USING AURELIO'S STORY TO EXPLAIN HOLISTIC MENTORING
Strategies for Holistic Mentoring (Rooted in Aurelio’s Identity Engagement Story)
April 19, 2020
What stood out—both positive and negative—in any of the six stages in Aurelio’s journey, from pre-school to college graduation?
Where—within the home, in the neighborhood, in school, on-line or other environments—did he experience his major challenges? (Rate intensity of headwinds)
And along which cause-and-effect highways and byways that Aurelio has traveled —which include the attitudes and beliefs that undermine his confidence, the individual people who hold him back, the groups that intimidate him and the situations that cause him stress—did he encounter the greatest barriers? (Rate power of obstacles)
s from identifying the weather conditions and obstacles (i.e., roadblocks) into practice.
CHANNELS WITHIN SETTINGS (making the map, again)
Considering the channels where identity engagement takes place. First and foremost, Aurelio had to navigate a number of systems operating within one another, like Uri Bronfenbrenner’s nested Russian dolls, as well as the various kinds of channels operating within them.
Environmental/situational channels. Now that he’s away from the extended family that supported him so fully, these channels are no longer as powerful. Then there are those channels that form his daily and weekly routines—his classes, his soccer team practices and games, the weekly meetings of the Cesar Chavez Society, not to mention his informal group of friends from his dorm. These channels are the stuff of what Tom Gilovich and Lee Ross call “the subtle sway of situations.”
Groups as channels. Then there are the groups within which Aurelio participates—the classes, the soccer team and the Cesar Chavez Society—that serve as channels where identity engagement takes place. These groups serve “double duty.” They influence him from within, as he navigates these groups’ internal dynamics. They also influence him by looking outward, especially his soccer team and the social justice work in the community through the Cesar Chavez Society, influence him through the pursuit of common goals and commonly held values. These are powerful channels that have replaced for the most part his prior dependency on his family.
Honor committee/restorative justice committee
Social and emotional channels. And then there is another set of channels altogether, chief among them his values, his mindsets, his character, which is best defined as the habits he develops out of his struggles he overcomes across a range of diverse situations.
Each of the channels has its own “factors — on-ramps, gates, gatekeepers and off-ramps, where driving forces and restraining forces compete—some of which create “pockets” of trapped energy. Each of the channels has an on-ramp, barriers and facilitators and an off-ramp—that can either trap or release potential. It is the barriers and facilitators within these channels that can either prevent his intensions from being realized or grease the skids, whether it is at the vigilance or threat appraisal stages. (put into the channels section the value of “interrupting” a downward spiral of poor performance.
For Aurelio, some of the channels are stronger than others, more relevant than others and more visible than others. Moreover, some of the channels merge and overlap and reinforce each other, forming a set of overlapping feedback loops with recursive properties.
Channels and Traffic. Just as the weather improved over the course of Aurelio’s life journey, so, too, did the channels, or roadways, that served to connect his dreams with actual accomplishments. In middle school he found himself mainly on surface streets encountering such physical barriers as gang territories, such emotional barriers as his father’s abuse and such racial barriers as his racist teacher. By high school he found himself encountering fewer barriers on both freeways (his daily bus ride) and those interpersonal surface streets paved with a growing number of adults in whom he could trust. As he matured grew more skillful in judging the potential of new and unexpected routes—whether academic, social or emotional—through, for example, the Los Angeles Community Scholars Program and those intergenerational relationships he developed with his college professors.
Playing Meteorologist and the Travel Agent
There are combined channels, reinforcing feedback loops and cortisol channels
Vicious and virtuous cycles
SYSTEMS (minding the gap)
The School as a Productive or Unproductive Equilibrium. Put another way, Aurelio lives and learns in various unproductive equilibriums where potential gets trapped. This unproductive equilibrium is dynamic and includes within it number of social and organizational ecosystems where the forces for stability, however toxic, override the forces for positive change and health. Whether it is out of neglect or a lack of resources, these forces settle into a steady state that create strong headwinds for Aurelio to buck. These forces, together, are the imponderables in Aurelio’s life, the “x factor.”
Complex factors working against Aurelio. Because tension systems involve complex interactions between and among forces, individual forces can impede or amplify one another (Ross and Nisbett). Replete with their own channels and feedback loops they come in and out of balance due to a multitude of factors.
Restraining factors prevail. That said, an “analysis of restraining factors can be as important to understanding and anticipating the effects of a newly introduced stimulus as an analysis of the stimulus itself.” (Ross and Nisbett, p14, 15)
Weather Systems. Virtually all of the various environments that Aurelio grew up in—family, neighborhood, school—could at some point in his journey turn into inhospitable weather systems—where the constructive forces of stability proved no match for the destructive forces of entropy and decay. He often found himself what social entrepreneurs would call “unproductive equilibria.” Fortunately for Aurelio, most of the challenging weather systems he had to confront early in his life began to abate over time. The storm clouds that had built up around his father’s abuse gave way to a certain calm after his departure. The stiff headwinds he confronted in crossing gang territories in middle school turned to winds at his back by the time he completed high school. The weather in college was even more favorable, so much so that he could easily take in stride the inevitable storms that would appear out of nowhere.
The wearing down of weather systems. The notion of inclement weather as an unproductive equilibrium is also noteworthy for another reason. Most systems, if they are untended, wear down over time. Call it entropy or decay. Understand how systems wear down, and you can gain key insights into how to build them up. Aurelio’s elementary school principal understood this concept as she revitalized the school playground, which, in turn, reduced bullying and student-on-student violence. Aurelio’s social worker understood this concept, as she gave the family a way to regroup after the departure of his father. Aurelio’s pediatrician understood this concept, in prescribing effective remedies for Aurelio’s low-grade depression.
To succeed in life, Aurelio needed help—both in understanding the power of the weather systems that would trap his potential and in locating the most stress-free routes to release his potential. Fortunately for Aurelio, there were enough adults in his life—mentors of various kinds who could help him endure and navigate around the most severe storms, guide him in taking the right routes to his goals and when necessary to accompany him along the way.
Taking into consideration the most significant headwinds in the most relevant times and places, the next set of skills the mentor needs to develop is how to put the insight
COMPLICATING FACTORS— DEGREE OF DIFFICULTY COEFFICIENT
Reference impact on Aurelio of various aspects of psychological environment
On the Influence of Nested Systems or “settings.” For the social entrepreneur to make an even greater impact, we should think of the school not just as an island consisting of situational channels such as place and time, channels that can be manipulated to achieve results for the betterment of its students, but also as one component of a larger system—a tension system nested within larger and smaller tension systems.
The Notion of the Psychological Environment. Aurelio’s encounters with others in college life—whether positive or negative, whether in the vigilance or threat appraisal stages—underscore both the subjectivity and delicate balance the environments in schools and colleges. I call it the “subjective environment.” “Although objective structural factors obviously affect behavior, the mental and psychological processes of individuals are also critical elements…” Garcia and Cohen call this a “psychological environment,” which they define as “the student’s perceptions of themselves and their environment.”
