Students are more likely to succeed in a place
where they feel known and cared about
I realize there are people whose impulse is to sneer when
talk turns to how kids feel, and who dismiss as “soft” or “faddish” anything
other than old-fashioned instruction of academic skills. But even these
hard-liners, when pressed, are unable to deny the relationship between
feeling and thinking, between a child’s comfort level and his or her capacity
to learn.
Here, too, there are loads of supporting data. As one
group of researchers put it, “In order to promote students’ academic
performance in the classroom, educators should also promote their social and
emotional adjustment.” And yet, broadly speaking, we don’t. Teachers and schools
are evaluated almost exclusively on academic achievement measures (which, to
make matters worse, mostly consist of standardized test scores).
If we took seriously the need for kids to feel known and
cared about, our discussions about the distinguishing features of a “good
school” would sound very different. Likewise, our view of
discipline and classroom management would be turned inside-out, seeing as how the primary
goals of most such strategies are obedience and order, often with the result
that kids feel less cared about -- or even bullied -- by adults.
