Blog

By Chris Ouellette

Director of the Academic Skills Center at Miss Hall’s School

Have you ever learned a mnemonic that you don’t think will ever leave your mind? I will tell you what mine is, 30 days hath September, April, June, and November... I find it a bit ironic that today’s offering on time management lands on the final day of November in 2020. As I found myself preparing to lead a workshop for my faculty on supporting the development of time management skills in their students, I laughed out loud at my own sense of time (or lack thereof) throughout this pandemic. Initially, working from home last spring was an amazing break (in an awful time) from the grind of everyday boarding school life. As we entered our first term this year in the virtual world, I started to find that days and weeks began to blur in my memory. When we began our second term in person; it was easier to find my anchor, easier to separate each day and experience. Not only did this help me be better for my students, I was also able to attain much better productivity. If this was occurring this easily for me (and I would imagine some of you), then how much more impactful is this for our students? So, with the surging pandemic in mind, and my school’s return to a virtual environment, the development of time management skills becomes even more necessary. 

When you put your hand on a hot stove, a second can feel like an hour. When you put your hand on a loved one seldom seen, an hour can feel like a second. While this quote can be explored slightly differently through the eloquent words of LL Cool J in the 1999 film Deep Blue Sea, the idea that time is relative is necessary. How we perceive time (how much we have, how long something takes) will impact our level of success with time management. 

The One-Minute Challenge

is a fun and quick way to see just how differently we all perceive time. The premise is simple: have your students or colleagues sit down when they feel one minute has passed. Have each member of your group stand up in front of their chair and close their eyes. Instruct them to sit down when they feel one minute has passed (open your eyes, remain quiet). Set your timer for 1:30 and say “go”. Throughout my time running this activity, I have only had two humans sit down at exactly one minute. Even those who think they can count to 60 often find that they miss the mark. Now apply this to what you are doing! What happens when you think something will take you 30 minutes and you only set aside 30 minutes? What happens when you feel like you are going to take a 10 minute break and then you look over at the clock and one hour has gone by? The more accurately you can perceive time, the better you are able to manage your own time.

$86,400

is a great way to look at our priorities a little more deeply. Another simple premise here: each of you have $86,400, you must spend it all in one day, you cannot bank/invest it, and if you don’t spend it, you lose it. Watching people decide what to spend their money on is quite amusing. I want to shout out my ~30 fresh-humans the other day as everyone chose to donate large sums of money or pay their families’ bills (we can talk about how far $86,400 goes another time). The fun part comes when you start talking about the real point of this activity. You have 86,400 seconds in each day. What you choose to spend your time on is vital to your success. If you don’t use your time well, you don’t get it back. It is important to help your group to start to think about their priorities, and remember to tell them that rest is an important thing to spend time on. 

Races to the Aces

helps us to look more deeply at our schedule. Yet another simple premise: each human turns over their deck of cards and races to find the four aces. Build up this competition so that humans really want to win. What they won’t know ahead of time is that some decks are shuffled randomly, while other decks have the aces strategically placed close to the bottom. “That’s not fair!” “They cheated!” “That’s BS Ouellette!” You should be smiling as you ask them to think of each deck of cards as their schedules. If your schedule is organized and ready to go, then you win the race (or at least have a better chance at winning). 

If we can help our students develop; a clearer perception of time, the ability to prioritize, and the ability to create a schedule to follow, then we will help them become better at managing their time. It would be foolish to not reinforce that each area discussed will take much practice, and even the most organized human has moments where time management is a losing battle. We need to regularly help our students reflect on and track how long assignments take to complete, strengthening their perception of time. We also need to help our students prioritize (you may have noticed that some students need help seeing that one less assignment can be more rewarding than finishing the next level, episode, or chapter) their work and restorative activities so that they can find a better life balance. Lastly, while some humans can seemingly fly by the seat of their pants, I promise that it becomes exhausting! We need to work with our students so that they can eventually build schedules for themselves that are both structured and flexible, so that they don’t become overwhelming. 

