S4 E31 BONUS: Coaching, Teaching, & Classroom Management Strategies Sparked From My Conversation with Lily Howard Scott (❤️Olivia Wahl)

Why Children Fear Making Mistakes

Discover why children fear making mistakes and how to help them embrace setbacks and learn from them. Nurturing curious minds is essential for growth and development.

In this powerful bonus episode, I delve deeper into my conversation with Lily Howard Scott, author of The Words That Shape Us.

Discover how the language educators and caregivers use profoundly impacts children's emotional development, self-perception, and willingness to take risks.

Learn practical strategies for building emotional vocabulary, reframing mistakes as learning opportunities, and using language that honors children's autonomy.

Whether you're a teacher, parent, or caregiver, these evidence-based approaches will transform how you communicate with the children in your care and help them develop the emotional intelligence needed to thrive in school and beyond. 

Episode Mentions:

➡️ Yale Center for Emotional Intelligence

➡️ Carol Dweck - Even Geniuses Work Hard

Chapters:

00:00 - Introduction and Episode Overview

01:00 - Overview of "The Words That Shape Us" Book Structure

04:00 - Developing Children's Emotional Vocabulary

07:00 - Helping Children Become Comfortable with Discomfort

09:00 - Reframing Mistakes as "Brilliant" Learning Opportunities

11:00 - Building a Culture of Fearless Learners

12:00 - Final Thoughts and Poem "On Children"

#TheWordsThatShapeUs #TeacherLanguage #EmotionalIntelligence #GrowthMindset #BrilliantMistakes #ChildDevelopment #ClassroomCommunity #TeachingStrategies #SEL #EmotionalVocabulary #PerfectionismInKids

Check out my full S4E31 interview with Lily Howard Scott (https://youtu.be/3UGl2D9VKg8).

New episodes are released every Monday, with a bonus solo episode on Fridays featuring research-backed coaching and teaching strategies you can apply right away to better serve the children in your care.

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When coaches, teachers, administrators, and families work hand in hand, it fosters a school atmosphere where everyone is inspired and every student is fully engaged in their learning journey.

Transcript

[00:00:00] Hi there. I'm so glad you're here. Your time is precious, and because of that, I want to let you know right away what you'll gain by listening to the very last second of this episode. My conversation with Lily Howard Scott focused on how the words we use not only shape us as grownups, but also the children in our care.

In this bonus episode, I highlight why the words we use with children have profound lasting impacts on their emotional development, self-perception, and willingness to take risks. You'll learn why building emotional vocabulary is essential for child development. How reframing mistakes as brilliant learning opportunities transforms how children approach challenges. And why effective teacher language recognizes children's autonomy and personhood. Stay with me. I'm so happy to have you as a listener today. This is Schoolutions [00:01:00] Coaching and Teaching Strategies, the podcast that extends education beyond the classroom.

A show that offers educators and caregivers strategies to try right away and ensure every student receives the inspiration and support they need to thrive. I am Olivia Wahl, and this is a bonus episode. It's an accompaniment to my conversation with Lily Howard Scott, season 4, episode 31, and I wanted to just take a moment to further highlight Lily's beautiful book, The Words that Shape us: The Science-Based Power of Teacher Language.

I wanted to begin this episode with a quote. And it's actually found in the conclusion of her book, but it resonates so strongly. Lily shares about a moment of reflection looking out at her students in her classroom, and she says, “I thought of the children in my care. My students are [00:02:00] not my students. They don't belong to the school, the classroom, the curriculum, they belong to themselves. It's not my job to give them my prepackaged thoughts, but I can give them words. Words that open doors to their own new, beautiful thoughts. Thoughts that empower them to trust themselves, take risks, and look for nuance all around them. Teaching elementary school is a mysterious profession, and that our influence is often invisible.”