Indeed, it is the notion of a “psychological environment” that serves as the central organizing concept for the whole book. A psychological environment is really a set of nested tension systems that includes the classroom, groups and the individual all under this umbrella. First, the “classroom as a dynamic tension system in which multiple forces exist and interact” and “in which various factors, including structural factors such as classroom size and psychological factors such as student perceptions, interact to produce a stable environment that elicits a consistent set of attitudes, behaviors and outcomes over time.” (p.?)
This is the maelstrom through which interventions play out. It is precisely because the psychological environment is so rich and multifaceted, because there is so much energy trapped within nested systems—that enlisting multiple channels overlapping, reinforcing and looping back upon themselves (“recursiveness”)—that make these interventions so successful. For this reason, among others, the concept of the schools and colleges as a “psychological environments” is among the most critical missing elements in school reform.
The School as a Judgmental Environment and its affects on identity formation. It is noteworthy to contextualize Aurelio’s journey—that is to place it in the powerful set of influences that school has on all young people. It is, after all, where they spend most of their time to be sure. But beyond that, school is an environment that, according to Garcia and Cohen, is a “charged and judgmental place where students are perpetually evaluated and judged.“ This is the environment within which Aurelio’s journey of identity engagement took place, an environment, a psychological world, a subjective world that holds within it “the student’s perceptions of themselves and their environment.”
Moreover, schools and colleges are complex environments that are made even more so by the fact that they are emotionally charged and judgmental places where students are “chronically evaluated.” From an adolescent’s point of view, it is absolutely critical for a psychological environment to be healthy and responsive, a place where each individual is taken seriously and there is an overt commitment on the part of the staff to an authentic sense of fairness and justice. This is the maelstrom within which the processes of identity formation and identity engagement are worked out through trial and error.
The Importance of Fairness and Justice in School and Its Bearing on Identity Formation. Thus, it is absolutely critical that school be healthy and responsive for each individual student. Students know this intuitively and if injustices surface, the school will attempt in good faith to correct them. And, a major and under-appreciated aspect of school culture is its commitment to bing a place where justice is actively pursued. Such a commitment is to encourage students natural drive to idealism . Give voice to idealism. The importance of being fair.
<add a sentence or two on restorative justice and the honor committee Aurelio served when he was in high school>
BUILDING THE APP (Mentor as Designer)
BACKWARDS DESIGN —THESE ARE THE QUALITIES WE WANT TO STRENGTHEN
Here are the essentials, which are included in a supplemental component to the “Mentor-as-Changemaker Diagnostic and Planning Worksheet.” They can be applied not only to Aurelio’s story but to the many Aurelio’s of the world.
- Efficacy— a person’s sense of being able to deal effectively with a specific task.
- Agency—the capacity to coordinate one’s learning skills, motivations and emotions to attain a goal, resulting in the capacity of individuals to make their own free choices.
- Resilience— the ability to bounce back effectively from setbacks, which in turn creates a buffer against future setbacks.
- Character — to make a habit out of going against our lesser impulses for the sake of our higher ones, and to do so consistently across a range of situations
- Domain transferability—the confidence one develops from success in one area (or remain) in life that is transferable to other areas.
And, for good measure: Self-integrity— the desire to be good person and can cope with her environment.
On a Young Person’s Sense of purpose. (From Bill Damon’s book, Paths to Purpose: Helping Our Children Find Their Calling in Life. “Only about one in five young people in the 12-22 age range express a clear vision of where they want to go, what they want to accomplish in life and why. The largest period of those we interviewed—almost 60 percent—may have engaged in some potentially purposeful activities, or they may have developed some vague aspirations; but they not have any real commitment to such activities or any realistic plans for pursuing their aspirations. The remaining portion of today’s youth population—almost a quarter of these we interviewed in the first of our studies—express no aspirations at too. In some cases, they claim that they see no point in acquiring any.”
In college he benefitted from the authentic interest his statistics professor took in him, not to mention the opportunity to develop a relationship with her and her family. But most importantly, his statistics professor was a natural at performing what Geoff Cohen calls the “mentor’s dilemma.” That is, she was able to hold out very high expectations for Aurelio while at the same time offering him unconditioned belief in his ability to meet these expectations.
LEVERAGE IN GENERAL
The sheer number of obstacles that Aurelio encounters in this story is all too commonplace. The sheer volume of coordinated resources that Aurelio receives in this story, on the other hand, is unfortunately all too rare. This dichotomy is intended, for Aurelio’s story, so constructed, serves as a vivid context for the mentor’s “Diagnostic and Planning Toolkit,” a companion piece that can help the mentor in two major ways. First, the diagnostic component of the toolkit is a guide book to uncovering any number of debilitating “hidden injuries of class”—the social and emotional dynamics that low-income youth routinely encounter. Second, the planning component of the toolkit presents the mentor with a list of innovative and even unexpected ways to support students like Aurelio. After all, even one or two resources, well-placed and skillfully executed, can serve as a major tipping point in any young person’s development.
One of the major responsibilities of the mentor-as-changemaker is to equip young people like Aurelio with the right foul weather gear and a navigational app like “WAZE” to assist in making the right decisions in real time on which of the most promising surface streets and freeways to take when. This is where the mentor can enlist a variety of approaches in evolving beyond the old-fashioned and traditional role of a “stand-alone” presence and to one of playing a variety of roles at once, chief among them as a tutor, a connector, a group leader, an expert in social and emotional learning and as an advocate. Thus, we have created a complete toolkit.
Build in timing — between levels of schooling — when students start to slide… .
School-based mentoring
One cohort specializes in one-on-one relationships, while another specializes in the leadership of study groups. Both cohorts need to invest two to three hours a week for direct student contact and another five hours a month for collaboration with colleagues and ongoing training.
Through a combination of exploring their inner lives in the context of challenging situations and and the social awareness errors they tend to make.
Now that we’ve attended fully to the forces that resist positive change—the restraining forces, the mentor is well positioned to succeed in developing a formal plan, executing it and measuring its results. However permanent and entrenched these inclement weather patterns may have appeared to Aurelio and his family, the weather can change. There is potential—including Aurelio’s potential—within the system that is waiting to be released. It just requires the right nudge at the right place at the right time and along the right cause-and-effect pathways.
Decision Time> The next set of tasks for the mentor is to conduct an inventory to determine when and where, exactly, Aurelio’s potential gets trapped:
- What stood out—both positive and negative—in any of the six stages in Aurelio’s journey, from pre-school to college graduation?
- Where—within the home, in the neighborhood, in school, on-line or other environments—did he experience his major challenges? (Rate intensity of headwinds)
- And along which cause-and-effect highways and byways that Aurelio has traveled —which include the attitudes and beliefs that undermine his confidence, the individual people who hold him back, the groups that intimidate him and the situations that cause him stress—did he encounter the greatest barriers? (Rate power of obstacles)
If that is true, we need to enlist a multi-faceted strategy drawing on a number of complementary resources. It is the job of the mentor-as-changemaker to not only have a firm grasp of these resources, but also the capacity to bring people together to implement these resources.
Finally, I turn to the field of social science to gain clarity some of the most important skill sets a student needs to succeed.
The Mentor’s Dilemma—in Schools (as psychological environment and complexity) . In college he benefitted from the authentic interest his statistics professor took in him, not to mention the opportunity to develop a relationship with her and her family. But most importantly, his statistics professor was a natural at performing what Geoff Cohen calls the “mentor’s dilemma.” That is, she was able to hold out very high expectations for Aurelio while at the same time offering him unconditioned belief in his ability to meet these expectations.
