Expert Rick Ackerly: Yes! Schools Can -- and Should -- Teach Empowerment

I follow Rick Ackerly's blog, The Genius in Children (and his book, The Genius in Children: Bringing out the best in your child is a must if you're a parent or an educator.) Rick is a nationally known author, speaker and educator but I like to call him "the school fix-it guy". His approach to education and to kids, in general, is really refreshing. He tells it like it is and treats kids like people, meaning they have a lot going on in their brains and hearts. I asked him the following question. And although, I love his entire answer, I especially like what he says about "labeling" kids. (I also love the ten Disciplines of a Learner and the fact that when he was a principal, he had it printed on the report card.)

Is there a place for teaching empowerment in schools? If so, how important is it to the success of the individual student and to the school as a whole?

Yes, of course, schools should teach empowerment, it is in fact their job. Empowerment is critical to the success of the individuals in the school (adults as well as children). It is, also, critical to the success of the school as a learning community—even if it only aspires to be a teach-and-test academy.

Because of all the baggage around words like power, empowerment, powerful people, I have rarely used them. I think it is slightly better to say: In a good school the measure of a person’s authority is their ability to increase the authority of others. A good principal increases the authority of the teachers, the teachers increase the authority of the students. The quality of adult authority is a function of the degree to which it increases the authority of the children. (Yes, I am trying to change the way we normally think of authority.) Isn't that one way to look at an educated person: she's an authority on something?

To begin with, naming types of people is worse than useless. Our brains take to it naturally, but we need to exercise a certain set of mental disciplines to resist the temptation and, instead, strive toward seeing ourselves and others as unique. One could define education as the process of transcending the generalizations we make of ourselves and others, because the purpose of education is accurate self-definition, and generalizations are distortions of reality.

As all good doctors are charged with helping people learn how to take care of themselves, all teachers and parents should be charged with helping students have a growth mindset about themselves. In my vision children would never be named bully or victim, because once you have a label in your head, you spend the rest of your life being NOT that, and you are off the track of defining yourself; you have let a label frame your development.

In order to change behavior, we have to change the cognitive constructs of the social context, and to do that we have to change our language. If I am on either end of a bully-victim continuum, then my goal is to be somewhere in between, and I will spend the rest of my life trying to be neither here nor there. But my job, remember, is to define myself uniquely in the world.

It is more empowering to have two continua: “takes a stand” more or less, and “cares for others” more or less. I can evaluate my progress toward self-actualization by using a four point scale with 4 being “consistently” and 1 being “rarely.” Of course, I would want to be “4” on both.

Speaking for myself, for example, when I was in grade school, I was a 2 (“sometimes”) on the first scale and a 3 (“usually”) on the second. I avoided conflict (and bullies). When in trouble, I usually presented the jugular vein. People liked me because I geniunely cared about all people, especially the underdogs. I was often elected president of the class. Becoming all I could be in the world has required that I learn to go nose to nose with people without getting mad, stating my position clearly and firmly without trying to defeat the other person. It has been the challenge of a lifetime, and although most people would give me an “outstanding” on “takes a stand,” and although I might sometimes give myself a “4,” I know that I still have a natural tendency to present the jugular vein and usually try to defuse conflict with humor or charm. I rarely go nose to nose with people, and feel that that somehow makes me less of a man, even though I know it’s not true. At the age of 66 I am still working to fulfill the image I have defined for myself.

To help people toward this double-headed challenge of defining Self in Relationship parents and teachers can establish a set of disciplines. At my last two schools we put the following list of ten “Disciplines of a Learner” on page one of the report card.

“Disciplines of a Learner:”
1. Asks questions
2. Speaks up
3. Uses mistakes as learning opportunities
4. Takes criticism constructively
5. Builds on other people’s ideas
6. Welcomes a challenge
7. Takes risks
8. Listens with an openness to change
9. Perseveres in tasks
10. Knows when to lead and when to follow.

