Dr. Brooks on Resilience

Raising Resilient Children

Third and Seventh Grade Buddies

On the evening of November 16, 2011, author, psychologist and professor at Harvard Medical School, Dr. Robert Brooks made a wonderful presentation to parents and guests on the topic of "Raising Resilient Children." Dr. Brooks visited all three divisions of the school and made a 90-minute presentation to the entire faculty before speaking with parents. Highlights of his main points and an 8+ minute video of him speaking are below.

Dr. Brooks provided a great insight into the challenges of parenting and ways to help your child become resilient. He emphasized:


• Parents need to have empathy.
• Children need a charismatic adult in their lives (one from whom they gather strength).
• Although children need limits (guidelines), they also need to be given choices
so that they feel that they are in control and learn responsibility.
• Children need opportunities to help others as well as to observe their parents
engaging in charitable causes.
• Children need to learn how to deal with mistakes and parents need to model this.
• Children also need private time with their parents.

                                                                                    

Dr. Brooks further explores these topics in the following articles and throughout his website.

Empathy: Turning Feelings and Beliefs into Action
http://drrobertbrooks.com/writings/articles/1108.html
Choice and Input: We All Want Our Voices to Be Heard
http://drrobertbrooks.com/writings/articles/1102.html
To Nurture Caring and Empathy in Children: Let's Rely on Modeling and Action, Not Lecturing
http://drrobertbrooks.com/writings/articles/1007.html
Disciplinary Practices, Parenting Styles, and The Development of Self-Discipline
http://drrobertbrooks.com/writings/articles/0612.html

Reflective Learning – Learning for a Lifetime

3rd and 4th Grade Piligrim - Native Peoples Feast

I joke with veteran Middle School seventh- grade social studies teacher, Betsey Carson, that she had to endure all four of my offspring. Actually I don’t think that they drove her too crazy, and they learned far more than just the social studies curriculum. To this day, all(some of whom are in their 30s) speak about how Ms Carson taught them how to take notes, how to study and how to manage long term assignments. What they still may not fully realize is that she actually did not teach them one magic way to study or organize. Instead she introduced my children and her students to this day, to a wide variety of methods and techniques to try out and try on. The most important thing was she asked her students to take the time to reflect on which techniques or combinations of techniques worked the best for them. As students begin to understand who they are as learners, they learn about their strengths and weaknesses, and what works and makes sense for them.

At the Book Fair

A recent visit to one of Mr. Swanson’s fifth-grade science classes reminded me of how important learning to reflect is in the process of helping students to grow into confident adults. He was going through a process that now is standard for fifth-grade teachers. He was leading his students through a“Test Reflect.” Before students received their corrected tests, they were asked to write about what they had done to prepare for the test, how long they had spent, what techniques they had used, whether they had studied with a friend, taken frequent brakes, written up notes, flash cards……. They were also asked to guess at how successful they had been, what techniques they thought had worked, what they wish they had done and what they would do differently in the future. Remember that this is all before they saw their corrected tests. This process helps them to avoid the almost irresistible pull to simply see how many questions they had missed and be done with it. There is so much for students to learn from evaluating and reflecting on their actions. This reflective learning can help students to become more confident and more successful in preparing for any kind of test, written or otherwise, that life may throw at them in the future.

The next parts of the “Test Reflect” were to answer a series of reflective questions after seeing the test results, to share the completed “Test Reflect” with their parents and to get their signature. In this way the learning that occurs in science class moves way beyond just understanding about our planetary system.

Ten minutes later I stepped into fourth-grade teacher, Ms. Sowa’s, class where she was discussing with her students the variety of ways they might successfully handle a week-long assignment in their on-line mathematics work. Again the learning is not just about math or instilling one single way of facing a challenge. Instead it is about having students learn through experimentation and reflection about what works best for them.

Third graders reflect on their strengths and weaknesses as they learn about differences in individuals through a unit from the All Kinds of Minds curriculum, and the list goes on....

Thinking about learning and understanding oneself, beginning in the Lower School, is one of the most important benefits of a Dwight-Englewood education.