APPENDIX D: THE POWER OF SOCIAL CONTEXT
APPENDIX D: THE POWER OF SOCIAL CONTEXT
We intend to inspire Steering Committee members to adopt new and innovative ways thinking and acting in addressing the needs of low-income students through learning from the examples of prominent social entrepreneurs in education. They are everyday people like you or me who happen to possess an uncanny ability to find opportunity in otherwise overlooked places (like to school playground), in otherwise underutilized blocks of time (like “after school”) and through newly-formed or established groups (especially in turning negative peer pressure into positive peer pressure). Moreover, social entrepreneurs are especially adept in mobilizing scarce resources within these key “social contexts” to achieve maximum results. This is the power of leverage.
In my career as an educator, I’ve had the opportunity to work directly in the programs spawned by three highly successful social entrepreneurs. Here are their stories.
On the importance of place: Playworks. As a principal of a charter elementary school in Oakland, California, I found myself faced by what I thought was an intractable problem: student discipline. Students were brought to my office nearly every day after altercations with other students. The boys’ altercations were often physical—pushing, shoving and fighting. The girls’ altercations were more relational and verbal. After nearly exhausting all the existing resources, the light bulb in my mind turned on: I had been focusing so intently on behavior, I had been blind to the “situational” factors right in front of my eyes: namely, that these altercations arose in the hallways or in the playground, and often at recess or at lunchtime.
It was then that I decided to partner with Playworks, a nonprofit organization and the brainchild of the social entrepreneur, Jill Vialet. Playworks recruits, trains and pays for part of the salary and benefits of a person who can serve as a full-time teacher on the playground, a person who is trained in cooperative play, physical movement, conflict resolution and fun games.
For less than one percent of my annual operating budget, the school’s problems of student-on-student violence were dramatically reduced. This allowed us short-handed administrators to be able to focus more intensively on teaching strategies and learning. It also gave the students new opportunities to see the playground as a place where they could exercise their imaginative powers and capacity for play.
It all started by paying full attention to a neglected place in the school: the playground. This is story reveals the importance of place and the transformative power of social context.
A gift of time: Citizen Schools. I have served as a “citizen teacher” in an after-school program called Citizen Schools, which provides middle school students with a new set of academic skills and sparks their sense of curiosity through teaching a course that culminates in what they call a WOW” project. Eric Schwarz, the founder, first turned to an underused time in the day (from 3pm to 6pm) as the platform for operations. Then, he brought in bright and successful citizens as volunteers—architects, lawyers, businesspeople, mothers and fathers—to be mentors and instructors. Finally, he trained these citizen teachers in the methodologies of progressive educators: the pedagogy of project-based learning. His story is eloquent testimony to the efficacy of combining both direct and indirect strategies that are summarized in Appendix C: Strategies and Interventions, not to mention the power of context.
The power of groups: No Bully. I am currently a trainer and a coach for a Bay Area nonprofit that confronts the problem of bullying and school violence in a way no other such organization employs, leading to a 90% success rate. What is the social lever? We give students a “seat at the table” and a significant voice in the wellbeing and safety of their school’s culture.
The bully, a “bully follower,” some bystanders and other “pro social” kids become full-fledged members of what we call a “Solution Team,” which meets three times over a three week period under the tutelage of a “solution coach,” a respected member of the faculty and staff in a school, who is able to activate students’ natural sense of empathy and compassion to solve the problem. Nicholas Carlisle, the founder of No Bully, has been able to focus on a special kind of social context of utmost importance to students—groups. For this is exactly where the power to transform negative peer pressure into positive peer pressure resides. And what is the power supply that drives this change? The undervalued resource: the students themselves.
I tell these stories to inspire the Steering Committee members to apply these kinds of solutions and these ways of thinking to the special social and emotional needs (those critical “noncognitive factors” and adverse childhood experiences) of low-income students. Who knows what places on a school campus that we are overlooking. Who knows what time in the school day or time out of school we are undervaluing. Who knows what groups need to be formed.
We all know how to pursue the direct approaches to students’ needs through tutoring and mentoring programs that are very successful. We know how to employ indirect strategies through investing in the adults who work directly with students. And we are beginning to understand just what it takes to combine direct and indirect approaches and understand how to leverage scarce resources, rightly placed, to achieve maximum results. Let’s put this knowledge into the hands of the Steering Committee and those who carry out their innovations, the Advocates for the Whole Child teams. If we do, they are bound to create new and innovative breakthroughs of their own.