DIRECT APPROACHES: LEVERAGE THROUGH SEL MINI-LESSONS
The Three Agents--unleashing energy on behalf of others
- Individuals
- Groups
- Situations
The mentor as designer and counselor
The Direct Approach focusing on the SE The Inner Setting.
Fortunately for Aurelio, he was introduced to number of the most sophisticated and successful “interventions in education,” especially those that are the product of an influential group of researchers primarily based out of the Psychology Department at Stanford University.
Growth mindsets, values affirmation and stereotype threat. In middle and high school he developed a certain degree of “metacognition” through exposure to Carol Dweck’s groundbreaking work on fixed and growth mindsets. That’s a major, internal, or construal channel. He got in touch with this deepest and most authentic values through Geoff Cohen’s exercises in “values affirmation.” That’s another important inner channel. In his advisory group in high school, he learned of Claude Steele’s work on “stereotype threat.”
In middle school: I’m valued! Use Cohen’s values affirmation intervention — strengthening sense of self at the threat appraisal stage lessening the impact of threats to identity by increasing individual’s “psychological resources.” Self-affirmations (values) — reduces stress arising from evaluative performance settings.
In high school. I can do it! In high school he developed a certain degree of “metacognition” through exposure to Carol Dweck’s groundbreaking work on fixed and growth mindsets. In his advisory group in high school, he learned of Claude Steele’s work on “stereotype threat.” These are major, internal, or construal channels. He also was able to build upon the values interventions he was first introduced to in middle school, and thus was able to get further in touch with this deepest and most authentic values through Geoff Cohen’s exercises in “values affirmation.” That’s another important inner channel.
Stereotype Threat and Identity Formation. Such an environment can place a heavy burden for all students to be sure, but for those like Aurelio—of African American and Latino descent—school can be a place for what Claude Steele calls “stereotype threat.” That is, when faced with a stressful situation like a test or exam, a cultural stereotype is activated (e.g., African Americans don’t do well on academic tests) triggering the kind of performance anxiety that becomes a self-fulfilled prophecy. Think about a student who experiences stereotype threat on a day-to-day basis, week after week, month after month, year after year. That’s a very heavy lift.
Values Affirmation.
In college. I belong! In college he didn’t feel he belonged and attributed his initial academic stumbles to himself rather than a set of temporary environmental influences. He participated in a “belonging intervention” that brought it all together. (Greg Walton and Geoff Cohen’s Social-Belonging Intervention (2007, 2011). A case study: the intervention that brings it all together: Greg Walton and Geoff Cohen’s Social-Belonging Intervention (2007, 2011).
<He learned to take the “blame” off himself and respect that the situation (frosh year) is difficult for everyone, irrespective of race/culture and normalize
Here is the ingenious design of the intervention. One-hundred first year college students were evenly divided into four cohorts in the spring of their freshman year at a selective university. An African American student treatment cohort, and an African American student control cohort; a White student treatment cohort and a White student control cohort.
The two control cohorts were just given information about campus life. The two treatment cohorts read the results for a survey on the topic, “many students feel they do not belong in college but that such worries dissipate” over time. Then they wrote an essay capturing the essence of the survey results. And finally, they gave a video speech to be shown to next year’s freshmen.
The results are noteworthy, even “too good to be true.” The African American student treatment cohort earned higher GPA’s (.24 grade points) in the three years before graduation. The racial “achievement gap” narrowed by 52%. All other cohorts were unchanged!
The key to this intervention? It normalized the anxieties nearly all students have in the first year of college, what psychologists call “belonging uncertainty,” which social psychologists have addressed in recounting the story of Michelle Robinson’s (Michelle Obama) experience at Princeton in the 1980’s. Social psychologists claim that the power of this intervention is in what they call “attributional retraining.” In plain English it is about helping students to see the cause of their underperformance more due to a temporary environmental set of conditions rather than any internal and permanent personality flaws.
HOW AFFECTED HIS IDENTITY
And like its predecessor intervention conducted a generation earlier (Wilson and Linville, 1982, 85), it shifted the negative “self-attributions” of college freshmen into the environment itself, what social psychologists call “attributional retraining.”
The length this one powerful intervention: one session of one hour. An important aside: Aurelio, and few students remembered the initial intervention three years later when asked
GROUP APPROACHES— LEVERAGE THROUGH TEAMWORK
The Three Agents—<needs to be fleshed out>
- Individuals working on behalf of others = change maker as organizer and advocate
- Groups working on behalf of others
- Working through groups (study groups)
- Situations working on behalf of others
The Group Approach: Turning Groups into Teams
The mentor as designer and group facilitator. (link with group approach to changer) Groups are also where students can find extraordinary avenues to positive change.
“Information is a surprisingly weak vehicle of change. Trusting individuals from an existing source of pressure or constraints, especially influences, is a surprisingly powerful vehicle.” (p 220) “Group dynamics can be the biggest barriers and the biggest motivators for change.” Kurt Lewin
Study Group at the YES Club House.
The Jigsaw Classroom. The middle school he attended was led by a principal who stressed social and emotional learning throughout the curriculum and who nurtured a school culture that directly addressed social prejudice and injustice. One such innovation involved the “Jigsaw Classroom,” the brainchild of the noted social psychologist, Eliott Aronson, now used in countless schools that serve low-income students all over the world. The principle: put students in small groups (five or six), with each students receiving only partial information of a whole. The result: each student brought with her a certain expertise; and all students needed to form a team to achieve a satisfactory academic result.
In high school the culture of the organizations he belonged to was unusually strong. His elite school had a firm and deep commitment to “equity and inclusion.” The Los Angeles Community Scholars program offered him a “clubhouse,” a safe haven. It was also a safe haven for his mother and grandparents to gain confidence in themselves and understand the world that had consumed Aurelio’s energies.
Then there are the groups within which Aurelio participates—the classes, the soccer team and the Cesar Chavez Society—that serve as channels where identity engagement takes place. These groups serve “double duty.” They influence him from within, as he navigates these groups’ internal dynamics. They also influence him by looking outward, especially his soccer team and the social justice work in the community through the Cesar Chavez Society. These are powerful channels that have replaced for the most part his prior dependency on his family.
Groups dominated his daily and weekly routines—his classes, his soccer team practices and games, the weekly meetings of the Cesar Chavez Society, not to mention his informal group of friends from his dorm. His “home-away-from-home,” the Los Angeles Community Scholars “clubhouse” was still a safe haven. Yes, as he reported every two weeks with the point person assigned to him for all four years of college. The power of the gangs in his neighborhood receded into the past, replaced by the power of his membership in positive affinity groups in college.
realize in real time how to reconcile one of the most underlooked of all identity formation agendas: to put into practice their natural sense of idealism and gain a sense of efficacy in the process.
Now that he’s away from the extended family that supported him so fully, these channels are no longer as powerful.
