The Texas Behavioral Science and Policy Institute

Pratik Mhatre

The Transition to High School Is Hard. Here’s How to Make It Better

This is part of a series called, Ask a Psychologist at Education Week
September 30, 2020 – David Yeager

This piece was originally published at characterlab.org in December 2019, but it’s still relevant today.

Question: What can I do to help students make the transition into high school?

Starting high school is hard. One 9th grader recently described seeing her old middle school friends walk by her in the hallway “without a hi or a smile.”

“I felt invisible,” she told me. To kids, minor incidents like this can seem like a sign of more bad things to come. As another teen said to me: “It makes me feel like I won’t have any friends at my high school reunion.”

As a scientist, I want to help kids stay optimistic during tough transitions in life. We’ve learned that if kids think that you can’t change the kind of person you are—a “bully” or a “victim,” a “good” person or a “bad” one—then they believe small difficulties predict the rest of their life.

Unfortunately, helping teens deal with stress isn’t as easy as telling them things will get better. What does work is giving teens reasons to hope that people’s underlying character can truly be transformed for the better. We call this a “growth mindset” about personality, and it boils down to a simple message: People can change.

In a series of experiments, we taught teens that labels like “winner” or “loser” are false and don’t define you. As a result, the students were less stressed if they got excluded, were better able to pay attention in school and got better grades, and were less likely to be depressed at the end of the year. (If you have an 8th or 9th grader, they can try out this online activity, which is available for beta testing.)

Don’t try to comfort stressed-out kids with platitudes (“Don’t worry, you’ll be fine”) or labeling kids in ways that imply they will never change (such as, “They’re just bullies” or “You’re a good person, and they aren’t”).

Do help kids see that even though it might take a long time, people can change for the better. And rather than telling them what to think, ask them to explain to you (or their friends) why this conception of personality could be true. Honoring their perspectives makes them more likely to hold on to the growth-mindset message.

Stress Can Lead to Student Failure. New Research Offers a Path for Success

This is part of a series called, Ask a Psychologist at Education Week
July 15, 2020 – Jamie Carroll and David Yeager

Question: Should I make my class less challenging when my students are stressed and anxious?

Students will face many difficulties in the coming year. They will need to catch up on last year’s content and learn this year’s—all while possibly confronting such issues as social isolation, difficulty with internet or computer access, food insecurity, family responsibilities, and more. 

For many students, the demands of the schoolwork will exceed the support they have available. Psychophysiologists, who study the connection between the mind and the body’s stress system, call this “threat” stress (see the left side of the figure below).

Scientists like Jeremy Jamieson have shown that students feel “threat” when they’re being asked to do more than they can handle. Their bodies then prepare for damage and defeat: Their blood vessels constrict, limiting blood flow, which leads to less oxygen to the brain. And their bodies release cortisol, the “toxic stress” hormone that makes it harder to form new memories. Both of these effects cause students to do worse in school.

Two different ways of helping students deal with stress: decreasing expectations vs. increasing support 

As teachers, we don’t want to put our students under “threat.” Therefore, we often pull back; we decrease our expectations to match the support available. We say, “That’s OK, you don’t have to worry about that” (see the bottom right of figure). While of course we need to be compassionate and flexible with how students complete assignments, we can end up pulling back for precisely the students who need us the most: lower-achieving students or those from low-income families.

In fact, in the spring of 2020, teachers in high-poverty schools were less likely to introduce new material during distance learning.

Fortunately, there’s another way to help students who feel stressed: by keeping schoolwork challenging but increasing support so it matches the expectations. This approach promotes resilience (see the top right of figure).

How can teachers help students deal with stress while maintaining high standards? For Sergio Estrada, an OnRamps physics teacher in El Paso, Texas, the move to distance learning meant continuing to challenge students while supporting their growth mindsets. “I want to be a support system for them but not necessarily a crutch,” he explains. “My students are engaged in learning, and they know more than they think they do. But there are a lot of confidence issues.”

In distance learning, Sergio did whatever it took for his students to know that his support will meet the rigorous demands of the course. When students got a problem wrong, he emphasized to them: “You are more than just a number. You can answer this question.” He tried to make his students feel comfortable with making mistakes to emphasize that failure is the starting place for growth. 

Even in the early days of the pandemic, he didn’t give them the answers when they were stuck but instead asked them guiding questions to help them connect the dots on their own: “I want them to learn how to think and what questions they should be asking themselves.” But he let them know he was available on a chat app at any time to help. “I tell them, ‘You have Mr. Estrada in your pocket. You just need to reach for him.’”

Teachers like Sergio convey to students that they are up to the challenge and that you will do whatever they need so they can meet the course’s ambitious learning goals. “I want to think my students are prepared for challenges,” explains Sergio. “They need to be resourceful because I may not always be there.”