Who's In My Classroom?. Tim Fredrick
was spending lots of time and mental energy trying to get a sense of what my sons learned in school, but I didn't spend enough time focusing on how being in school made them feel. Once I shifted from asking them about what they learned in school to what they wished they could learn in school or what would make school more interesting and enjoyable for them, our “conversations” shifted from interrogations to dialogues.
As I mentioned in the introduction, in recent years I've conducted focus groups with hundreds of elementary, middle, and high school students from urban, suburban, and rural public schools and urban private schools. I use four simple questions to learn more about their experience of school: (1) What are some of your favorite things about school? (2) If you were in charge, what things would you change about your school? (3) What are some things that your teachers do that help you to learn? And (4) What are some things that make it harder for you to learn in school?
Meanwhile, the teens at Youth Communication have written hundreds of stories about what works and doesn't work for them in school. They echo many of the answers that I have heard in those focus groups. Here are a few excerpts:
Ebony Coleman, 18, notes that caring teachers find creative ways to learn about students’ lives and personalities:
Even kids you think are a lost cause get engaged with the right method. If you know how their life is, you can use something that relates to them. Say the student's a hustler, and you know this because when they're in the lunchroom you hear them all the time. If you have a math lesson, you can apply the lesson to their life. I see that a lot and it works.
Margarita Martinez, 18, describes several methods that show caring:
Mr. Hatchett not only teaches well, he believes in all his students and doesn't give up on us. Let's say one student complains that the work is hard. He will go up to the board and let the student tell him which part of the problem they don't understand. He'll explain it, do another problem, and let the student try it. Later, he'll call on that student so they start getting motivated. And during independent study, he's constantly asking the class if anyone needs help. No one is left behind.
Renea Williams, 18, says don't overdo it:
Teachers shouldn't act like students. You can be their friend, help them with schoolwork, and let them come to you and talk about their lives. But I hate it when you act your students’ age and use the slang students use. It's unprofessional.
Evin Cruz, 19, says don't give up on a student:
Sometimes you just truly don't get it, and then you need a teacher to be patient and explain it over and over, maybe a different way, to make sure you understand. The teacher shouldn't just give up and think, “He doesn't get it, but he'll learn eventually”—he probably won't! With school, it's a snowball effect: If you don't know one thing, it's harder for you to learn other things.
There's a consistent message from the teens in my focus groups and the teen writers at Youth Communication: It is important for students to feel like their teachers care about them, and when teachers get to know about their lives outside of school it can have a big impact on their learning. Students also report that they often struggle to manage the demands of school and life, and when teachers adapt how they teach in a way that's responsive to their reality, it makes students more eager to learn.
Why Understanding Child and Adolescent Development Is Crucial for Teachers
As important as it is to listen to individual students, there are other things teachers need to know about youth, in general. As a developmental psychologist, I believe that one important way to “know” students is to have knowledge of how they develop physically, cognitively, linguistically, socially, and emotionally.
For more than two decades, I've worked as a professor in Hunter College's School of Education where I teach courses in the developmental sciences to undergraduate and graduate students preparing to become teachers. I've learned that understanding how children and adolescents develop makes us better prepared to support their needs. By their needs, I don't exclusively mean their academic needs. Rather, I focus on developmental needs—needs that are typical of all students within a particular age range, such as during adolescence.
For example, all students need to be intellectually engaged, to feel competent, and to feel a sense of accomplishment. But for adolescents, there's also a critical need for self-understanding and the need to reflect on what makes them who they are. They need to better understand how their race and gender shape their sense of identity and the identity of groups in which they claim membership. And they need to better understand their personal beliefs and their values. All students also need the opportunity to express themselves creatively. For adolescents, this creative expression helps them to discover their talents and their voice and agency and it helps them to explore their thoughts and feelings in ways that enable them to exert control over their lives.
All students also need to engage with others in a supportive and nurturing environment. With adolescents, positive relationships with peers are especially critical to helping them to recognize their own emotions, how to recognize the emotions of others, and how to respond to others with empathy and care.
I remember looking back at one of my old elementary school class photos. What stood out to me was the range of heights. I was one of the taller students, so I was in the back row, but I wasn't the oldest student. In fact, I remember clearly that a few classmates on the shorter side were actually the oldest ones in the class. It seems perfectly reasonable for us to accept and even expect a wide range of physical development across students in the same grade, and to know that those physical characteristics are not fixed. But why is it less likely for us to expect the same variability regarding cognitive, social, or emotional development? Why is it that we often associate physical development with social and emotional development? I remember once being frustrated by the “lack of maturity” demonstrated by one of my middle school students, who happened to be the tallest student in my class, until I found out that he was my youngest student.
Scholars and policymakers within the fields of education and psychology have highlighted the need for educators to be knowledgeable about how children and adolescents develop.2 For example, through their Developmentally Appropriate Practice framework, the National Association for the Education of Young Children suggests that knowing how children develop and learn, knowing the individual needs of children, and knowing their cultural backgrounds are critical to supporting their learning.3 A comprehensive report by the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development published in 2007 states that “aspects of development—neural, cognitive, social, psychological, physical and ethical—have far-reaching effects on children's ability to learn.”4
Similarly, a 2010 report published by the National Council for Accreditation of Teacher Education notes that “teacher knowledge of the social, emotional, and cognitive domains, coupled with the ability to effectively apply strategies based on developmental principles, translates to increased student engagement and improved learning outcomes.”5
Several studies have also found that teachers with knowledge of child and adolescent development are more likely to design and implement lessons that address not only the academic, but also the social and emotional needs of their students.6 As a result of these findings, two common teacher performance assessments—the Danielson Framework for Teaching (which is used to assess the performance of teachers) and the edTPA (which is used to assess the performance of students preparing to become teachers)—emphasize the need for teachers to demonstrate knowledge of their students’ strengths and learning needs.
While development is variable, it is not necessarily linear. For example, during childhood