Notice that one could actually count the defined behaviors and use the 4 point scale more or less objectively. If all schools focused on graduating eighth graders who are skilled at using all the tools in this toolbox, all of our graduates would be great learners, great leaders and great students—powerful people.

As I wrote in “Banishing Bullying” A person’s behavior is strongly influenced by the social context. Establishing these disciplines as normative in a school can have a powerful effect on all other aspects of school culture and create the conditions in which victims nearly disappear and bullies are more easily confronted and changed into truly powerful people.

Genius, Rick!

Teaching Empathy and Bullying Prevention

My last post talked about the elementary school "One for All" Leadership campaign. It's simple goal is to have older kids mentor younger children. It's not the whole answer by a long shot but it's one of the answers in creating a more positive school climate. Although the older grades are asked to teach the younger ones lessons in friendship and respect, the overriding lesson is compassion.

You can't talk about compassion. You have to demonstrate it. As the "buddies" get to know each other, they learn to listen to each other. Why is this so important? Because some types of bullying make kids feel invisible. No one should suffer with the feeling that they're not important enough to be seen.

Why do we need to teach young kids empathy?
According to an article in Time Magazine's August issue, How Not to Raise a Bully: The Early Roots of Empathy:

Increasingly, neuroscientists, psychologists and educators believe that bullying and other kinds of violence can indeed be reduced by encouraging empathy at an early age. Over the past decade, research in empathy — the ability to put ourselves in another person's shoes — has suggested that it is key, if not the key, to all human social interaction and morality.

Someone commented on the post that a leadership campaign is "good in theory" but there are "mean teachers and mean kids out there." I agree with three quarters of that comment. Meanness is the enemy and that's why this fight is worth it. If part of the answer is making sure that there is someone in the building that "sees" each child, it's worth a shot. Building compassion takes a lot of effort. It doesn't happen overnight but the benefits get passed along for generations. It's also fun and we could all use a little of that every day.

The most surprising part of seeing these partnerships in action? In the process of helping to build self confidence in the younger kids, sometimes it's the older kids that benefit the most. When a first grader looks up to them as an eighth grader, it doesn't matter if they're the most popular in the class or if they were just ignored at lunch. All that goes away at the moment when a 6 year-old thinks you're the coolest thing on earth.

It's a Good Time to Talk to your School About Next Year's plans for Bullying Prevention

Some schools around the country are already out for the year. In the East, where I live, they only have a couple of more days before they're free!

Even if your school is already in vacation mode, it's a good time to send them an email or a note to ask "What's up?" for next year.

If you don't already have a bullying prevention program in place, here are a couple of suggestions to get started.

Programs have to engage the following stakeholders: Principals, teachers, after school staff, lunch monitors, parents, and finally, the kids.

Here are some simple and cost efficient ways to get started:

Principals and Teachers: Check out this three day conference in NYC hosted by the Center for Social and Emotional Education and suggest that someone in the school or school district go for professional training. I've met with this group and I have a lot of respect for their work. School climate is a critical and complicated subject which requires professional guidance. Information learned at the conference can be shared with all other adults in the building that interact kids, including after-school staff. If it's not possible to come to NYC, there are other organizations that host them in different parts of the country.

Parents: Enlist the support of the other parents while you're at barbeques or the pool. Believe me, it's a subject that hits a nerve with more parents than you would have guessed. There's safety in numbers and instead of complaining about kids bullying other kids, do something about it. Start forming a group of interested parents to come up with resources and age appropriate ideas that the school can incorporate when the new school year comes around.

A book I found inspiring is Schools Where Everyone Belongs by Stan Davis. I love the title. It's a positive message that he reinforces over and over again with good clear examples of the challenges and how to overcome them.

And since we can't forget that the kids also live in an online world, I suggest the following web sites: Common Sense Media and iKeepSafe. They have tremendous resources for homes and schools. The government also offers free booklets about online safety and they're great: Netcetera.