HOW AFFECTED HIS IDENTITY
INDIRECT APPROACHES—LEVERAGE THROUGH SITUATIONS AND THE ENVIRONMENT
The Three Agents—<needs to be fleshed out>
- Individuals working on behalf of others
- Groups working on behalf of others
- Situations working on behalf of others
Mentor as designer and advocate
changing the environment to change the individual
Attending to Transitions, Recurring Events and Sticky Situations
The Mentor as advocate (situational and indirect approaches). The mentor may have unique insights on the environmental roadblocks and obstacles that Aurelio faces, but not much sway. For these roadblocks and obstacles operate outside the mentor’s wheelhouse. Thus, we encourage the mentor to become an advocate. That is, be prepared to meet with school personnel who have control over what the late educational sociologist Seymour Sarason called “the routines of school keeping,” particularly the places and the times where and when Aurelio’s potential is trapped. Encourage others to adopt this maxim: Change the environment and situations to change the student.
In middle school, the routines of schoolkeeping seemed stifling to Aurelio, not to mention the dangerous places he had to navigate, especially gang territories. In high school, the routines fell into a positive place. Day after day, week after week Aurelio was able to develop the habits that would constitute a strong social, emotional and academic foundation. Aurelio’s informal mentors within the school—the college counselor and his advisor—were able to reinforce these routines.
<reinforcing feedback loops>
His high school also tended to two critical “time” channels in the form of transitions, especially the transition into the high school during the summer and the transition from high school to college in the summer.
As for place, the campus architecture in his high school—a central town square surrounded by hospitable rooms and spaces that allow students to gather informally, the welcoming quality of the classrooms, the cleanliness of the place — all signaled quality and care.
Together, time and place conspire as a school culture well positioned to reinforce the routines of his growing love of learning and in a place that was pleasant and inviting. The wrap-around in the Los Angeles Community Scholars Program.
Tie in mentor as coordinator Examples of the Mentor-Coach as Advocate
Middle school left Aurelio without positive channels :
- Gang territories gto and from his middle school in peace (situations and groups)
- His father’s abuse prevented him to trust other men in his life (individuals)
- His racist teacher prevented him from emotional stability (individuals supported by repeat situations)
In high school his travel by bus to and from school was opened up, there were channels opened up:
- to trust other men (individuals)
- put his values into action through service projects (values situations)
In college
- To trust his professor
- To benefit from …
Respectful of the Subjects
Non stigmatizing . They are short and non-stigmatizing. They trigger new insights and awareness. They bring to light what was once located in the unconscious mind (99%). They are unlike academic learning. They don’t feel controlling or remedial. And they are carried out in the appropriate setting (e.g., classrooms)hey employ “self-persuasion” techniques. They help students with “counter-attitudinal” idea generation.
The intervention enlists the power of student voice and student agency. Students have a stake in the college as a just community and to play the role of changemakers. This speaks to the directly to the notion of “behavioral primacy,” which in brief says that “its more powerful to act your ways into new ways of thinking than it is to think your ways into new ways of acting.”
But you can’t really tell until you try… . Finally, some of the channels that best connect intentions with results — “many of the forces in a system go unobserved or under-appreciated until efforts to change it are made,” reinforcing Kurt Lewin’s enduring and most practical insight, “If you want truly to understand something, try to change it.”
Are such, interventions too good to be true? Some would call them “magical.” Within these nesting systems there actually is a meaningful rationale behind their effectiveness.
What makes these kinds of interventions so successful? The subject matter of Walton and Cohen’s intervention is personal—especially relating to one’s self confidence, ability to fit in and be “normal”—is emotionally important to students. In this way, this intervention can clear away emotional resistance. Perhaps most important is that this intervention gives students the opportunity to act upon their beliefs.
TEXT TO SAVE
MAKING CHANGE: DOMAINS AND MAKING THE MAP/MINDING THE GAP
On the Compounding and Confounding Effects of Nested Domains” For the social entrepreneur to make an even greater impact, we should think of the school not just as an island consisting of situational channels such as place and time, channels that can be manipulated to achieve results for the betterment of its students, but also as one component of a larger system—a tension system nested within larger and smaller tension systems.
Each of these domains can serve a variety roles, especially as channels (defined above) and systems (also defined above).
Channels are cause-and-effect pathways that connect intentions with results—the routes upon which potential gets trapped and/or released. Channels are most powerful when multiple channels are in play, and especially so when these channels double back upon themselves in the form of “reinforcing feedback loops.”
Channels—road conditions and traffic
Energy. Energy is what animates two sets of forces—those that drive change and those that restrain change. These forces arrive at a standoff, also known as a social equilibrium. Somewhere in this stand-off is where energy can get trapped and/or released. Systems—weather patterns and barometric pressure.
Leverage is a catalyst that infuses the right channels with the right force at the right time and place whether it is in situations, groups or individuals.
channels where identity engagement takes place — vigilance and threat appraisal.
The Mentor as Diagnostician needs to play Meteorologist and use be able to use Waze
There are combined channels, reinforcing feedback loops and cortisol channels. Vicious and virtuous cycles
The Importance of Fairness and Justice in School and Its Bearing on Identity Formation. It is absolutely critical for low-income students (and for all students for that matter) that school be healthy and authentic environment and its staff be responsive to each one of them as individuals. Students, each armed with their own crap-detectors, can tell if the people running the school are honest and authentic. They are keenly attuned to understand that when injustices surface, whether the school can in good faith to correct them. And, a major and under-appreciated aspect of school culture is its commitment to bring a place where justice is actively pursued. Such a commitment is to encourage students natural drive to idealism . Give voice to idealism. The importance of being fair.
The School as a Productive or Unproductive Equilibrium. Put another way, Aurelio lives and learns in an unproductive equilibrium where potential gets trapped. This unproductive equilibrium is dynamic and includes within it number of social and organizational ecosystems where the forces for stability, however toxic, override the forces for positive change and health. Whether it is out of neglect or a lack of resources, these forces settle into a steady state that create strong headwinds for Aurelio to buck. These forces, together, are the imponderables in Aurelio’s life, the “x factor.”
Strategies for Holistic Mentoring (Rooted in Aurelio’s Identity Engagement Story)
April 19, 2020
What stood out—both positive and negative—in any of the six stages in Aurelio’s journey, from pre-school to college graduation?
Where—within the home, in the neighborhood, in school, on-line or other environments—did he experience his major challenges? (Rate intensity of headwinds)
And along which cause-and-effect highways and byways that Aurelio has traveled —which include the attitudes and beliefs that undermine his confidence, the individual people who hold him back, the groups that intimidate him and the situations that cause him stress—did he encounter the greatest barriers? (Rate power of obstacles)
s from identifying the weather conditions and obstacles (i.e., roadblocks) into practice.
CHANNELS WITHIN SETTINGS (making the map, again)
Considering the channels where identity engagement takes place. First and foremost, Aurelio had to navigate a number of systems operating within one another, like Uri Bronfenbrenner’s nested Russian dolls, as well as the various kinds of channels operating within them.
Environmental/situational channels. Now that he’s away from the extended family that supported him so fully, these channels are no longer as powerful. Then there are those channels that form his daily and weekly routines—his classes, his soccer team practices and games, the weekly meetings of the Cesar Chavez Society, not to mention his informal group of friends from his dorm. These channels are the stuff of what Tom Gilovich and Lee Ross call “the subtle sway of situations.”