We intend to inspire Steering Committee members to adopt new and innovative ways thinking and acting in addressing the needs of low-income students through learning from the examples of prominent social entrepreneurs in education. They are everyday people like you or me who happen to possess an uncanny ability to find opportunity in otherwise overlooked places (like to school playground), in otherwise underutilized blocks of time (like “after school”) and through newly-formed or established groups (especially in turning negative peer pressure into positive peer pressure). Moreover, social entrepreneurs are especially adept in mobilizing scarce resources within these key “social contexts” to achieve maximum results. This is the power of leverage.
In my career as an educator, I’ve had the opportunity to work directly in the programs spawned by three highly successful social entrepreneurs. Here are their stories.
On the importance of place: Playworks. As a principal of a charter elementary school in Oakland, California, I found myself faced by what I thought was an intractable problem: student discipline. Students were brought to my office nearly every day after altercations with other students. The boys’ altercations were often physical—pushing, shoving and fighting. The girls’ altercations were more relational and verbal. After nearly exhausting all the existing resources, the light bulb in my mind turned on: I had been focusing so intently on behavior, I had been blind to the “situational” factors right in front of my eyes: namely, that these altercations arose in the hallways or in the playground, and often at recess or at lunchtime.
It was then that I decided to partner with Playworks, a nonprofit organization and the brainchild of the social entrepreneur, Jill Vialet. Playworks recruits, trains and pays for part of the salary and benefits of a person who can serve as a full-time teacher on the playground, a person who is trained in cooperative play, physical movement, conflict resolution and fun games.
For less than one percent of my annual operating budget, the school’s problems of student-on-student violence were dramatically reduced. This allowed us short-handed administrators to be able to focus more intensively on teaching strategies and learning. It also gave the students new opportunities to see the playground as a place where they could exercise their imaginative powers and capacity for play.
It all started by paying full attention to a neglected place in the school: the playground. This is story reveals the importance of place and the transformative power of social context.
A gift of time: Citizen Schools. I have served as a “citizen teacher” in an after-school program called Citizen Schools, which provides middle school students with a new set of academic skills and sparks their sense of curiosity through teaching a course that culminates in what they call a WOW” project. Eric Schwarz, the founder, first turned to an underused time in the day (from 3pm to 6pm) as the platform for operations. Then, he brought in bright and successful citizens as volunteers—architects, lawyers, businesspeople, mothers and fathers—to be mentors and instructors. Finally, he trained these citizen teachers in the methodologies of progressive educators: the pedagogy of project-based learning. His story is eloquent testimony to the efficacy of combining both direct and indirect strategies that are summarized in Appendix C: Strategies and Interventions, not to mention the power of context.
The power of groups: No Bully. I am currently a trainer and a coach for a Bay Area nonprofit that confronts the problem of bullying and school violence in a way no other such organization employs, leading to a 90% success rate. What is the social lever? We give students a “seat at the table” and a significant voice in the wellbeing and safety of their school’s culture.
The bully, a “bully follower,” some bystanders and other “pro social” kids become full-fledged members of what we call a “Solution Team,” which meets three times over a three week period under the tutelage of a “solution coach,” a respected member of the faculty and staff in a school, who is able to activate students’ natural sense of empathy and compassion to solve the problem. Nicholas Carlisle, the founder of No Bully, has been able to focus on a special kind of social context of utmost importance to students—groups. For this is exactly where the power to transform negative peer pressure into positive peer pressure resides. And what is the power supply that drives this change? The undervalued resource: the students themselves.
I tell these stories to inspire the Steering Committee members to apply these kinds of solutions and these ways of thinking to the special social and emotional needs (those critical “noncognitive factors” and adverse childhood experiences) of low-income students. Who knows what places on a school campus that we are overlooking. Who knows what time in the school day or time out of school we are undervaluing. Who knows what groups need to be formed.
We all know how to pursue the direct approaches to students’ needs through tutoring and mentoring programs that are very successful. We know how to employ indirect strategies through investing in the adults who work directly with students. And we are beginning to understand just what it takes to combine direct and indirect approaches and understand how to leverage scarce resources, rightly placed, to achieve maximum results. Let’s put this knowledge into the hands of the Steering Committee and those who carry out their innovations, the Advocates for the Whole Child teams. If we do, they are bound to create new and innovative breakthroughs of their own.