In the interest of my own time management, I will leave you with a quote from J Cole, “they say time is money, but really it’s not. If we ever go broke, time is all we got.” Let’s keep working to help our students make the best of the time they have got! 

Cheers,

Chris

By Chris Ouellette

Director of the Academic Skills Center at Miss Hall’s School

Happy final Tuesday in October to you all! I hope that you have been able to find that groove you were looking for! As we enter our Covid inspired Term 2, we are starting to ideate on professional development. What are our needs? How much is in our budget? Can we safely bring in an outside guest to deliver a PD offering? 

As we entered this past summer, it was clear that the majority of us would be working through the summer in order to build the best programmatic offering during this wonky time. One of the pieces of our summer work centered on offering PD to our colleagues. Several of us were given a pretty straightforward task: Create effective offerings that would help our teaching colleagues prepare for the year while also allowing for asynchronous attendance. Our ultimate result:

Miss Hall’s PD Summer Seminar Series

Our premise was simple: our school is filled with experienced teachers who had participated in PD courses outside of MHS or had expertise in certain areas. If we could tap into these humans, not only would we empower their voices, we could also provide our PD program at a significantly reduced cost to the school. We were able to target three areas of focus; Technology, Assessment, and Curriculum. Once we targeted areas to focus in on, we began to tap people who could potentially lead one hour webinars for our colleagues. All together we offered nine structured webinars and also offered up three practice and play sessions over a two week time period. I am really proud of my colleagues for their offerings:

-Zoom: Reconceiving Zoom as a learning and collaboration space

-Wayfinding: “No you don’t need to create 2 lessons for each class”

-Student Agency + Classroom Culture

-Powerschool 102

-Maximizing Learning Outcomes w/ 5 week terms!?!

-Creating Videos with Loom: “Enhancing student learning” 

-Assessment: “Through the eyes of our PD courses”

I also had the honor of presenting two offerings to my colleagues

-Assessment: Using Formative assessment to guide student learning “And you can still give summative assessments”

-Student Support: Supporting different learning needs in the hybrid model

After we had presented the webinars, all recordings were uploaded to our faculty resource page on our Powerschool LMS. This allowed for easy curation of all of the offerings for colleagues to peruse at will. 

So what have I learned? Here’s my top five:

Asynchronous for the Win!

Adults really enjoy having the ability to attend something asynchronously on their own time during the summer. While we had many in-person attendees, the timing required flexibility that was achieved through the asynchronous opportunity.

Expertise in your Halls!

There are so many diverse minds and experiences amongst your faculty. Work hard to find out where they have expertise, and tap into it! Almost everyone we spoke with was excited to help out! 

Reimagine Summer PD

Most of us are used to one-two weeks of full day meetings and professional development right before school starts. This does not have to be the case, and our colleagues really appreciated dropping to 3 days of all school PD with the addition of our seminar series. 

Provide ease of Access

We added in timestamps so that asynchronous viewers would not have to listen to every moment. This allowed for a choose-your-own-adventure style of PD. A little fun goes a long way!

It won’t be Perfect

We learned so much upon reflection that will help us implement this style of PD in a more efficient and effective way in the future. We ran into speedbumps, they required mea culpas, and we now know how to make it better. Be humble and listen to the feedback that comes in.

Thanks for sharing your time with me, I will leave you with a quote from the late science-fiction author Robert Heinlein, “When one teaches, two learn”.

Cheers,

Chris

By Chris Ouellette

Director of the Academic Skills Center at Miss Hall’s School

Hello there you wonderful humans! Happy end of September to you all! Most of us are bringing the 1st month of classes or more to a close. Whether you have had students back in person since day one, or you are just now slowly starting to see students return to campus, please know how important your work has been to the school communities we serve. We are providing virtual sessions at all times of the day to accommodate time zone changes for our students. I have not spoken with a Learning Specialist this year who hasn’t seen 1-1 sessions from 7:00am EST to 10:00pm EST.   One thing is clear, this shift to a hybrid style of learning and teaching has brought a whirlwind of mixed results. 