Students: Two great books that can jump start an anti-bullying or leadership campaign in elementary schools: Have You Filled a Bucket Today and One. It's amazing what happens when you put older kids together with younger kids to read these two books and discuss them. With a little guidance, kids mentor each other better than we ever could.

There are dozens of ways to approach school climate and bullying issues. Just start somewhere. Something unexpected happened when I started a home grown campaign at a local school. Kids weren't necessarily expecting miracles but things seemed to improve simply because someone was paying attention to the problem. Some kids were relieved that we were bringing up the subject. Once again, it was proof that we don't always know what's going on in their minds or their world.

So have a frozen concoction, preferably with a little umbrella, and starting getting creative.

Can Bullying Survive In the Presence of Empathy and Kindness?

Is empathy teachable? Is happiness contagious?

Two articles: USA Weekend and Time Magazine say yes to both.

That's good news. It means hope for overwhelmed schools and frustrated parents but most of all, worthy kids.

As reported in USA Weekend:

When people benefit from kindness, they “pay it forward,” which creates greater cooperation that influences others in a social network, say researchers Nicholas Christakis, a physician and sociologist at Harvard University, and James Fowler, a social scientist at the University of California-San Diego. Findings were published in March in the online edition of Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

Christakis and Fowler also have found happiness, loneliness and obesity to be contagious.

Did you hear that? Loneliness is contagious. And that's what bullying does.

But so is happiness. And that's what we can build by "paying it forward." Imagine the lives that can be changed by including the excluded.

This week's Time Magazine article "How to Deprogram Bullies: Kindness 101" is also a must read.

"When kids are able to watch an interaction that's empathic, empathy isn't just being taught; it's being demonstrated," says Dr. Daniel Siegel, a clinical professor of psychiatry at UCLA.

Here's a tip: leadership programs where the primary focus is for older kids to teach younger ones about respect, kindness and expectations for good behavior. It works for a lot of reasons. Often, these are lessons that older kids have forgotten and by becoming the teacher, they have to step up their game. It's also important to enlist the help of older kids because, quite honestly, sometimes younger kids listen to student mentors more than to adults. Younger kids in general seem to want to impress their "cool teachers."

(Like anything, it's not always perfect, though. Recently during a leadership session, a 7th grade boy was shocked when a pint-sized kid socked him. He yelled, "I've just been bullied! This is not supposed to happen!" Rome wasn't built in a day.)

Leadership programs take commitment but not a lot of money. Try it. Demonstrating empathy is a good way to go.

Parents and Bystanders Seem To Be The Key

To change the culture of an elementary and/or middle school, the message has to begin with parents. A recent study confirms that a school climate is dependent on how kids relate to each other which is a direct result of how they are taught at home.

It's hard work to promote respect among students but unless parents and, in some cases, teachers get the message, it's impossible. But how do we get this point across?

Instead of an anti-bullying campaign, another concept is to build a leadership campaign. It's easier to talk to kids and parents about leadership than it is to harp on bad behavior. It's also an effective way to talk about the critical role of the bystander. If a child feels like they are a leader when they support the kids around them, they are more likely to step up. If both a parent and child can be complimented for their leadership qualities, others will more likely follow.

As part of a leadership program, older kids mentor younger children. This is so important because in order to lead, kids are taught to lead by example.

An observation: kids tune out at the word "bully." Kids don't relate their own behavior to being a "bully." From what I see, they only understand it when they have to explain it to a younger child.

What is also good about this approach is that it sends a message to the young ones about the expectations of the school. Basically, "We are nice to everyone here, whether they are your friend or not." It also gives them a sense of importance that the older kids know them. Sometimes kids do things because they don't think anyone else will notice. The older kids are taught to catch the younger ones doing something good and give them encouragement. The older ones are also reminded to "take their own pulse" and to not make mean behavior a habit.

This may be simple but it is universal. People want to feel good about themselves. Any school can establish a leadership program with no or little cost. Just the help of interested parents. See -- it's always about the parents!