A GIRL WITHOUT EDUCATION

Why don’t you educate me?

I am not just born to make coffee and tea.

My heart pains badly

When I say this sadly.

I would like to go

To school where children get everything to know.

You don’t know how I feel When children carry bags and meal.

I am just a small child

Who is so gentle and mild.

At least, now let me go to school

For I don’t want to be a fool.

Then, before you parents we will glow like pearls

So at least now please educate girls.

How Teachers Can Help Students To Destress

National Stress day is celebrated every year in the month of November. Stress is a big part of normal daily life. It is a challenge we all face, and the body’s natural response to a threat or danger. Children spend most of the day in classrooms, teachers can play a powerful role in limiting stress. When children suffer from stress, it affects the entire family. Feeling stressed because of toxic levels of adversity such as experiencing or witnessing physical or emotional abuse, or substance abuse, they find it very challenging to step back from a negative experience, pause, and calm their nervous systems. When this happens during adolescence as the influence of peers is increasing and young people cope with the c hallenges of a developing sense of self, destress can be very challenging. Most students experience significant amounts of stress, and this stress can take a significant toll on health, happiness, and grades. That means teens are experiencing significant levels of chronic stress, and that they feel their levels of stress which generally exceed their ability to cope effectively. Stress can affect health-related behaviors like sleep patterns, diet, and exercise as well.

Students need to understand what stress is and how to cope with it, making them aware of how to recognize stress in themselves and in others that will help them handle the situations much better. Visualizations can help to calm down, detach from what’s stressing and turn off the body’s stress response. Every student needs an adult that they can trust and rely on developing a positive student/teacher relationship who is critical for reducing stress. Teachers need to allow for social connectivity within the classroom, need to form relationships and to connect to other human beings. Feeling socially connected, in a safe environment, helps build relationships and teaching time management. When students are organized, they have less stress. Allow students to have flexible due dates on assignments. This will lower their anxiety about due dates as well as keep them motivated and on top of their work. Including physical activity within the school day, stress can be greatly decreased with physical movement. Even taking classes outside for a short walk will reduce anxiety. Playing music and listening to music help to reduce stress and relax and stay focussed. Classical music is great for the classroom. Parents should also limit processed foods and those containing sugar which may be linked to sleep problems and depression. When our body is experiencing a stress response, a quick way to calm down is to practice breathing exercises. These can be done virtually anywhere to relieve stress in minutes, and are especially effective for reducing anxiety before or even during exams, as well as during other times when stress feels overwhelming.

Teachers need to be aware of the stress their students are experiencing in the classroom as well as in their personal lives. We can provide the support and help they may need to handle these stressful times. By understanding how stress affects learning, teachers can help build their student’s emotional resilience as well as activate their highest levels of cognition.

Dheekshitha

“What really moves the needle for educators and, by extension, their students?”

Being an effective teacher is about more than just improving test scores it’s also about making a difference in students’ lives. Teacher behaviours and traits are one of the most significant factors influencing student learning. When we think about the traits of a life - changing teacher , the great teachers make their students feel safe and loved, possess a contagious passion for learni ng, believe their students can succeed and always know when to be tough to help students reach their full potential.

But what are the fundamental levers that teachers can pull to refine their practices, improve their craft, and make a significant or even l ife - altering contribution to the lives of their students?

1. ALWAYS BE COLLECTING (TARGETED) FEEDBACK

Becoming a better teacher isn’t just about refining your craft it’s also about developing the right tools to shore up your weaknesses and identify blind spots.

In a 2019 study , researchers interviewed award - winning teachers and found a consistent pattern: They all regularly solicited feedback from their students to identify what was working and what wasn’t. Predictably, the feedback surfaced questions that students had about the material but also teased out valuable, hard - to - spot shortcomings related to how well - organized lessons were, and how easily students could find assignments, grading policies, and other crucial resources.

To get the highest - quality data, keep the feedback low - stakes and focused on pedagogical practices, not the content. The purpose of the survey is to give t he students a voice to tell the teacher what changes they can make and what practices they can implement to help them perform better in class. The survey has nothing to do with content. There are no questions about the subject.