Some of the students who work with us regularly are thriving with reduced course loads or reduced length of their school days. The shift to virtual calendars has helped our students who are the most organizationally challenged. On the other hand, some of our Rockstar students are finding that the increased amount of independent work expected is proving to be quite taxing to plan for. Our students already face difficulties with long term project planning during regularly scheduled programming, and now we are seeing that struggle amplified across students both in and outside of our learning support systems. There is a silver lining to the challenges with independent work being highlighted now; our schools can place a larger focus on building these skills throughout a student’s program. If we can increase support designed to strengthen these skills in all of our students now, they will be better prepared for the world post high-school, whatever that may bring them!

I know that I am not the only Learning Specialist out there who is exhausted already. Since the school year always brings less personal time, I have found myself in need of work/life separation even more so this year. One thing that has got me through is a steady supply of music. I wanted to share my most recent playlist with you all:

• LoFi Hip Hop (chill, melodic, Jazz/Hip-hop instrumentals, multitude of varieties here, check out “Beats to relax/study to” or “Brazil songs”) 

• ”Sing About It” The Wood Brothers (also shared in my last post)

• ”When Doves Cry” Prince 

• ”Invisible Seas” Panacea

• ”Just Thinkin” Slightly Stoopid ft Chali 2na

• ”RITMO” Black Eyed Peas, J Balvin

• ”Own Light (what hearts are for)” Brother Ali

• “Danger Zone” Kenny Loggins

•  DJ 9thWonder has been running the “Fass-Auntie Lounge” on Instagram and has been spinning records live

• “River Takes the Town” The Wood Brothers

• “Pressure Drop” Toots & The Maytals

If music doesn’t get you through, allow me to share one of my favorite motivational quotes from the movie Finding Nemo: “Just keep swimming, just keep swimming” -Dory the fish. So, as you enter the month of October, if you find yourself drifting at sea, please reach out to someone at NEALS so we can throw you that much needed life-preserver. 

Cheers,

Chris

Title inspired by: “I heard a bird sing in the dark of December. A magical thing. And sweet to remember. We are nearer to Spring than we were in September. I heard a bird sing in the dark of December.” -Oliver Herford

Deal NEALS Members and Supporters,

My intention in this letter was to introduce myself and talk about all the great plans that NEALS has in store for the 2020-21 school year, but life has other plans right now.  As we near the beginning of the school year, my head is spinning with ideas about how to best support my students whether we are in-person (masked and 6 feet apart), or remote and meeting via Zoom, or a combination of the two.  These are strange times!  I just started teaching at Dedham Country Day School last year; I was warmly welcomed and became an active part of the community.  This year’s changes to schedule and program delivery make me feel like I am starting a new job all over again.

In my personal life, I am getting ready to send my son to college for his Freshman year.  As of now, he will be on campus and attending classes in a hybrid model. My daughter is a rising high school Junior and will be attending school in person two days a week and the remainder of her school time will be a combination of asynchronous and synchronous online learning.  I mourn for their lost experiences in this pandemic, but I celebrate their resilience and “can do” attitude.  After all, this is the new normal.

The new normal means that we need to shift our thinking quickly- and be prepared to change how we teach in a moment’s notice.  I am reviewing all of my curriculum and materials and trying to figure out if handouts would be better presented in a Google Doc format or as a Slide presentation.  I am seeking videos and other online tools that can reinforce concepts.  I am also trying to figure out how to better reach the students who crumbled last March and were incapacitated with reading ansynchornous class instructions let alone actually trying to complete the assignment.  I keep thinking back to presentations on executive functions presented at prior NEALS conferences and realizing that my students and I are all in the same boat;  anxiety and stress are trying to turn off our thinking  brains and yet we are frequently trying to “do school” like we normally do.  All of our old tricks and strategies need to be reviewed and analyzed to figure out if they will work in the new normal.  This is hard work!