Groups as channels. Then there are the groups within which Aurelio participates—the classes, the soccer team and the Cesar Chavez Society—that serve as channels where identity engagement takes place. These groups serve “double duty.” They influence him from within, as he navigates these groups’ internal dynamics. They also influence him by looking outward, especially his soccer team and the social justice work in the community through the Cesar Chavez Society, influence him through the pursuit of common goals and commonly held values. These are powerful channels that have replaced for the most part his prior dependency on his family.
Honor committee/restorative justice committee
Social and emotional channels. And then there is another set of channels altogether, chief among them his values, his mindsets, his character, which is best defined as the habits he develops out of his struggles he overcomes across a range of diverse situations.
Each of the channels has its own “factors — on-ramps, gates, gatekeepers and off-ramps, where driving forces and restraining forces compete—some of which create “pockets” of trapped energy. Each of the channels has an on-ramp, barriers and facilitators and an off-ramp—that can either trap or release potential. It is the barriers and facilitators within these channels that can either prevent his intensions from being realized or grease the skids, whether it is at the vigilance or threat appraisal stages. (put into the channels section the value of “interrupting” a downward spiral of poor performance.
For Aurelio, some of the channels are stronger than others, more relevant than others and more visible than others. Moreover, some of the channels merge and overlap and reinforce each other, forming a set of overlapping feedback loops with recursive properties.
Channels and Traffic. Just as the weather improved over the course of Aurelio’s life journey, so, too, did the channels, or roadways, that served to connect his dreams with actual accomplishments. In middle school he found himself mainly on surface streets encountering such physical barriers as gang territories, such emotional barriers as his father’s abuse and such racial barriers as his racist teacher. By high school he found himself encountering fewer barriers on both freeways (his daily bus ride) and those interpersonal surface streets paved with a growing number of adults in whom he could trust. As he matured grew more skillful in judging the potential of new and unexpected routes—whether academic, social or emotional—through, for example, the Los Angeles Community Scholars Program and those intergenerational relationships he developed with his college professors.
Playing Meteorologist and the Travel Agent
There are combined channels, reinforcing feedback loops and cortisol channels
Vicious and virtuous cycles
SYSTEMS (minding the gap)
The School as a Productive or Unproductive Equilibrium. Put another way, Aurelio lives and learns in various unproductive equilibriums where potential gets trapped. This unproductive equilibrium is dynamic and includes within it number of social and organizational ecosystems where the forces for stability, however toxic, override the forces for positive change and health. Whether it is out of neglect or a lack of resources, these forces settle into a steady state that create strong headwinds for Aurelio to buck. These forces, together, are the imponderables in Aurelio’s life, the “x factor.”
Complex factors working against Aurelio. Because tension systems involve complex interactions between and among forces, individual forces can impede or amplify one another (Ross and Nisbett). Replete with their own channels and feedback loops they come in and out of balance due to a multitude of factors.
Restraining factors prevail. That said, an “analysis of restraining factors can be as important to understanding and anticipating the effects of a newly introduced stimulus as an analysis of the stimulus itself.” (Ross and Nisbett, p14, 15)
Weather Systems. Virtually all of the various environments that Aurelio grew up in—family, neighborhood, school—could at some point in his journey turn into inhospitable weather systems—where the constructive forces of stability proved no match for the destructive forces of entropy and decay. He often found himself what social entrepreneurs would call “unproductive equilibria.” Fortunately for Aurelio, most of the challenging weather systems he had to confront early in his life began to abate over time. The storm clouds that had built up around his father’s abuse gave way to a certain calm after his departure. The stiff headwinds he confronted in crossing gang territories in middle school turned to winds at his back by the time he completed high school. The weather in college was even more favorable, so much so that he could easily take in stride the inevitable storms that would appear out of nowhere.
The wearing down of weather systems. The notion of inclement weather as an unproductive equilibrium is also noteworthy for another reason. Most systems, if they are untended, wear down over time. Call it entropy or decay. Understand how systems wear down, and you can gain key insights into how to build them up. Aurelio’s elementary school principal understood this concept as she revitalized the school playground, which, in turn, reduced bullying and student-on-student violence. Aurelio’s social worker understood this concept, as she gave the family a way to regroup after the departure of his father. Aurelio’s pediatrician understood this concept, in prescribing effective remedies for Aurelio’s low-grade depression.
To succeed in life, Aurelio needed help—both in understanding the power of the weather systems that would trap his potential and in locating the most stress-free routes to release his potential. Fortunately for Aurelio, there were enough adults in his life—mentors of various kinds who could help him endure and navigate around the most severe storms, guide him in taking the right routes to his goals and when necessary to accompany him along the way.
Taking into consideration the most significant headwinds in the most relevant times and places, the next set of skills the mentor needs to develop is how to put the insight
COMPLICATING FACTORS— DEGREE OF DIFFICULTY COEFFICIENT
Reference impact on Aurelio of various aspects of psychological environment
On the Influence of Nested Systems or “settings.” For the social entrepreneur to make an even greater impact, we should think of the school not just as an island consisting of situational channels such as place and time, channels that can be manipulated to achieve results for the betterment of its students, but also as one component of a larger system—a tension system nested within larger and smaller tension systems.
The Notion of the Psychological Environment. Aurelio’s encounters with others in college life—whether positive or negative, whether in the vigilance or threat appraisal stages—underscore both the subjectivity and delicate balance the environments in schools and colleges. I call it the “subjective environment.” “Although objective structural factors obviously affect behavior, the mental and psychological processes of individuals are also critical elements…” Garcia and Cohen call this a “psychological environment,” which they define as “the student’s perceptions of themselves and their environment.”
Indeed, it is the notion of a “psychological environment” that serves as the central organizing concept for the whole book. A psychological environment is really a set of nested tension systems that includes the classroom, groups and the individual all under this umbrella. First, the “classroom as a dynamic tension system in which multiple forces exist and interact” and “in which various factors, including structural factors such as classroom size and psychological factors such as student perceptions, interact to produce a stable environment that elicits a consistent set of attitudes, behaviors and outcomes over time.” (p.?)
This is the maelstrom through which interventions play out. It is precisely because the psychological environment is so rich and multifaceted, because there is so much energy trapped within nested systems—that enlisting multiple channels overlapping, reinforcing and looping back upon themselves (“recursiveness”)—that make these interventions so successful. For this reason, among others, the concept of the schools and colleges as a “psychological environments” is among the most critical missing elements in school reform.
The School as a Judgmental Environment and its affects on identity formation. It is noteworthy to contextualize Aurelio’s journey—that is to place it in the powerful set of influences that school has on all young people. It is, after all, where they spend most of their time to be sure. But beyond that, school is an environment that, according to Garcia and Cohen, is a “charged and judgmental place where students are perpetually evaluated and judged.“ This is the environment within which Aurelio’s journey of identity engagement took place, an environment, a psychological world, a subjective world that holds within it “the student’s perceptions of themselves and their environment.”
Moreover, schools and colleges are complex environments that are made even more so by the fact that they are emotionally charged and judgmental places where students are “chronically evaluated.” From an adolescent’s point of view, it is absolutely critical for a psychological environment to be healthy and responsive, a place where each individual is taken seriously and there is an overt commitment on the part of the staff to an authentic sense of fairness and justice. This is the maelstrom within which the processes of identity formation and identity engagement are worked out through trial and error.
