Play is a key ingredient to human happiness – your happiness and the happiness of your students.

But the importance of play goes far beyond happiness.  The American Association of Pediatrics affirmed that play is a vital contributor to the “whole child” development of children and youth.  The United Nations has designated play as a basic human right of all children.

Play is a natural strategy kids use to cement knowledge, practice social roles, and deepens understanding and wisdom.

Researcher and author Dr. Peter Gray sets out five fundamentals that define play: true play is self-chosen, engaged in for the sake of play itself, operates by self-selected rules, takes on the characteristic of imagination, and is generally active but unstressed.  

Play manifests in different types – object play, rough and tumble play, outdoor play, and social play to name a few.  Each type of play comes with its own developmental rewards.

In today’s world, many schools and programs have over-regulated play time with unnecessary rules.

Teachers need to understand the importance of play, and they serve the students best by facilitating play and increasing the number of opportunities for students to engage in play.  With all this play going on, the teacher is not a passive actor.  Using open-ended questions, teachers open up doors of student understanding through play.

In this week’s episode, Rick takes the Transforming Teachers crowd down the fascinating path of METACOGNITION.  We’ll be looking at the way students think about thinking.

We’ll look at the benefits of developing the trait of metacognition in your students as well as three of the best ways that any teacher can implement the learning of metacognition in their classroom or program – without the need for tons of PD or a budget increase!

We’ll get a “check up from the neck up” and find out how adopting a GROWTH MINDSET naturally fosters metacognition in children and youth, as well as examining other benefits to transforming a fixed mindset into the growth realm.

We’ll also look at recent research that shows gains in metacognition when students are prompted to reflect on what they don’t understand and what they don’t know.

Lastly, we’ll preview how to wrap your curriculum – no matter what subject – in a metacognition “envelope”, doubling your teaching efficacy and killing two (or more!) birds with one stone.

Check out this week’s episode, and move your students toward academic greatness through the use of METACOGNITION!

One of the best ways to inspire and cement learning is understanding two related concepts.  Now despite that their names imply that they’re polar opposites, FORMAL LEARNING and INFORMAL LEARNING work together to create a depth of understanding and students’ ability to truly grasp the fundamentals of an idea or concept.

When a student can take a concept that they’ve learned FORMALLY, say in the classroom… and they can supplement it and test it by using it in their everyday experience, then the learning becomes CEMENTED in place.  The understanding is deeper.

This takes INTENTION, it takes FORETHOUGHT, and PLANNING.  First off, remember that INFORMAL LEARNING comes from things that students experience with their senses.  What they see, what they hear, what they touch, feel, and taste.  When you designate “free time” for your students… set up your environment so that they immediately have access to the items that support the concepts you’re teaching. 

Now, with the advent of afterschool programs, we have a huge opportunity – and a duty – to make sure that INFORMAL LEARNING time is available.

The fact is, as humans on the search for deeper understanding and knowledge, we absolutely need and must embrace both FORMAL LEARNING and INFORMAL LEARNING and we must encourage the interplay between the two.

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GUIDING THROUGH CHOICE

PART ONE – The Power of Choice

So, as children develop from birth through childhood and adolescence, one of the most important skills that is developed along the way is the skill of choosing.  When a child or youth is allowed to choose, they develop neural pathways that, with encouragement and guidance, lead to success in critical thinking and the development of agency. Agency is that sense within a student that they have a cause-and-effect relationship and an impact with the rest of the world.

PART TWO – Acknowledging The Social and Emotional Aspects

One of the most intuitive areas in which to activate student choice comes with learning in the social/emotional arenas.  The whole topic of Social/Emotional learning is huge today.  The fact is, allowing children and youth to explore choices socially – and then having an adult help in deconstructing the effects – that’s one of the most valuable areas of choice and leads to significant social and emotional development.

PART THREE – Strong Enough To Bend

Creating a program with structures that are both strong and flexible is both a science and an art.  We have to start with that magic ingredient of INTENTION.  But we also have to cultivate our skill of being PRESENT in the moment – so that we’re attuned both to what we are setting out to accomplish as well as the thoughts, feelings, and attitudes of our students.

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DEVELOPING LEADERSHIP SKILLS

Now, whether you’re a classroom teacher, an afterschool professional, sports coach, even a preschool teacher, I’m here to tell you that you most definitely have a role in molding your students’ leadership abilities, and you definitely have a responsibility to help them find their true inner voice. 

PART ONE – CHOICES

Your students’ abilities to recognize and make choices is strengthened through repeated exposures and opportunities to practice making choices in a real-world setting … and we will cover how to get that going in your program.

PART TWO – TEACHER TRAINING

Now, this may seem like a given – but, just like any other subject that you want to teach to children and youth, in order to be successful, the teacher has to have an understanding of the subject beforehand.  You can google a whole host of “Top Ten” books… but I’ll give you three of my favorites to start with.  Remember… it doesn’t matter where you start… just start!