The new normal has also led to some silver linings on some very dark clouds- NEALS has begun to use technology to help us better connect.  We are now hosting member meetings online and they have been great!  As much as I love our annual conferences, I have enjoyed connecting online with so many of you during these past months. And there is a bonus of no commute or hotel needed to get to these meetings!  NEALS will continue to deliver online programming this year and I hope to “see” you at our future online offerings.  Our next event on August 19th addresses best practices in “the new normal” and I know I am looking forward to hearing from others about what new tips and tricks I can incorporate into my teaching this year.  

The mission statement of NEALS is:

I am proud of the work NEALS has done during the pandemic to ensure that learning specialists feel supported.  We will continue to provide professional development and community building  events this year, just in a new way.  I hope you will join us on this “new normal” adventure.

Warmly,

Laura

Summer Seminar with Dr. Robert Brooks, July 22, 2020

by  Susan Cole Ross

Laura Foody makes stepping down from the presidency relatively easy. Though I have loved serving in this role for the past nine years, I know NEALS is in more than capable hands. Laura shares the vision of our predecessors of what NEALS is and can become for teachers and students. She exudes the energy, creativity, intelligence, and dexterity to make our vision into a reality especially at this time, because she has such a vast capacity for maximizing the potential of our interactive website. Already, Laura has expanded member usage and networking enormously, streamlined our processes, and energized NEALS. In so doing, she has only begun to improve the academic lives of ten thousand vulnerable students each year. I hope you will join me in sprinkling Laura with congratulations as she becomes the sixth President of NEALS.   

Today we are thankful to so many of you for your donations to the Cole Fund for Educational Equity. In one month we have raised enough in gifts and pledges to ensure that henceforth the teachers from one under-resourced city school will be joining us and adding their voices as members of NEALS. If you’d like to help us endow memberships for another school, please write the The Cole Fund in the comment box when you donate to NEALS (https://nealsonline.org/Donate).  We also thank the Wilson Language Program (https://www.wilsonlanguage.com) for their generous sponsorship of the summer seminar series.  And we are so grateful to Educators Ally (https://educatorsally.com), for their highly personalized approach in helping learning specialists and schools find each other, and for sponsoring our intimate and illuminating seminar with Dr. Robert Brooks (https://www.drrobertbrooks.com) on July 22nd. 

The Board was so pleased to introduce Bob to our membership. Teaching at Harvard Medical School and previously serving as Director of the Department of Psychology at McLean Hospital, Bob is the authority on student psychology and the calm voice in a storm. We never needed him more. Among his many awards and distinctions, Bob received “Hall of Fame” awards from both CH.A.D.D. (Children and Adults with Attention Deficit Disorders) and the Connecticut Association for Children with Learning Disabilities for his work with children and adolescents with special needs; the Distinguished Leadership Award from Learning Disabilities Worldwide in recognition of his contributions and commitment to the field of learning disabilities, and the Outstanding Educator Award for Mental Health Education from the New England Educational Institute, Pittsfield, MA. He most recently received the 2018 Mental Health Humanitarian Award from William James College, Newton, MA, for his work as a clinician, educator, and author. I attribute my own son’s success as a Porsche race car fabricator in part to inspiration received from Bob at an early NEALS conference - to help my son find his “islands of competence in a sea of inadequacy.”  It was gratifying to witness another generation of learning specialists energized and inspired by our friend Bob Brooks.

During his talk, Bob addressed the value of positive mindsets, resiliency, and a charismatic adult in the lives of students, as well as how to make students feel welcome to address their need for belonging. In research he conducted, adults shared the importance of having teachers who smiled and said hello using their names at the beginning of each school day when they were students.  He shared studies and resources from Gabriele Oettingen, from Edward Deci’s model of intrinsic motivation, and from so much other fascinating and compelling research, such as how the way in which teacher’s greeted students at the door increased student engagement by 20% and decreased disruptive behavior by 9%. In many specific ways, Bob addressed students’ need for self-determination and how to discover and use their islands of competence to make them feel more dignified, as one principal put it. 