The Importance of Fairness and Justice in School and Its Bearing on Identity Formation. Thus, it is absolutely critical that school be healthy and responsive for each individual student. Students know this intuitively and if injustices surface, the school will attempt in good faith to correct them. And, a major and under-appreciated aspect of school culture is its commitment to bing a place where justice is actively pursued. Such a commitment is to encourage students natural drive to idealism . Give voice to idealism. The importance of being fair.
<add a sentence or two on restorative justice and the honor committee Aurelio served when he was in high school>
BUILDING THE APP (Mentor as Designer)
BACKWARDS DESIGN —THESE ARE THE QUALITIES WE WANT TO STRENGTHEN
Here are the essentials, which are included in a supplemental component to the “Mentor-as-Changemaker Diagnostic and Planning Worksheet.” They can be applied not only to Aurelio’s story but to the many Aurelio’s of the world.
- Efficacy— a person’s sense of being able to deal effectively with a specific task.
- Agency—the capacity to coordinate one’s learning skills, motivations and emotions to attain a goal, resulting in the capacity of individuals to make their own free choices.
- Resilience— the ability to bounce back effectively from setbacks, which in turn creates a buffer against future setbacks.
- Character — to make a habit out of going against our lesser impulses for the sake of our higher ones, and to do so consistently across a range of situations
- Domain transferability—the confidence one develops from success in one area (or remain) in life that is transferable to other areas.
And, for good measure: Self-integrity— the desire to be good person and can cope with her environment.
On a Young Person’s Sense of purpose. (From Bill Damon’s book, Paths to Purpose: Helping Our Children Find Their Calling in Life. “Only about one in five young people in the 12-22 age range express a clear vision of where they want to go, what they want to accomplish in life and why. The largest period of those we interviewed—almost 60 percent—may have engaged in some potentially purposeful activities, or they may have developed some vague aspirations; but they not have any real commitment to such activities or any realistic plans for pursuing their aspirations. The remaining portion of today’s youth population—almost a quarter of these we interviewed in the first of our studies—express no aspirations at too. In some cases, they claim that they see no point in acquiring any.”
In college he benefitted from the authentic interest his statistics professor took in him, not to mention the opportunity to develop a relationship with her and her family. But most importantly, his statistics professor was a natural at performing what Geoff Cohen calls the “mentor’s dilemma.” That is, she was able to hold out very high expectations for Aurelio while at the same time offering him unconditioned belief in his ability to meet these expectations.
LEVERAGE IN GENERAL
The sheer number of obstacles that Aurelio encounters in this story is all too commonplace. The sheer volume of coordinated resources that Aurelio receives in this story, on the other hand, is unfortunately all too rare. This dichotomy is intended, for Aurelio’s story, so constructed, serves as a vivid context for the mentor’s “Diagnostic and Planning Toolkit,” a companion piece that can help the mentor in two major ways. First, the diagnostic component of the toolkit is a guide book to uncovering any number of debilitating “hidden injuries of class”—the social and emotional dynamics that low-income youth routinely encounter. Second, the planning component of the toolkit presents the mentor with a list of innovative and even unexpected ways to support students like Aurelio. After all, even one or two resources, well-placed and skillfully executed, can serve as a major tipping point in any young person’s development.
One of the major responsibilities of the mentor-as-changemaker is to equip young people like Aurelio with the right foul weather gear and a navigational app like “WAZE” to assist in making the right decisions in real time on which of the most promising surface streets and freeways to take when. This is where the mentor can enlist a variety of approaches in evolving beyond the old-fashioned and traditional role of a “stand-alone” presence and to one of playing a variety of roles at once, chief among them as a tutor, a connector, a group leader, an expert in social and emotional learning and as an advocate. Thus, we have created a complete toolkit.
Build in timing — between levels of schooling — when students start to slide… .
School-based mentoring
One cohort specializes in one-on-one relationships, while another specializes in the leadership of study groups. Both cohorts need to invest two to three hours a week for direct student contact and another five hours a month for collaboration with colleagues and ongoing training.
Through a combination of exploring their inner lives in the context of challenging situations and and the social awareness errors they tend to make.
Now that we’ve attended fully to the forces that resist positive change—the restraining forces, the mentor is well positioned to succeed in developing a formal plan, executing it and measuring its results. However permanent and entrenched these inclement weather patterns may have appeared to Aurelio and his family, the weather can change. There is potential—including Aurelio’s potential—within the system that is waiting to be released. It just requires the right nudge at the right place at the right time and along the right cause-and-effect pathways.
Decision Time> The next set of tasks for the mentor is to conduct an inventory to determine when and where, exactly, Aurelio’s potential gets trapped:
- What stood out—both positive and negative—in any of the six stages in Aurelio’s journey, from pre-school to college graduation?
- Where—within the home, in the neighborhood, in school, on-line or other environments—did he experience his major challenges? (Rate intensity of headwinds)
- And along which cause-and-effect highways and byways that Aurelio has traveled —which include the attitudes and beliefs that undermine his confidence, the individual people who hold him back, the groups that intimidate him and the situations that cause him stress—did he encounter the greatest barriers? (Rate power of obstacles)
If that is true, we need to enlist a multi-faceted strategy drawing on a number of complementary resources. It is the job of the mentor-as-changemaker to not only have a firm grasp of these resources, but also the capacity to bring people together to implement these resources.
Finally, I turn to the field of social science to gain clarity some of the most important skill sets a student needs to succeed.
The Mentor’s Dilemma—in Schools (as psychological environment and complexity) . In college he benefitted from the authentic interest his statistics professor took in him, not to mention the opportunity to develop a relationship with her and her family. But most importantly, his statistics professor was a natural at performing what Geoff Cohen calls the “mentor’s dilemma.” That is, she was able to hold out very high expectations for Aurelio while at the same time offering him unconditioned belief in his ability to meet these expectations.
DIRECT APPROACHES: LEVERAGE THROUGH SEL MINI-LESSONS
The Three Agents--unleashing energy on behalf of others
- Individuals
- Groups
- Situations
The mentor as designer and counselor
The Direct Approach focusing on the SE The Inner Setting.
Fortunately for Aurelio, he was introduced to number of the most sophisticated and successful “interventions in education,” especially those that are the product of an influential group of researchers primarily based out of the Psychology Department at Stanford University.
Growth mindsets, values affirmation and stereotype threat. In middle and high school he developed a certain degree of “metacognition” through exposure to Carol Dweck’s groundbreaking work on fixed and growth mindsets. That’s a major, internal, or construal channel. He got in touch with this deepest and most authentic values through Geoff Cohen’s exercises in “values affirmation.” That’s another important inner channel. In his advisory group in high school, he learned of Claude Steele’s work on “stereotype threat.”
In middle school: I’m valued! Use Cohen’s values affirmation intervention — strengthening sense of self at the threat appraisal stage lessening the impact of threats to identity by increasing individual’s “psychological resources.” Self-affirmations (values) — reduces stress arising from evaluative performance settings.
In high school. I can do it! In high school he developed a certain degree of “metacognition” through exposure to Carol Dweck’s groundbreaking work on fixed and growth mindsets. In his advisory group in high school, he learned of Claude Steele’s work on “stereotype threat.” These are major, internal, or construal channels. He also was able to build upon the values interventions he was first introduced to in middle school, and thus was able to get further in touch with this deepest and most authentic values through Geoff Cohen’s exercises in “values affirmation.” That’s another important inner channel.
