research coming out all the time, but I like the way this is written. As many of us School Psychologist's know, Verbal IQ correlates positively to overall intelligence (as measured by IQ tests... there are many forms of intelligence that IQ tests don't test for).

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So according to an article in the new issue of School Psychology Review (which you unfortunately need to be a member of the National Association of School Psychologists to read and hasn’t been issued digitally yet, for some odd reason) there is substantial evidence that not only are school-based academic and behavioral interventions for ADHD effective, but also that they’re MORE effective than the use of prescription medication (e.g. stimulants).

I feel like this should be bigger news.

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Great news! Thanks for sharing! More people need to find out about this!