And I had someone leave a comment after watching Lily's episode, and this person said, I wish we all had such wonder-filled teachers when we were kids, to awaken that birder mindset and build confidence in our inner voices. And I couldn't agree more with this person because that's what Lily does. And what I absolutely love about her book that we didn't really speak to during our original conversation is that the book is structured with four [00:03:00] different parts and then in each part there are sections. The four parts break down to establishing and maintaining a connected classroom community. The second cultivating students self-awareness, self-compassion, and self-regulation. The third, inspiring students to strive for independence and take academic risks. And the fourth, supporting students when they exhibit challenging behavior.

And then I adore that in each part Lily includes language suggestions, curricular connections, and partnering with families. This book can be utilized by every audience imaginable, and her curricular examples are so applicable to using right away in the classroom. She even includes in the back of the book an appendix filled with reproducible templates that match all of the different curricular connections. And in part [00:04:00] two, that speaks to cultivating student self-awareness, self-compassion, and self-regulation, Lily reminds us that “most of our behaviors and knee-jerk reactions as grownups are rooted in hazy, hard to pin down core beliefs that were formed long ago in our childhoods.”

And revisiting this quote that she mentioned during our original conversation, “Children in pre-kindergarten through fifth grade spend approximately 1000 hours with the same teacher or co-teaching team in a home-based classroom every year.”

And those many, many hours are such a beautiful opportunity to form responsive, supportive relationships between teachers and students. And so when you're working with elementary level children, it's critical to remember that we can coach them around separating who they are from the feelings that they're temporarily experiencing. And on page 59, Lily reminds us that “individuals with greater [00:05:00] emotional granularity, essentially a larger emotional vocabulary, have greater psychosocial well-being and are poised for greater academic success.” This from David and Brackett 2016 and 2019. 

And Lily goes on “naming feelings with precision and nuance not only helps us better tailor our emotional experiences to certain situations, but also underscores the truth that feelings are impermanent. It's a whole lot easier to notice that our emotional experiences are constantly shifting if we have language to describe those shifts.”

As I read these words, it reminds me so much. I was at a dentist appointment yesterday and my dental hygienist, whom I adore, was sharing about her conversations with her children. One is in kindergarten and one is in third grade. The openness and the way she speaks to her children about their emotions being temporary, [00:06:00] her calm during their storms.

It was just so refreshing to hear the way that she's parenting her kids to develop that beautiful emotional granularity that Lily quotes here in this section, Lily gives language like feeling visitors and even offers questions like, “what feelings visited you this morning on your walk to school?” Or if you see a child upset or their head on a desk, you could ask What feeling is visiting you right now? Remember, you're separate from your feeling. 

And this concept may seem crazy to grownups, but we have to remember that those early years, those elementary years are when children are most impressionable. They're most malleable to better understanding and developing their own emotional vocabulary. Lily introduces beautiful language.

She has a feeling visitor word bank pictured on page 62 in the book. [00:07:00] She also highlights the Yale Center for Emotional Intelligence's mood meter with colors like red, yellow, blue, and green, that represent different feelings like afraid, happy, sad, or calm. And in the Partnering with Family Section, she gives language both that children can use to ask their caregivers about feeling visitors as well as language caregivers can weave in to read alouds they're doing at home associated with characters or other situations that the family is facing. 

And another layer of the conversation that came up yesterday while I was getting my teeth cleaned, was around kids needing to be comfortable with being uncomfortable. And Lindsay was sharing about her daughter that the entire goal of this school year in her mind and her daughter's teacher's mind is to help her daughter be [00:08:00] less of a perfectionist. And I thought this was absolutely fascinating and refreshing at the same time. And Lindsay was sharing about a club that her daughter has joined after school and that her daughter gets very frustrated when learning doesn't come quickly.

But that Lindsay is celebrating the baby steps of success and the fact that she's continuing to go to the club even though it feels frustrating and she's giving her daughter questions that she can ask for clarification. And on page 88, in part three of Lily's book, inspiring students to strive for Independence and taking academic risks, she says, “When we shame kids for not trying hard enough, when they're trying with all their might, we teach them this toxic lesson that trying doesn't work.”