Stereotype Threat and Identity Formation. Such an environment can place a heavy burden for all students to be sure, but for those like Aurelio—of African American and Latino descent—school can be a place for what Claude Steele calls “stereotype threat.” That is, when faced with a stressful situation like a test or exam, a cultural stereotype is activated (e.g., African Americans don’t do well on academic tests) triggering the kind of performance anxiety that becomes a self-fulfilled prophecy. Think about a student who experiences stereotype threat on a day-to-day basis, week after week, month after month, year after year. That’s a very heavy lift.
Values Affirmation.
In college. I belong! In college he didn’t feel he belonged and attributed his initial academic stumbles to himself rather than a set of temporary environmental influences. He participated in a “belonging intervention” that brought it all together. (Greg Walton and Geoff Cohen’s Social-Belonging Intervention (2007, 2011). A case study: the intervention that brings it all together: Greg Walton and Geoff Cohen’s Social-Belonging Intervention (2007, 2011).
<He learned to take the “blame” off himself and respect that the situation (frosh year) is difficult for everyone, irrespective of race/culture and normalize
Here is the ingenious design of the intervention. One-hundred first year college students were evenly divided into four cohorts in the spring of their freshman year at a selective university. An African American student treatment cohort, and an African American student control cohort; a White student treatment cohort and a White student control cohort.
The two control cohorts were just given information about campus life. The two treatment cohorts read the results for a survey on the topic, “many students feel they do not belong in college but that such worries dissipate” over time. Then they wrote an essay capturing the essence of the survey results. And finally, they gave a video speech to be shown to next year’s freshmen.
The results are noteworthy, even “too good to be true.” The African American student treatment cohort earned higher GPA’s (.24 grade points) in the three years before graduation. The racial “achievement gap” narrowed by 52%. All other cohorts were unchanged!
The key to this intervention? It normalized the anxieties nearly all students have in the first year of college, what psychologists call “belonging uncertainty,” which social psychologists have addressed in recounting the story of Michelle Robinson’s (Michelle Obama) experience at Princeton in the 1980’s. Social psychologists claim that the power of this intervention is in what they call “attributional retraining.” In plain English it is about helping students to see the cause of their underperformance more due to a temporary environmental set of conditions rather than any internal and permanent personality flaws.
HOW AFFECTED HIS IDENTITY
And like its predecessor intervention conducted a generation earlier (Wilson and Linville, 1982, 85), it shifted the negative “self-attributions” of college freshmen into the environment itself, what social psychologists call “attributional retraining.”
The length this one powerful intervention: one session of one hour. An important aside: Aurelio, and few students remembered the initial intervention three years later when asked
GROUP APPROACHES— LEVERAGE THROUGH TEAMWORK
The Three Agents—<needs to be fleshed out>
- Individuals working on behalf of others = change maker as organizer and advocate
- Groups working on behalf of others
- Working through groups (study groups)
- Situations working on behalf of others
The Group Approach: Turning Groups into Teams
The mentor as designer and group facilitator. (link with group approach to changer) Groups are also where students can find extraordinary avenues to positive change.
“Information is a surprisingly weak vehicle of change. Trusting individuals from an existing source of pressure or constraints, especially influences, is a surprisingly powerful vehicle.” (p 220) “Group dynamics can be the biggest barriers and the biggest motivators for change.” Kurt Lewin
Study Group at the YES Club House.
The Jigsaw Classroom. The middle school he attended was led by a principal who stressed social and emotional learning throughout the curriculum and who nurtured a school culture that directly addressed social prejudice and injustice. One such innovation involved the “Jigsaw Classroom,” the brainchild of the noted social psychologist, Eliott Aronson, now used in countless schools that serve low-income students all over the world. The principle: put students in small groups (five or six), with each students receiving only partial information of a whole. The result: each student brought with her a certain expertise; and all students needed to form a team to achieve a satisfactory academic result.
In high school the culture of the organizations he belonged to was unusually strong. His elite school had a firm and deep commitment to “equity and inclusion.” The Los Angeles Community Scholars program offered him a “clubhouse,” a safe haven. It was also a safe haven for his mother and grandparents to gain confidence in themselves and understand the world that had consumed Aurelio’s energies.
Then there are the groups within which Aurelio participates—the classes, the soccer team and the Cesar Chavez Society—that serve as channels where identity engagement takes place. These groups serve “double duty.” They influence him from within, as he navigates these groups’ internal dynamics. They also influence him by looking outward, especially his soccer team and the social justice work in the community through the Cesar Chavez Society. These are powerful channels that have replaced for the most part his prior dependency on his family.
Groups dominated his daily and weekly routines—his classes, his soccer team practices and games, the weekly meetings of the Cesar Chavez Society, not to mention his informal group of friends from his dorm. His “home-away-from-home,” the Los Angeles Community Scholars “clubhouse” was still a safe haven. Yes, as he reported every two weeks with the point person assigned to him for all four years of college. The power of the gangs in his neighborhood receded into the past, replaced by the power of his membership in positive affinity groups in college.
realize in real time how to reconcile one of the most underlooked of all identity formation agendas: to put into practice their natural sense of idealism and gain a sense of efficacy in the process.
Now that he’s away from the extended family that supported him so fully, these channels are no longer as powerful.
HOW AFFECTED HIS IDENTITY
INDIRECT APPROACHES—LEVERAGE THROUGH SITUATIONS AND THE ENVIRONMENT
The Three Agents—<needs to be fleshed out>
- Individuals working on behalf of others
- Groups working on behalf of others
- Situations working on behalf of others
Mentor as designer and advocate
changing the environment to change the individual
Attending to Transitions, Recurring Events and Sticky Situations
The Mentor as advocate (situational and indirect approaches). The mentor may have unique insights on the environmental roadblocks and obstacles that Aurelio faces, but not much sway. For these roadblocks and obstacles operate outside the mentor’s wheelhouse. Thus, we encourage the mentor to become an advocate. That is, be prepared to meet with school personnel who have control over what the late educational sociologist Seymour Sarason called “the routines of school keeping,” particularly the places and the times where and when Aurelio’s potential is trapped. Encourage others to adopt this maxim: Change the environment and situations to change the student.
In middle school, the routines of schoolkeeping seemed stifling to Aurelio, not to mention the dangerous places he had to navigate, especially gang territories. In high school, the routines fell into a positive place. Day after day, week after week Aurelio was able to develop the habits that would constitute a strong social, emotional and academic foundation. Aurelio’s informal mentors within the school—the college counselor and his advisor—were able to reinforce these routines.
<reinforcing feedback loops>
His high school also tended to two critical “time” channels in the form of transitions, especially the transition into the high school during the summer and the transition from high school to college in the summer.
As for place, the campus architecture in his high school—a central town square surrounded by hospitable rooms and spaces that allow students to gather informally, the welcoming quality of the classrooms, the cleanliness of the place — all signaled quality and care.
Together, time and place conspire as a school culture well positioned to reinforce the routines of his growing love of learning and in a place that was pleasant and inviting. The wrap-around in the Los Angeles Community Scholars Program.
