Friday Fragments, April 23rd
Some perennial faves: research on students' sense of belonging, the importance of relationships, and grit.
What I’m reading/listening to…
I have shared previous articles about students’ sense of belonging (increasing belonging through writing assignments and helping students to feel seen) - this brief is a concise and informative collection of what research tells us about college students and belonging: What We Know About Belonging from Scientific Research
This article, How a Bathroom Log Helped One Middle School Understand Its Literacy Issues, isn’t really about bathrooms. Rather, it’s about using relationships to identify when students are struggling in ways that tests don’t always show, and students won’t always feel comfortable acknowledging.
If we can identify struggling readers and keep them motivated, we can turn them around in life-changing ways. They might not be reading Faulkner or Shakespeare, but they can read their high school textbooks and graduate from high school. The challenge for our educators is that, by 7th grade, students might be hiding their challenges behind coping mechanisms that keep them from being discovered.
Brené Brown’s new Dare to Lead podcast episode is a discussion with Angela Duckworth about perseverance and chasing what brings us joy - and figuring out what does not. I have previously written about grit and having a growth mindset and about the interconnection of grit and perseverance in making us happy, so I’m delighted to have the thoughtful conversation between Brown and Duckworth to listen to.
Happy reading!
