The Relevance of Relationships to Academic Achievement

It can feel like a focus on academics means we have to sacrifice nurturing whole-student growth—body, mind, heart, and spirit. In reality, they go hand in hand. Join Molly as she talks with Dr. Eve and guest Colleen Grueter, High School Teacher from Michigan, about how to build a focus on students as whole people into every school day.

Transcript

Molly: [00:00:00] From Leader in Me Studios, I'm Molly Garcia. This is The Empowering Teacher for Secondary 

Molly: My favorite question to ask a secondary teacher is why did you choose this profession? I instantly see them light up and without any prompting they immediately begin either sharing a past teacher who believed in them when no one else did or a story about a student who impacted them forever.

Molly: They describe how they felt down to the smallest detail, often sharing that they want to give that same gift to students. It's hard to separate these experiences from who they are as teachers. Knowing the value of educating the whole person, body, mind, heart, and spirit produces all these examples that teachers share.

Molly: Now imagine if we didn't take the time to cultivate the relationships. To see the whole student, then what would that feeling be that students take away from time in your class? We are taking this question head on today with our guest, Colleen Grueter, High School Teacher from Michigan. 

Molly: Before Colleen and I [00:01:00] jump into our conversation, I'm here with Dr. Eve Miller, FranklinCovey, Education Director of Research to take a look at the research behind the power of the whole person, Eve, I feel like there can be this, this true internal struggle with teachers, this tug of war between wanting to make time to nurture the feelings students will carry with them, the rest of their lives in feeling pulled to the other side, like I just don't have time for this. Help us make sense of these feelings and how the research can help us make an intentional choice to support the Whole Person Paradigm. 

Eve: Hi, Molly. Your tug of war metaphor, it's a perfect example of a false choice misconception in education. We often think it's either whole child development or academics, but in reality, blending both is key. It's not about sacrificing one for the other. It's about harmonizing them. 

Eve: Research shows that when academic learning and personal growth go hand in hand, students become more balanced and effective learners.

Eve: Decades of research [00:02:00] in fields like human development, brain science, and education show that our social, emotional, cognitive, linguistic, and academic skills, they're all interconnected in our brains and, therefore, are all central and interconnected into our ability to learn. We know from neuroscience that cognition and emotions work in tandem.

Eve: So, just a simple example, if a student needs to focus on something difficult, what's most likely to derail them?

Molly: Maybe a frustration level or maybe they're bored?

Eve: Yeah, exactly. Or that's going to be at the root of whatever action comes out of them. So both are emotional responses, and we need our cognitive ability to help us regulate those emotions. But that is a skill that must be developed before it can be used. In short, what research tells us is there's no difference between what is whole [00:03:00] person and what is academics in the brain.

Eve: And it is only when we balance the development that we will get the breakthroughs needed for so many students.

Molly: Okay. All right, Eve. Our time is short. I feel like we're, I'm always having to remind ourselves of that, but I have to ask the question. So many educators are probably thinking right now, so, how?

Eve: Absolutely Molly whole person approaches must be directly taught and intentionally integrated and to help with this, I will make a plug, which I don't usually do for Leader in Me online and the huge wealth of resources and activities that help you integrate more deeply. Beyond this, let me give you a quick list of highly impactful practices that are easy to integrate, many of which have supports and resources available to you on Leader in Me Online.

Eve: Here we go. So number one, start the day with a student check-in. Second, turn solo work into partner and [00:04:00] group work and be sure to provide some structure around these so that they're positive experiences.

Eve: Number three, explicitly build, model, and encourage the emotional vocabulary of learning for your students. Fourth, include meaningful reflective writing. Fifth, allow time for talking. Sixth, create opportunities for students to work toward a common goal.

Molly: Okay. I love these and I also want to remind our listeners that integrating any one of these will make a difference. So remember, be gentle with yourself as you add more practices to your daily and weekly routines. Don't go all in. Take it short, doable, right? Meaningful and manageable.

Eve: That's so true. And I'll add that starting with yourself is also a big step in the right direction. Educators who start from the inside out have profoundly positive impacts on students.

Molly: Oh Eve, we needed to hear just that. Thank you for these impactful insights. [00:05:00] I cannot wait to jump into conversation with Colleen about how they are bringing this research to light 

Molly: Colleen, welcome to The Empowering Teacher Podcast for Secondary. 

Colleen: Thank you. It is awesome to be here.

Molly: I'm so excited to jump into our conversation for this episode, particularly around the Paradigm of Education, and Colleen, you know, in a time where academics tends to take center stage. Tell us where you find the time to really celebrate and focus on the whole person with students

Colleen: We have created a seventh hour in our school district for the past few years. It does not happen at the end of the day. It actually happens in the middle of it, but because of the 7 Habits, um, and it's 30 minutes. And that day includes Monday is a planning day, Big Rock little rock day.

Colleen: Tuesday is our career and college day. Post-secondary day, it's where we do anything post-secondary plans. Sometimes we bring in speakers. Wednesday is our leadership day, which is student led. Our students do a leadership course. curriculum every Wednesday.[00:06:00] 

Colleen: Thursday is study hall. So that gives kids options to make up tests, do homework, get extra help. And Friday is our student club choice day, where kids get to choose their own clubs and lead clubs and get 30 minutes of whatever activity, whether it be crocheting, basketball, dungeons and dragons, whatever they want.

Colleen: That's what they get to do on that day. 