Tie in mentor as coordinator Examples of the Mentor-Coach as Advocate
Middle school left Aurelio without positive channels :
- Gang territories gto and from his middle school in peace (situations and groups)
- His father’s abuse prevented him to trust other men in his life (individuals)
- His racist teacher prevented him from emotional stability (individuals supported by repeat situations)
In high school his travel by bus to and from school was opened up, there were channels opened up:
- to trust other men (individuals)
- put his values into action through service projects (values situations)
In college
- To trust his professor
- To benefit from …
LEVERAGE UNDERSTOOD AFTER THE FACT -- WHAT CHANGE REVEALS
What is revealed through interventions about trapped energy. Walton and Cohen, and their colleagues from a previous generation, Ross and Nisbett, have identified some basic patterns that have emerged through their research about why tension systems are such an “x factor.”
“Sometimes small things matter.” “Very dramatic and widespread changes in the system can sometimes result from the introduction or alteration of seemingly small and inconsequential forces.” (pp. 14, 15). Apparently big situational manipulations sometimes have small effects and why apparently small manipulations sometimes have big effects.” (p.15).
The Guesswork in Finding the Right Level of Force
“Look before you intervene and above all don’t oversimplify.” This speaks directly to complexity, both with regard to“the complex nature of student performance itself (p.30) and the very nature of the “psychological environment.” Although structural factors obviously affect behavior, the mental and psychological processes of individuals are also critical elements in a social tension system and this must be considered in predicting the effects of such systems of behavior. (Ross and Nisbett)
Picking the right initial channel is the easy part. Go to what’s important for students—their values, their social status, their academic insecurities and triumphs—create a “triggering mechanism” and grease the skids within the channel. In other words, clear away the constraining channel factors.
Determining the right timing is also relatively easy. Go to important transitional moments in a student’s life for the greatest potential. That’s when students might be most developmentally ready for new insights.
Determining the right level of force behind the catalyst might be more difficult, but no less critical. Cognitive dissonance theory—“perhaps social psychology’s most important contribution to the study of motivation” (p. 16)—reveals to us how important it is to motivate through what is credible to the individual. Too overt and overbearing a catalyst and the student will disregard the stimulus. The most influential catalysis are often subtle and “unobvious.” (See Carlsmith and Festinger 1959)
Internal Rewards — Lightly Doled Out. An example of internal rewards is from Mark Lepper’s famous “magic marker” experiments from the 1970’s – “calling into question a very popular, and apparently quite successful, behavior modification tool—the use of tangible (outer) rewards and the establishment of token economies…” (p.231). That is “points earned.”
“Detrimental effects of extrinsic constraints are most likely to occur when initial interest is high, when extrinsic constraints are superfluous and salient, and when they provide a psychologically plausible explanation for one’s engagement in the activity—when the reward, in short, can be easily viewed as a “bribe.” Such effects are less likely to occur, by contrast, when any tangible rewards are based on quality of task performance, that is, when the rewards serve primarily to offer feedback and recognition of the competence in a task that is intrinsically motivated already” (pp. 231-232)
Part of a Larger Ecosystem
“No intervention is an island.” In other words, the intervention connects with other elements and channels within various social ecosystems, somewhere, somehow.
Design is Important.
“One size does not fit all.” Given the sensitivity and complexity of tension systems, each intervention needs to take into effect the unique features and dynamics of a particular set of situations.
“Timing is almost always important—especially transitions.” In the case of Walton and Cohen (2007, 2011) it is in the transition from high school into college life. Their intervention took place during the freshman year.
They involve reflection and advocacy (teaching back).
Respectful of the Subjects
Non stigmatizing . They are short and non-stigmatizing. They trigger new insights and awareness. They bring to light what was once located in the unconscious mind (99%). They are unlike academic learning. They don’t feel controlling or remedial. And they are carried out in the appropriate setting (e.g., classrooms)hey employ “self-persuasion” techniques. They help students with “counter-attitudinal” idea generation.
The intervention enlists the power of student voice and student agency. Students have a stake in the college as a just community and to play the role of changemakers. This speaks to the directly to the notion of “behavioral primacy,” which in brief says that “its more powerful to act your ways into new ways of thinking than it is to think your ways into new ways of acting.”
But you can’t really tell until you try… . Finally, some of the channels that best connect intentions with results — “many of the forces in a system go unobserved or under-appreciated until efforts to change it are made,” reinforcing Kurt Lewin’s enduring and most practical insight, “If you want truly to understand something, try to change it.”
Are such, interventions too good to be true? Some would call them “magical.” Within these nesting systems there actually is a meaningful rationale behind their effectiveness.
What makes these kinds of interventions so successful? The subject matter of Walton and Cohen’s intervention is personal—especially relating to one’s self confidence, ability to fit in and be “normal”—is emotionally important to students. In this way, this intervention can clear away emotional resistance. Perhaps most important is that this intervention gives students the opportunity to act upon their beliefs.
TEXT TO SAVE
MAKING CHANGE: DOMAINS AND MAKING THE MAP/MINDING THE GAP
On the Compounding and Confounding Effects of Nested Domains” For the social entrepreneur to make an even greater impact, we should think of the school not just as an island consisting of situational channels such as place and time, channels that can be manipulated to achieve results for the betterment of its students, but also as one component of a larger system—a tension system nested within larger and smaller tension systems.
Each of these domains can serve a variety roles, especially as channels (defined above) and systems (also defined above).
Channels are cause-and-effect pathways that connect intentions with results—the routes upon which potential gets trapped and/or released. Channels are most powerful when multiple channels are in play, and especially so when these channels double back upon themselves in the form of “reinforcing feedback loops.”
Channels—road conditions and traffic
Energy. Energy is what animates two sets of forces—those that drive change and those that restrain change. These forces arrive at a standoff, also known as a social equilibrium. Somewhere in this stand-off is where energy can get trapped and/or released. Systems—weather patterns and barometric pressure.
Leverage is a catalyst that infuses the right channels with the right force at the right time and place whether it is in situations, groups or individuals.
channels where identity engagement takes place — vigilance and threat appraisal.
The Mentor as Diagnostician needs to play Meteorologist and use be able to use Waze
There are combined channels, reinforcing feedback loops and cortisol channels. Vicious and virtuous cycles
The Importance of Fairness and Justice in School and Its Bearing on Identity Formation. It is absolutely critical for low-income students (and for all students for that matter) that school be healthy and authentic environment and its staff be responsive to each one of them as individuals. Students, each armed with their own crap-detectors, can tell if the people running the school are honest and authentic. They are keenly attuned to understand that when injustices surface, whether the school can in good faith to correct them. And, a major and under-appreciated aspect of school culture is its commitment to bring a place where justice is actively pursued. Such a commitment is to encourage students natural drive to idealism . Give voice to idealism. The importance of being fair.
The School as a Productive or Unproductive Equilibrium. Put another way, Aurelio lives and learns in an unproductive equilibrium where potential gets trapped. This unproductive equilibrium is dynamic and includes within it number of social and organizational ecosystems where the forces for stability, however toxic, override the forces for positive change and health. Whether it is out of neglect or a lack of resources, these forces settle into a steady state that create strong headwinds for Aurelio to buck. These forces, together, are the imponderables in Aurelio’s life, the “x factor.”