Other tips:

• Use student surveys. Assure your students that feedback will be anonymous, and use a mix of targeted questions as well as open-ended ones like “Are assignments clear?” and “What should keep happening in this class?” to quickly home in on areas to improve.

• Invite other teachers into your classroom. Ask teachers you admire, and position it as an opportunity to seek advice and collaborate on finding solutions.

• Video yourself. Seeing yourself in action provides an opportunity for self-reflection: Are you calling on the same students? When are students most attentive?

2. ATTEND TO RELATIONSHIPS (AND CLASSROOM CULTURE)

One more time for the folks in the back: Relationships before learning. In school, children need a sense of belonging to be productive learners. They need to be connected to their fellow students and their teachers, and affirmed in who they are in a way that is positive and accepting.

Even the simplest efforts can yield meaningful results. In a 2018 study , teachers who spent a few minutes greeting kids at the door dramatically improved student attentiveness and reduced misbehaviour, adding as much as an additional hour of student engagement over the course of an instructional day. Meanwhile, a 2019 study found that when teachers used techniques cantered around establishing, maintaining, and restoring relationships throughout the yea r, academic engagement increased by 33 percent and disruptive behaviour decreased by 75 percent.

Other tips:

• Check in daily. Spend 15 minutes on morning meetings, a rose-and-thorn activity, or daily temperature checks to build the bonds of community and identify kids who are struggling.

• Conduct relationship audits. Consider using a relationship tracking form to inventory student interests and personal details, or keep a praise checklist to chart who you’ve praised so you can spread the love evenly.

• Be responsive. Allowing your lessons to emerge from the interest of your students can revitalize the class. Try to do student surveys every nine weeks and when you implement it from their feedback, let them know that you are doing this because you heard them and they matter to you.

3. DON’T GIVE AN INCH ON STANDARDS

Relationships matter but they’re not a substitute for rigor. In fact, to get the most out of the students, the teacher needs to strike the right balance between caring deeply for kids an d exposing them to challenging or even frustrating materials.

The assumption is that one can be either a compassionate teacher or a rigorous teacher, but not both and there’s a belief that kids don’t want rigor. But high expectations are effective when you adopt a “warm demander” approach and work within a student’s zone of proximal development. Build strong relationships with your students, and then draw on that trust to hold them accountable for outstanding work.

The impact of maintaining high academic standards is far - reaching. In a 2014 study , for example, high school students whose teachers had high expectations were three times more likely to graduate from college than students whose teachers had low expectations, even when student grades were identical.

Other tips:

• Be direct. Students who received encouraging but aspirational messages from their teachers “I’m giving you these comments because I have very high expectations and I know that you can reach them”—were twice as likely to revise their work, a 2014 study found.

• Embrace “productive failure.” In a 2008 study of 11th graders, researchers concluded that challenging problems that resulted in “productive failure” actually drove deeper learning than simpler, highly scaffolded problems that reliably produced correct answers.

• Avoid busywork and remedial work. Low expectations can be a self-fulfilling prophecy. Research reveals that when passionate students are repeatedly assigned remedial work, it snuffs out the spark of interest and becomes an academic dead end.

4. MAKE YOUR CLASSROOM MANAGEMENT ‘INVISIBLE’

The best classroom management can feel almost invisible: Proactive strategies that emphasize strong relationships are quietly at work behind the scenes, putting a stop to student misbehaviour before it get s started.

That’s an insight that expert teachers, in particular, possessed a “comprehensive understanding of classroom management and its complexity.” The most experienced educators conceived of classroom discipline holistically looking for the “root caus es” of misbehaviour before they considered punishment, prioritizing strong student - teacher relationships, and thinking about discipline as a natural extension of the way lessons were organized and executed, or even how the physical environment was arranged

Other tips:

• Pick your battles. Sometimes you have to confront kids, but when you call out every lowlevel disruption, you may unwittingly be giving students the spotlight they crave and reinforcing the misbehaviour. Instead, draw attention to positive behaviour and rely on relationships and lesson engagement to do a lot of the work.