During the question and answer period one member wrote, “His work is SO MUCH at the foundation of my work… This is a great discussion!”  Meanwhile, Dr. Brooks provided a more personal discussion of empowering students to own their education, emphasizing the importance of self-determination, project-based learning, and a sense of belonging. In doing so, he offered suggestions for how to help anxious students return to school. Furthermore, he addressed how to stimulate intrinsic motivation in our students versus tuning out and avoidance, and the power of personal persistent feedback versus the power of grades, and for this coming year especially, the importance of connection over content. In response to the seminar one member wrote, “Dr. Brooks and NEALS organizers, thank you so much for setting up this amazing presentation. I got many ideas to bring back to my school community.”  On behalf of the Board, I want to thank Dr. Brooks as well for such a rich and productive presentation and an enriching opportunity for NEALS members to share. 

It is indeed an honor to relinquish the role of President on such a high note. It is hard to put into words how grateful I am to our Board, who have served NEALS diligently and intelligently and become dear friends in the process. In particular, I want to thank Melissa Rubin who has taken every phone call, text, and Google doc and made our work so much better for the learning specialists we serve. We share a joy in that service that will provide a positive impact on myriads of students long after we are gone.

Slides from Dr. Brooks's presentation are available on the Resources page for a limited time.

The video of the seminar with Dr. Brooks is available to NEALS members on the Member Resources Page.

July Update by Susan Cole Ross

We were so pleased to have Murielle St Paul join us to kick off the Summer Seminar Series on June 23rd.

A bit more about Murielle: During her decades of service as an independent school STEM teacher, learning specialist, and dean, Murielle has conducted qualitative and quantitative research on “Students of Color in Independent Schools,” along with “Students of Color with Learning Differences in Independent Schools.”

For the seminar, Murielle offered NEALS members her characteristically thoughtful and inventively inclusive perspective.  Jump starting our discussion, she shared one student’s experience with learning support at an independent school.  Her case study, questions for our breakout sessions discussions, and resulting recommendations will soon be available  on our members’ resources page: https://nealsonline.org/NEALS-Member-Resources

Following the presentation and discussion one member wrote:

Thank you for running today’s Zoom! I think there were some great conversations and comments.

Members will have a chance to reconnect and to discuss these and other issues further on Wednesday, July 8 at 4:00 PM when we will meet for a relaxed social hour.

Our seminar closed with the joy of honoring Liz Radday with the 2020 Barbara Kenefick  Award for Service. 

Liz has always made NEALS look good. A Fulbright scholar with her EdD in Teaching, Learning and Curriculum from UPenn, Liz is no slouch. She has raised the bar over her eight years of service, improving our knowledge base, fine-tuning and expressing our policies with an eye to legalities and future needs, and always cleaning up my writing with good humor. Being dyslexic, I especially appreciate her affectionate teases about my malaprops and misspellings. I can well imagine how she makes every student feel appreciated in all of their quirkiness and intelligence. 

Liz’s gifts to NEALS have been many. She served on the 2016 strategic planning committee, attending every meeting and workshop, and there were many. Liz edited the members’ survey to ensure that NEALS’ plans and policies grew directly out of member desires and expectations. Liz wrote our quite extensive and critical bylaws that will serve to guide and sustain NEALS for generations. In 2016 and 2020, Liz has overseen a comprehensive re-organization of NEALS’ board of directors not once, but twice. 

She did all this while raising two thoughtful and exuberant girls, serving as Director of Learning Support at Marvelwood School for 10 years, and then becoming a leading innovator in educational programming as Research and Support Specialist for Skills21 at EdAdvance... 

and raising the mother of seeing-eye dogs!

