Critical Window Alliance for Excellent Education

On this episode of the Alliance for Excellent Education’s Critical Window podcast, Dr. Medha Tare breaks down what research on the science of adolescent learning says about the development of literacy skills during adolescence, and how educators can support this development.

Too often people think stereotypically about the period of
adolescence as a time of vulnerability, risks, and problems. You may even be
guilty of this. How often have you participated in or overheard conversations between
parents that sound something like “my daughter is headed to middle school next
year” and the response is “yikes, good luck!”?







But the reality is that adolescence is the healthiest period
of the lifespan, explains Professor Ronald Dahl, MD, a pediatrician and
developmental scientist, on the latest episode of our Critical Window podcast.
“Almost everything you can measure—if you go from elementary school across
adolescence into early adulthood—gets better,” says Dahl. “Strength, speed,
reaction time, reasoning abilities, cognitive skills, immune function,
resistance to cold, heat, hunger, dehydration, and most types of injuries.”



This sounds like good news, but we also know that “the
overall death and disability rates jump 200 to 300 percent between elementary
school and early adulthood.” Dahl explains that those jumps don’t come from “mysterious
medical illnesses.” Instead, such increases result from teens still learning
how to control behavior and regulate emotion. Therefore, we see “increasing
rates of accident, suicide, homicide, depression, alcohol and substance use,
violence, reckless behaviors, eating disorders, sexually transmitted diseases,
health problems related to risky behaviors broadly, [and] worsening obesity.”



Dahl calls this the “health paradox of adolescence.”



In this episode of Critical
Window, Dahl breaks down stereotypes and popular assumptions about
adolescent health and focuses on the opportunities to support positive
development and shape the future of young people. 



Here are some takeaways:



Adolescent brains do
what they are supposed to do.  



“Adolescent brains are very well adapted to the tasks and
challenges of adolescence,” says Dahl. “They’re focusing and prioritizing
learning about their complex social world and their place in it as an
individual.”



Dahl gives an example of how understanding this shift in
priorities can shape learning environments. “If it’s a way to increase [their] social
world, adolescents will master the learning very rapidly. If they’re being told
that they need to learn something because it’s going to help them sometime in
the future, then their brains may not look like they work very well. But it’s
not because something’s wrong with their brain.”



Adolescents are passionate.



“We’re doing a disservice to the brain if we think that it’s
all about rational thought,” says Dahl. The adolescent brain is figuring out
what matters and what doesn’t matter and is establishing heartfelt goals and
priorities that can lead to positive impact, especially when given proper
support. “Feelings can be smart, wise feelings,” says Dahl. “We can have
passions for good causes and purposes that guide our value systems, and shaping
these systems are as important as shaping the ability for the thinking brain to
suppress emotions.”



Adolescents aren’t
“just being impulsive.”



Increasingly, adolescents seek sensation, something that
Dahl describes as “having an appetite for, an inclination for excitement,
arousal, novelty, bursts of unusual experiences and feelings.” This isn’t “just
being impulsive.” This is what drives kids to learn and explore. “A huge number

Gifted programs are structured to cultivate and maximize the strengths of an individual. But shouldn’t these ideals be applied to all students? This week, Dr. Yvette Jackson, adjunct professor at Teacher’s College at Columbia University and a senior scholar at the National Urban Alliance for Effective Education, returns to Critical Window to share her knowledge about gifted and talented programs, what they tell us about how we structure our education system, and what we can learn from these programs.

Sports provide a place for young people to grow, learn, and enhance
their physical skills, but, with the help of good coaches, they will learn more
than how to throw a pitch or perfect a layup.







On this episode of Critical Window (audio link below) a podcast by the Alliance for Excellent Education (All4Ed), Jennifer Brown Lerner, deputy director for Aspen Institute Sports & Society Program, explores how sports and coaching influence the social, emotional, and academic development of students, and what educators and coaches can learn from one another.




Building Student Agency on the Field



“While sports might be a unique arena, it's part of a broad array of places in which young people learn, grow, and develop,” explains Brown Lerner. “There's unbelievable opportunity to think about sports as a place in which young people can take ownership of their own learning.”



Into early adolescence, students have “a unique opportunity for voice and choice on the sports field that they don't have in the classroom,” says Brown Lerner. This space, outside of the traditional learning environment, “is really allowing them to come into their own.”



Sports as the
“Ultimate Performance Assessment”



“You could view sports as the ultimate performance assessment,” says Brown Lerner. “Every game, every practice is really an opportunity for young people to put on display a core set of physical skills and social-emotional skills that they're learning.”



Not only are players demonstrating their skills, they are
also receiving real-time responses of their performance. “There's instantaneous
feedback right there, a win or a loss.”



Coaches as Role
Models



Coaches play a significant role in modeling the skills they
hope to see exemplified by their players.



“Sports are a critical space in which [kids] get to both see modeled, and practice, this core set of competencies across the social, emotional, and cognitive domains,” explains Brown Lerner. “It's a really important opportunity in which young people can get, and create, a continuous feedback loop with their coaches and with other athletes.”



A large part of this learning opportunity is dependent on relationships between coaches and their players. “One thing that great coaches do is really focus in on that individual relationship with each player,” explains Brown Lerner. “They also create a space and environment and a culture that honors the relationship that other players have with each other.”



What Can Teachers
Learn from Coaches, and Vice Versa?



“If we truly believe that learning happens in relationships, we need to give all educators in the classroom, and on the sports field, the time, the tools, and the opportunity to cultivate the fire and passion within each student, which only happens when you have the opportunity to build a relationship,” says Brown Lerner.



“There's a real opportunity to build a bridge between what
educators do really well in terms of planning and articulating for young
people, and how coaches create relationships and environments which are truly
young people centered.” With this combined effort, “we can just see an
explosion of growth of these core skills across all the places and spaces young
people learn.”



Listen to more from Brown Lerner in the episode below.







Critical Window is a podcast from the Alliance for
Excellent Education that explores the rapid changes happening in the body and

When you step into your classroom each day, do you believe that all your students can succeed? This week, Dr. Yvette Jackson, adjunct professor at Teacher’s College at Columbia University and senior scholar at the National Urban Alliance for Effective Education, shares her concept of the “pedagogy of confidence,” and how can educators use this style of pedagogy to support adolescent learning.

Who Am I? Podcast Episode from @All4Ed Explores Racial and Ethnic Identity Development During Adolescence