Molly: Well, okay. So seventh hour really, it's hitting me right now. This truly is a space where students throughout the day get an opportunity to focus on heart, body, mind, and spirit. How did you help shift the paradigm to really embrace this seventh hour, where we get to live in the Paradigm of Education. 

Colleen: Well, when we started Leader in Me, we knew we wanted some change, but I think the first three years we did it, it was like a roller coaster. You can do something really well. Then you'd figure out that didn't work. 

Colleen: There's so many things that changed throughout, the one thing we did know is that every year, as we continue to do it, we tweak it, we get it better. And, more kids [00:07:00] wanted to get involved and more staff buy in. And at that point, it's when we really realized, okay, this is something that we really want to keep.

Molly: Yeah. it's this, beautiful journey of like, iterations, right? So we're going to put this system in place. We're going to see how it works and then we're going to make sure that we shift and change and adjust. 

Molly: So we have to talk academics. Where are you all? seeing this connection between the seventh hour and embracing the Paradigm of Education and the results on academics 

Colleen: The first thing we did was our Big Rock little rock day, which is Monday, And the one thing that teachers were truly on board with was this day. And so we created these Big Rock little rock boards that are outside all the classrooms.

Colleen: For instance, in Social Studies department, all the teacher's names are on there. And it says Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, and every Friday afternoon or Monday morning, they fill out what their week's going to look like for students. And so Monday the yearbook takes pictures of that, they upload them, and then in my class my students pull those pictures up and [00:08:00] they read off.

Colleen: Okay, get your planners out. Alright, today in Biology, who has Mr. Schenefield for Biology? You have a quiz 2A on Wednesday. You have a portfolio due on Thursday. It's another way that they know what their week's gonna look like.

Colleen: And then Thursday is our study hall. Teachers are also on board with that because it allows kids to move. We have yellow passes that we created that are just for that day. You know which teacher you're going to, whether it's to get extra help, make up a test or a quiz.

Colleen: It really shows academics are important, but it's giving kids choice of what they want to do those days as well.

Molly: Okay, so this is what's running through my mind as you're saying this. I'm thinking about the Big Rocks on the outside of a Social Studies classroom. So clarity leads to ownership, right? So if we're clear on what the expectations are, what are those Big Rocks for the week, then I can own that. I can do that.

Molly: That makes it doable for me as a student. And that gets me excited. I have this momentum and this energy. And I always think about once we have that momentum and energy, that's going to lead to systems. And if we have systems in place, that [00:09:00] this is going to continue. So talk to us about those systems that are living right now with y'all that really help you embrace the paradigm of education 

Colleen: Yeah, one of the things with systems, the planning was, one of our first goals. So when we did our MRA, you know, we choose our, what we need to work on as a community parent, staff, students. That was one area that we really realized we wanted to focus on.

Colleen: And so at that time, that year, Student Lighthouse took that as a goal and they fundraised and they got planners for everybody. Okay. Because they wanted to show the importance of planners, you know, what is a Big Rock and what is a little rock making that as what's really helped with the system of Big Rocks little rocks, cause that was the first system we put in place.

Colleen: We have clubs on Friday. That was another hard system for us to put in, but I know this sounds probably funny, but the system of study hall, that seems really easy.

Colleen: That is not easy. It is not easy to trust that 350 kids can go around a school and just go wherever they want. In the beginning, we had kids who would skip and they would do other things. And so ewe [00:10:00] debriefed as a staff, as students. And I would say these last two years, just having special passes, a new way of who you have to go to, to get a pass.

Colleen: Kids know that expectations. If they don't have that yellow pass, they are not in the right area. Not only has that been much smoother with students, but it's also increased missing work, missing tests, missing assignments. And that's something that's really beneficial for us because obviously it promotes academics, but it's also giving kids their own choice of who they want to go to.

Colleen: Maybe they need to go to Biology this one day. Maybe they need to go work with English and that system is something that kids know. I will tell you, even our Freshmen now, second semester, they're on it because all of our other kids, our sophomores or Seniors are on it as well.

Colleen: And so that's how I know things are working.

Molly: Yeah, and it sounds like these systems are not complex. I mean, we're talking about, like, the color coded pass is going to ensure that students get to where they need to go. We're going to talk about the schedule of each day of the seventh hour. It's very specific, and students know it's predictable, [00:11:00] it's routine

Molly: So these systems really are embracing a structure that makes kids feel like, I got this. This is doable and it's meaningful. We got to wrap up with results. So talk to us about the results that you're getting from truly embracing the paradigm of education. Because that's what y'all are doing 

Colleen: Right. I look at results by student involvement in our school. In student voice. I know through talking to teachers at staff meeting, the participation in their classrooms is up. I know that when students start leading those classrooms that this is working.

Colleen: I see, just in these past two, three years, where kids truly believe and know that their voice matters. They know that when they choose a goal and we're going to fundraise and we're going to get our whole school to fundraise because they're going to support us doing planners, that that matters.

Colleen: If you walk through our school and if you walk through the halls during that hour, it could be quiet one day, or one day we could be doing indoor decorating, or one day, one day we could have, um, we do cleanup days where the whole school's around.

Colleen: It's like that half hour’s, like a [00:12:00] breath of fresh air for some kids. and that's what kids need to balance out their school life.

Molly: Colleen, it brings me back to the heart of an educator. When we truly focus in on the whole person, we get academics and so much more. It's not just a one and done. It's so amazing work that you all are doing, Colleen. Thank you for shining a light on what happens when we choose to embrace the paradigm of education and the impact it is having in the students at your high school.

Molly: To our listeners, remember that you matter, you make a difference, and you've got this.

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