• Be adaptive. Successful classroom management requires the adaptive application of a repertoire of different strategies. What works for one student may not work for another, so consider the right tool for the situation.

• Involve students in norm-setting. A list of rules won’t produce compliance, researchers insist: Consider working together to identify key guidelines, such as being respectful of others, reflect on them and amend them throughout the year.

5. HUMANIZE YOUR TEACHING

You can calibrate your bell schedules and arrange your classroom seating immaculately, but it’s the messy emotional worlds of students their daily ration of hope, fear, sadness, passion, and confidence that ultimately determine academic readiness.

Attending to the emotional well - being of kids, then, is just effective academic instruction. It starts with the little things, from treating kids like people to pulling up a chair and listening to them carefully. A rapidly growing number of studies suggest that setting aside 5 or 10 minutes for student self - reflection from brief essays that allow kids to tackle their schoolrelated anxieties to perspective - taking exercises before a test and can move students along the continuum from belonging to self - confidence to academic success.

Finally, don’t underestimate the role that identity plays in learning. Students are res ilient, but peer pressure and academic self - doubt can send them reeling: In a 2021 article for Scientific American , researchers c oncluded that students as young as 7 years old are keenly aware of social reputation and begin to connect asking for help with looking incompetent in front of others. Give students private channels to seek help and try to reduce the stigma associated wit h mistakes.

Other tips:

• Give grace. If a student misses an assignment, it may be for reasons outside of their control. Retakes let students know that the teacher acknowledges their humanity, that we all have bad days.

• Opt for low-stakes tests. Testing season is misery for many students, driving up biological indicators of stress and interrupting sleep cycles. Frequent, low-stakes quizzes are gamechangers: They rely on proven learning methods, reduce student anxiety, and dramatically improve retention.

• Give kids a break. A 2021 study found that during breaks, the brain replays learned material over and over at high speed, compressing and consolidating it. The research strongly endorses more downtime, concluding that “wakeful rest plays just as important a role in learning as practice does.”

6. CHECK YOUR BIASES

• Use grading rubrics. When rubrics articulate clear standards and are applied rigorously, bias in grading is greatly reduced.

• Get a second opinion. Periodically have other teachers review assessments with you. The mere awareness that people’s work will be reviewed for bias decreases the level of bias at play.

• Conduct self-audits. Check your materials for inclusivity. Making small, culturally relevant adjustments to curriculum.

7. AUTHENTICITY AND PASSION PAVES WAY TO SUCCESS!

Don’t spend time trying to live up to mythical teachers or fall prey to the popular notion that educators are entertainers.

In short, be yourself. Teachers make stronger connections to students when they let their quirkiness shine and engage in collaborative learning. Meanwhile, some students prefer teachers who have an authentic, conversational style. This suggested that when educators are passionate about the material, it inspires kids to invest more time and effort in learning.

Life - changing teachers aren’t just nominally passionate about the subjects they teach, however, like ta lented professionals in any field, they spend time every day honing their craft, whether it’s by reading books and articles, learning from their colleagues, or trying out new ideas.

Other tips:

• Continually update your knowledge. From learning walks where groups of teachers visit each other’s classrooms to pick up new ideas, to book clubs. Strive to expand your teaching expertise.

• Connect to your passions. This does wonders for student engagement and relationships.

8. CLOSE THE BOOK ON THE DA Y

We’d be remiss if we didn’t mention that teaching is clearly getting harder too hard, in many cases. In our 2021 research roundup , reviewed the research and identified an unpreceden ted erosion of the boundaries between teachers’ work and home lives, and found that teachers were being asked to adopt new technology without the resources and equipment necessary for its correct didactic use.

To educate students, teachers need a clear end to their work day and time to replenish themselves, and it’s the school systems not the teachers that need to adjust accordin gly. What else should be done? Creating strict school policies that separate work from rest, eliminating the adoption of new technological tools without proper supports, distributing surveys regularly to gauge teacher well - being and above all listening to educators to identify and confront emerging problems might be a good place to start.

G. Shreya Roll no - 10 2020 - 22