The Board of Directors is delighted and so honored to present NEALS’ 2020 Barbara Kenefick award for service to our Liz Radday. 

We are grateful to Wilson Language Systems and Educators Ally Placement Agency for sponsoring our summer seminars.   Our next in the series which will be on July 22 at 1:00 PM.  Dr. Robert Brooks will speak to us about Nurturing Resilience, Positive Mindsets, and Islands of Competence.  As ever, our summer series is free to members (though you must preregister) so please encourage your colleagues, especially school counselors, to join NEALS. 

Have a peaceful and safe summer!

NEALS Summer Seminar Series

by Melissa Rubin, Principal at The Student First

Congrats to everyone! For better or worse, we survived the school year. That feels good to say - more so this year than any others. But I have to say, I’ve always loved June. Aside from being my birth month, June has always represented potential for me, especially in regards to professional development (PD). We now have more time to dedicate to reading, listening and participating in conferences and webinars which will help us support our students even better in the new academic year. With this in mind, I wanted to highlight some exciting events NEALS will be offering in the next few weeks, as well as some other PD opportunities. 

As a kickoff to NEALS’ virtual summer seminar series, Murielle St Paul, Associate Director of Academic Support at Milton Academy, and NEALS’ outgoing President, Susan Cole Ross, are planning a Zoom presentation and discussion for Wednesday, June 24 @ 1:00 PM to discuss learning specialists’ role in supporting students from non traditional backgrounds at our schools.  This conversation is overdue, and we are honored to have Murielle’s wisdom and ongoing research on the topic.  Further information will be on our discussion board, and we welcome your questions to target our discussion to your students’ needs. Email us at nelearningspecialists@gmail.com. 

Last week, Susan Cole Ross, NEALS’ President-elect, Laura Foody, and I had the pleasure of talking with Dr. Robert Brooks. As you may remember, pre-COVID 19, Dr. Brooks was slotted as our keynote speaker for NEALS’ Annual Conference. Since we weren’t able to gather to hear him, Dr. Brooks has graciously agreed to join a Zoom conference call on Wednesday, July 22nd @ 1pm, for a discussion about resilience, positive mindsets, and building off of students’ strengths, or as he terms them, “islands of competence.”  In preparation for the discussion, Dr. Brooks has provided the following resources to serve as a foundation:  

• Mindset of Effective Students

• Building Success from Strengths: How to Engage Students’ Islands of Competence

• How to Develop Mindsets in Students

• Nurturing Hope in Uncertain Future

• Resilience in Adversity

• Resilience during COVID-19

• SEL and Brain Activity

• Relationships and Mindsets

I encourage you to review them, and PLEASE  submit any questions or topics you would like Dr. Brooks to address to nelearningspecialists@gmail.com. We will give him your questions ahead of time to ensure that the meeting is rich and targeted for those attending.

           

On Wednesday August 19th at 1:00 PM, we plan to discuss Best Practices in “The New Normal”. These conversations will be held as a whole group, as well as in departmental breakout sessions and/or elementary/middle/secondary school breakout sessions. Of course, we remain open to suggestions for specific topics and speakers, so please let us know (nelearningspecialists@gmail.com)!

Other organizations are offering PD events as well. Architects for Learning (AFL) is continuing to offer their free “Virtual Teacher’s Lounge” at least once each week. Here is the link to sign up for the Teacher's Lounge: http://www.architectsforlearning.com/teachers-lounge/. Topics have ranged from “supporting sentence-level writing in online instruction” to reading comprehension. June 12th, the topic will be “Deep Dive into Executive Functions” (https://zoom.us/j/504645880 meeting ID 504-645-880 if you are logging in with the app). Each week, AFL sends an email to registered users indicating the next week’s time and topic.  I highly recommend attending these Zoom calls as they are informative but informal.