And so I shared with Lindsay, she's doing the exact opposite of that. She's celebrating her daughter continuing [00:09:00] to try and to take those small steps forward to take risks when she has no idea what the outcome is going to be and to take risks in front of other children when the outcome may not be perfect. Lily offers language like, what a brilliant mistake and how that language can cultivate independence and joyful risk-taking. And so then let's lean into that language, what a brilliant mistake. There's such a shift between labeling mistakes, silly versus brilliant.

Lily points out “a teacher who self deprecatingly says, whoops. There I go again. Making another silly mistake, inadvertently signals that there's a touch of ridiculousness to the air. But when educators label mistakes and accompanying epiphanies as brilliant as grounds for celebration, not shame, children follow suit. Internalizing this language literally rewires how kids' brains respond [00:10:00] to errors. Students learn to persevere through challenges with the capacity to withstand the discomfort of failure, which in turn leads to increased independence. Brilliant mistake language is a balm for kids who make mistakes all the time. And for kids who rarely do.”

She uplifts Dweck's research that reveals that “often children who have been praised for being naturally gifted are the ones most at risk for developing fixed mindsets, and that on the rare occasion that these students make mistakes, the experience is especially uncomfortable for them because it threatens their sense of themselves as infallible, which is tethered to their sense of self-worth.”

So another reason that brilliant mistake language as well as any language that celebrates process over product instead of product over process helps high achieving kids embrace a growth mindset. We also need a culture of learners that are willing to share their ideas frequently, [00:11:00] open-heartedly and without judgment. And so this idea of brilliant mistake language, it dissolves any shame that's associated with failure. 

And ultimately, it empowers our children. Lily mentions one of my favorite books, Mistakes That Worked, the World's Familiar Interventions and how they came to be. She offers a chart with language. When you make a mistake, remind yourself, and I love these reminders. “What can I learn here? Mistakes lead to learning only if I notice and explore them.” 

So don't just make mistakes, but really explore what you can learn from them. Some of the greatest discoveries of all time occurred because people were curious about their mistakes, like chocolate chip cookies or silly putty or even cheese! And another reminder we can offer. I can't control whether or not I make mistakes, even when I try my hardest not to make mistakes [00:12:00] I'll always make some, but I can control how I respond to my mistakes. I think we can go even farther with that, that we also have control of how we respond when others make mistakes.

And I'll wrap by reading this beautiful poem that Lily includes in the back of the book. It's called On Children. Your Children are not your children / They're the sons and the daughters of life's longing for itself / They come through you, but not from you / Though they are with you, yet they belong not to you / You may give them your love but not your thoughts / For they have their own thoughts / You may house their bodies, but not their souls / For their souls dwell in the house of tomorrow, which you can visit not even in your dreams. 

And Lily reminds us “twenty years from [00:13:00] now, a student from our second grade class may remember to think ishfully and keep perfectionism at bay so she can finally begin a long deferred endeavor.”

That writer Anthony Doerr, “compares the air around us to a library. Every sentence spoken, every word transmitted, still reverberating within it. The words you share with your students will reverberate on and on in ways you can never know.” 

Thank you to Lily for writing this beautiful book. I look forward to seeing you next week. Until then, take care. Schoolutions Coaching and Teaching Strategies is created, produced, and edited by me. Olivia Wahl. Thank you to my older son, Benjamin, who created the music playing in the background. You can follow and listen to Schooltions wherever you get your podcasts or subscribe to never miss an episode and watch on YouTube.

Now, [00:14:00] I'd love to hear from you. Send me an email at schoolutionspodcast@gmail.com. Let me know what learning opportunities your school or district provides that nurtures children's emotional intelligence. Tune in every Monday for the best research, back coaching and teaching strategies you can apply right away to better the lives of the children in your care. And stay tuned for my bonus episodes every Friday where I'll reflect and share connections to what I learned from the guest that week. See you then.