PART THREE – ALLOW for EXPERIENCE

In their own way, the school and afterschool settings, it’s like they’re their own “miniature societies” where social learning is taking place all the time. We talk about how to bring in the leadership aspect to you program, being more intentional about social-emotional learning and nurturing the self-esteem and leadership skills of our students. 

PART FOUR – CREATE SMALL CHALLENGES for GROWTH

Finally, today I’d like to share with you a quick technique that is an easy and quick way to implement leadership development and youth voice skills in your classroom, school, or center.  This technique can be fitted to whatever topic is happening in your curriculum and it takes very little effort on your part beyond intention.

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This video looks at the second part of the ERE … RELATIONSHIPS. This is the piece that is most often ignored by our traditional training and education. In addressing RELATIONSHIPS, Rick looks at three aspects of how relationships are key to the learning and growth process, and how teachers, can leverage best practices and next-level understandings to exponentially increase effectiveness, connection, and satisfaction in the field.

Rick has constructed this video so that you’re able to take at least one small idea away and implement it in your work with children and youth.  Because once implemented, that’s when these ideas start changing lives and changing futures… the lives and futures of your students…. And it’s All because of YOU!

He talks about Dyadic relationships, including Bill Wilmot’s book called Dyadic Communication.  It’s absolutely fascinating to see the interplay of all the pieces of relationships, especially as it relates to being in a group setting.

Rick also challenges you to put on a ROLE MODEL MENTALITY – step into the “BEING” of a role model and act with more intention and integrity in your work… not only do you influence the future, but you’re going to find that there’s more intrinsic satisfaction that you’ll take in what you do, day in and day out.

Rick introduces us to the Mountain Pathway Theory and the Japanese principle of kaizen. Just these two concepts will transform how you go to work tomorrow!

Then, Rick will give you the SIX MAGIC WORDS when it comes to creating boundaries in a group culture, these six words, when invoked carry ten times the weight and gravitas of any other phrase. He tells you how to apply them in the classroom, so that they work magic!

Lastly, Rick talks about managing the culture of a group and setting boundaries for optimal group buy-in and function.  Remember – it’s an art – it’s a dance.  One that might have a little bit of a learning curve if you’ve never thought much about relationships and influence from this perspective… but, nonetheless, a very valuable tool that makes every other aspect of teaching flow easier and smoother.

Three Takeaways from Brendon Burchard’s “High Performance Academy”

 I attended a four-day event in Phoenix, Arizona called HIGH PERFORMANCE ACADEMY. I want to share with you, three of the biggest takeaways that I got from High Performance Academy as it pertains to working with children and youth.

PART ONE – QUESTIONS

One of my big takeaways from High Performance Academy is the habit of asking myself – and answering – questions that reflect my desire and human need for growth in particular areas of my life. 

PART TWO – MANAGING ENERGY

So, what are the takeaways from High Performance Academy around energy?  First thing - we can take responsibility for our own energy – yeah, life happens to us, and we sometimes suffer the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune and sometimes our energy is affected.  But if we take responsibility for our energy, we can take control of low points and bring them up – we can savor the high points of energy, and best of all, we can PLAN AHEAD to make sure that we have the energy we need to bring to the day.

PART THREE – ENTHUSIASM

If you really want to genuinely connect with other people – whether it’s your students, or their families, your co-workers, your principal or your superintendent or program director – if you really want to open authentic lines of communication, you must get out of your head and out of your needs and get into THEIR enthusiasms.  Find out what exactly it is that makes them, not just happy, but enthusiastic.

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Rick discusses the first piece of the ERE framework, ENVIRONMENT. The idea is that everything we do as educators to shape our students’ outcomes can be categorized into one of these three areas: Environments, Relationships, and Experiences.

Rick goes over the three key distinctions that educators need to think about in the physical environment that we provide for our students. First, Rick will walk you through what to look for when analyzing the OVERALL LAYOUT of your student’s space in your center or classroom. Second, he covers the idea that most of us don’t put a lot of thought into it, but it has probably the biggest effect on the subconscious mind of our students and that is the visual experience of our environments, the LOOK. Finally, Rick talks about what he likes to call LOCATION, or if you want to get technical the “Kinesthetic Coordination” of the environment. 

So many times, we focus on the curriculum that we forget how important the environment is to the growth and development of children and youth. This video takes educators to the next phase of optimizing their environment for the students in their care.

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Episode 3 talks about the absolute need for you to create affinity with the students that you work with.  Children NEED to feel affinity from the adults that work with them. They need to feel understood and appreciated at that profound level that we are all looking for.

Behavior guidance is a topic that I am frequently asked to teach and speak about.  Here, I've highlighted five key principles in your quest for mastery-level Behavior Guidance.

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Episode 4 discusses a concept introduced by Robert Fulghum, "Don't worry that the kids won't listen to you ... worry that they are always watching you" and developing a role model mentality that goes beyond just when you think students are watching.

Behavior guidance is a topic that I am frequently asked to teach and speak about.  Here, I've highlighted five key principles in your quest for mastery-level Behavior Guidance.