- We can share the important life consequences their decisions can produce when counseling and coaching young people about their choices of friends. Parents, too, may find this information helpful as they support their children’s development and encourage friendships.
- We can nurture and monitor the culture of our school and class to ensure that all students are accepted and valued, and that wealth, race, and other factors don’t determine success in social groups and activities.
- We can break down the school into small, diverse groups of students for advisory, service learning, and social activities, and provide other opportunities to form relationships that might not otherwise occur in large school environments.
- We can structure class activities to encourage interactions and relationships among young people that cross socioeconomic and academic groups. For example, we can design class activities and place students from various groups and levels of academic performance to perform tasks and address challenges that tap the talents and interests of all students, not just those with strong academic skills.
- We can encourage students to join co-curricular and extracurricular activities that attract the full spectrum of student interests—such as Esports, the arts, and sports—and are less dependent on traditional “feeder” systems. However, we also need to ensure that economics is not a barrier to student participation.
- We can reduce stratification of students in school and increase opportunities for students to interact across social and academic lines. High numbers of Advanced Placement classes and formal gifted and talented classes can work against such interactions. Special attention should be given to ensuring that these opportunities are well-populated with students from the full socioeconomic spectrum and fully reflect racial and other demographic characteristics of the student population.
- We can create experiential learning opportunities such as career pathways, internships, and job shadowing to expose students to a wide variety of experiences, expectations, and connections.
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In Your Corner, Student Learning
The Friends Students Make Today May Determine Their Future
Friendships play a key role in the development of children and adolescents. They help young people learn to form and maintain relationships. Friendships present circumstances to assist in the acquisition of problem-solving skills and conflict resolution strategies. Young people can also gain a sense of identity and connectedness through friendships.
Obviously, friendships play significant roles in young people’s social growth. However, they can also exert important influences on their school success—even their lifelong career opportunities.
Young people whose friends comply with school behavior expectations are less likely to violate school rules and find themselves in trouble. Unfortunately, the opposite is also true. Friendships can keep young people behaving responsibly or distract them from doing so.
Research studies have documented the positive impact friendships have on the academic effort students give and the success they achieve. Young people whose friends value and invest in academic learning achieve at higher rates than similar agemates whose circle of friends invest less in academic pursuits.
Now, a series of studies by Harvard economist Raj Chetty and colleagues found that friendships and other social connectedness play a key role in raising career aspirations and pursuits. When friendships cross socioeconomic lines and include others who hold higher career and life aspirations and who have greater access to social capital, new options and opportunities emerge. For these young people, friendships contribute toward upward mobility and expand life and work opportunities. Alternatively, when friendships remain within social class networks, young people tend to remain within their networks and assume work roles common in their communities.
The researchers noted that economic connectedness offered through friendships that cross socioeconomic lines is a strong predictor of economic upward mobility—more so than school quality, family structure, or race. Further, the impact is often career long. Individuals build new skills, become aware of expanding education and career opportunities, and form relationships with people from diverse backgrounds and in a variety of settings.
What implications does the importance of friendships hold for our work with young people? Here are six actions we can take:
In Your Corner, Supporting Families, Thinking Frames
Seven-Step Process for Responding to Angry Parents
The frequency with which educators are confronted with angry parents has increased over the past few years. The trend is not surprising given the uncertainty, fear, and disruption families have experienced during the pandemic. Meanwhile, political forces have, at times, conspired to create doubt and suspicion regarding instructional content and regarding the intentions and strategies employed by educators. These factors can be the source of considerable angst and emotional distress for parents. It follows that much of the emotion, including anger, gets directed at teachers.
The prospect of meeting with an angry parent can create significant anxiety. Teachers may not know the source of the anger. They may feel uncertain about how and whether they can respond adequately. Handling the situation successfully will most certainly require a plan. Fortunately, there is a process teachers can employ in these circumstances that can help them navigate emotions, respond to concerns, and move forward. Consider this seven-step approach:
First, look at the situation as an opportunity to solve a problem, not as a personal attack. This perspective allows you to avoid taking a defensive position and seeing the situation as “win-lose.” Approach the situation with more objectivity. In some cases, this approach can even enable you to enlist the parent as a partner in finding a solution.
Second, listen carefully for understanding, rather than defending or explaining an action. As much as possible, avoid interrupting other than to seek clarification. Allowing the parent to vent can be the first step in moving the situation toward resolution. Equally important, you’re likely to hear information and discover important clues that later can form the foundation of an effective response.
Third, focus on the emotions the parent is sharing, rather than responding with logic or additional information. Your understanding and respect for the emotions and empathizing with the distress the parent is feeling can be as crucial to resolving the situation as the ideas you share and commitments you may make. You don’t have to agree with the parent’s perspective to be accepting and respectful of their emotions.
Fourth, summarize what you’ve heard to confirm your understanding, rather than correcting or judging what has been said. Your goal is to assure the parent that you’ve been listening to understand, not to prepare a counter argument. Listening is one of the most respectful actions you can take and being listened to can be a powerful dissipater of anger.
Fifth, express confidence that you’ll find a solution, even if you don’t yet have a fully formed outcome in mind. This also is the point in the conversation where you might tactfully share additional information, including information that may be counter to the perceptions of the parent. You may point to additional information you need to collect and clarify. Doing so may mean suspending the conversation until you’re able to build a better understanding and develop options for moving forward. However, you need to be specific about the timing and focus of the next steps to avoid giving the impression that you're stalling or avoiding the problem.
Sixth, offer multiple potential solutions, rather than choosing a single option to consider. Your choice to contemplate more than one course of action can open the door for the parent to provide input and create greater acceptance of and ownership for the next steps in the process. However, you need to clarify and confirm what will happen next to avoid confusion and avoid undermining the trust you’ve built.
Seventh, follow-up with the parent to provide an update on actions taken, share any additional relevant information, and confirm any other commitments you’ve made. This information typically is best communicated in person or via another form of live conversation to avoid any misunderstanding and to reinforce the relationship you’ve built.
Dealing with an angry parent may not be a comfortable prospect. But teachers can approach the situation with confidence and optimism if they have a plan to guide them through the emotional context—that communicates respect and responsiveness, and that leads to a thoughtful, responsive, and mutually acceptable outcome.
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In Your Corner, Student Learning, Thinking Frames
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In Your Corner, Teacher Learning, Thinking Frames
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