The Southern Association of Independent Schools (SAIS) is hosting a summer virtual conference (SAIS Summer Virtual Conference Info) at the end of the month as well. Key topics include “addressing learning loss” and “building hybrid courses”.  

The Landmark College Institute for Research and Training, in conjunction with the Learning Disabilities Association, is offering a course, “Student Engagement, Self-Regulation and Motivation” (course info) beginning the end of June. It will “examine a range of strategies and systems to support, actualize, and sustain engagement in diverse learners.” 

These are the “big hitters” for me. However, if you learn of any others, please share with us on our Discussion Board! Also, if you do end up “attending” a conference, a webinar, or any other PD event, please share your takeaways. We would love to post the information on our site so other NEALS members can benefit as well.

Finally, please understand that, as enthusiastic I am about these PD opportunities, I’m realistic too. We need some downtime. We need to take advantage of this time to recover and rejuvenate as I have a feeling we have a long road ahead. Self care is not selfish! I just wanted to share some options we have to help us get ready :) 

Reminder: 

Join GoodReads and check out NEALS’ list there of suggested reading. We have included books related to anxiety, executive functioning, and assessment thus far. 

Commitment Through Uncertainty

by Chris Ouellette of Miss Halls School

When I signed up for this blog post a few short weeks ago, my intention was to write about onboarding a brand new member to your team and school (Hannah is pretty awesome, I am sure you will hear about/from her soon). Similar to many of you, as the reports started to come in and the emails/meetings started to increase, I realized that we were in a very different time. We have been given a call to move to distance learning in an attempt to stop the spread of a contagious disease, and have been asked as educators and students to do something that we may have never done before. Schools are still working out action plans, so no matter the point you are at, there is work to be done. We can only predict that this change will last for some time. While we can think about our students, their needs and potential struggles/successes, until we get rolling, we just won’t know. I have to admit that I do not have control over much currently, but one of the things that I can control is to think about what I can commit to during these times. I am fortunate to work at a school that has set forth the following commitments for distance learning and the end of the semester:

1. We remain dedicated to our mission and to helping students develop our core competencies of Vision, Voice, Interpersonal Efficacy, and Gumption.  

2. We commit to prioritizing engagement and connection over content.

3. We commit to creating clear and reasonable goals and expectations for the final eight weeks of class; these goals and expectations are not and cannot be the same as they would be for face-to-face learning. 

4. We commit to asking ourselves and our departmental colleagues “What is really important for this class in this curriculum?”  We will distill our coursework down to these most essential concepts and skills. 

5. We understand that distance learning cannot replicate the time of face-to-face interaction and homework time. We will commit to a maximum estimated number of work minutes per week, keeping in mind the grade level of the students and in agreement with our colleagues in all academic departments.

6. We commit to assess student learning in creative and equitable ways; especially in the context of distance learning, when students' home lives differ greatly, we need to rethink traditional, graded content-based tests and quizzes. 

7. We understand that learning styles differ, and some students will have more difficulty than others learning in a distance model. We commit to modifying our expectations to best accommodate and support these, and all, students.  

8. We commit to ensuring that asynchronous learning is a possibility/option for every lesson and assessment. We understand that not all students can be expected to be present for live instruction.  

9. We commit to communicating clearly with individual students about their progress in the interest of supporting students equitably.  If a grade falls below a midterm grade, we commit to bringing in a student’s personal team and making this as successful of an experience as possible.  

Whether you borrow from these, or you have your own entirely unique set of commitments, one thing is clear to me: setting these commitments, as an individual or as an entire institution will drive the educational experience of our students going forward. There are two things we should all be able to commit to; 1) We can commit to being there for our students, and 2) We can commit to being there for our colleagues. If we all commit to those two simple tenets, I believe we can find the strength to get through these challenging and uncertain times.

Here’s a song that has helped me stay positive: “Sing About It”- The Wood Brothers

Thanks for your time and energy, make sure to take care of yourselves in this time as well!

Cheers,

Chris

Dear Members,

NEALS is committed to supporting and protecting our teachers and their students and schools. Therefore, the NEALS Board has decided to postpone our April conference until the fall. We are grateful to Dr. Brooks and New Hampton School for joining us in this precautionary decision and helping us to plan the conference for the fall. 

With a reported 30% transmission rate, doubling every seven days, and affecting all of our regions, the likelihood of spreading the Covid-19 virus at a conference is concerning, especially given how many attendees may be traveling in March.

We apologize for any inconvenience or disappointment caused by this decision, but the Board believes it is in the best interest of our members. If you need to cancel your hotel reservation, please call the hotel at 603-286-3400. 

Sincerely,

Board of Directors, Northeast Association of Learning Specialists ~ nealsonline.org

Beyond Skill Building

by Vaunie Graulty, Miss Hall’s School (retired learning specialist)

As learning specialists, we offer students the chance to develop skills and strategies that will lead them to academic success. In our sessions, we teach our students to structure their time by using planners. We teach note taking and study techniques. We teach tools for becoming better readers. We teach active listening and participation. The list goes on and on. But that isn’t all we do, not by a long shot! Skilled learning specialists are also shaping the personal growth of their students. And when they succeed, we celebrate with them.

Some students, and even their teachers, may see us merely as homework helpers, but I bet you, like me, hope and expect that our work goes much deeper and its impact is much longer term. We don’t do for our students; we guide them to do for themselves. “Give a fish, and a person will be hungry tomorrow; teach him to catch a fish they’ll be richer all their life.” Give a rod not a fish. Put the student in charge of their learning. 

Besides test scores, how can we measure impact? Try asking the student! It’s been amazing to me how much a quiet student has to say on paper. I am a big believer in “powerful questions.” These can be used in two ways: 1. To coach students to self-reflect and ultimately self-coach. 2. To evaluate their own growth: cognitive, personal and academic. 

I was first introduced to “powerful questions” by Jodi Sleeper Triplett when I took her course on AD/HD coaching. Over the years, however, I’ve discovered her techniques work for every student regardless of whether they have AD/HD.

The student begins each session with a self-reflection. It will take time for students to believe in themselves enough to answer questions positively, but they WILL, with time and practice. They will also become self-starters, comfortable with the opening routine. Try asking students to WRITE their answers; for some this is easier. Self-reflecting in a Learning Journal develops voice, strengthens self-awareness and builds confidence. 

• What is your plan for today?

• What are your personal strengths? How do they show up at school and outside of school?

• Which of your traits will help you to do this task* really well? (*paper, study prep, presentation etc.)

• A “gremlin” stands in the way of progress or forward movement. He is an obstacle that impedes success. We all have gremlins. What are yours? 

• Sometimes we feed our gremlins by encouraging them with negative self-talk or inaction. Talk about how you do that. 

• What is the smallest step you can take to get started with your assignment?

• What have you accomplished this week that has made you feel really good?

• What are you concerned about regarding school?

• Talk about a situation in which you experienced disappointment or failure and explain what you learned from it.

• What do you know about your learning style? What kind of study techniques work for you? What does not work? Have you ever had any testing or psycho-educational evaluation? What did you learn about yourself from that?

• If you could wave a magic wand and make a change in your student self, what would it be?

• What motivates you? Talk about both internal and external motivators.

• What acknowledgement would you like to give yourself today?

• Teachers want you to do well; they are really in a partnership with you. What are your responsibilities as a student? Theirs as a teacher? How do you contribute to the relationship?

• How are you your own best friend?

In my experience, students like to look back through their journals now and then. By the end of the school year, they are proud of how much they write, and they learn from re-reading their entries.  Students finish the year better able to talk with their teachers about how they learn. They can partner with the teacher. Students also discover the power of talking themselves through a challenge by asking energizing and affirming questions like the ones above. Self- coaching is the goal. Of course, this is a life skill!