![]() Restorative justice programs, which move schools away from a zero-tolerance, punative approach to a more educative process where children take responsibility for their actions and make amends, have been shown to build trust among and between students, teachers, and others in the school community. Wrap-around services for communities in need can help provide the kinds of supports kids need to do well in school, especially in high-risk neighborhoods. Don’t expect a child to succeed in isolation. WhyTry provides a series of lessons and experiential activities that help struggling students learn to reframe and rise above personal and school-related challenges. Eye-to-Eye pairs trained college and high school mentors succeeding in spite of learning differences with younger students experiencing the very same differences. Programs like Eye-to-Eye and WhyTry move kids along this path. This begins by helping them see their challenges in a new light. While it’s important to level the playing field by offering support to kids, it’s also important to raise the bar for them concurrently. Many eventually stopped accepting help as a result. But they also remember how some of that help drew unwanted attention to challenges they viewed as shameful and embarrassing. Many of those who failed at school remember the well-intentioned adults who tried to help them. Raise the bar and level the playing field. Giving kids responsibilities like these can go a long way in helping them feel they belong and have something important to contribute to others and to their community. Perhaps an older child can become a tutor for a younger child, or a child who has trouble sitting still can be responsible for delivering messages between classrooms. Maybe a kid who talks a lot would be a great student ambassador for their school, or a child who’s very artistic can create a mural for the classroom. One way to prevent this is to provide kids with important jobs and responsibilities that teachers and others value. Yet, some struggling children don’t experience either of these until they’ve reach adulthood. To feel we belong and that we have something important to contribute are universal needs. Provide opportunities for kids to feel they belong and to contribute in meaningful ways. Some of these remedies focus on how to manage environmental risks, while others focus on managing neurodevelopmental risks but it’s often a combination of these approaches that will be the most effective, especially in very risky, very averse situations. ![]() Here are nine ways educators can support kids so that fewer will succumb to problems these now-successful adults did decades ago. I’ve worked a lot with adults who failed in school when they were younger, but ended up succeeding later in life-and they have taught me a lot about what it takes to get past these perceptions. ![]() When we succumb to these and other erroneous perceptions, we run the risk of prolonging school difficulties and preventing children from harnessing the resources they’ll need to succeed. The truth is, some of smartest and most resilient people we will ever meet may struggle significantly just to get through a typical day, school-age children included. Many of us also equate resilience with success, ignoring specific learning challenges and important environmental influences. For example, many of us believe that those who do well in school are smart, while those who struggle in school are not. In my new book, Children Who Fail at School But Succeed at Life, I highlight some of the misperceptions that can put these kids at further risk for failing at school. Too often, we can misinterpret the cause of this, which can lead to misunderstanding-and to well-intentioned but ineffective interventions. This is especially true for children who, as a result of their invisible neurodevelopmental, stress-related, or other challenges, learn and behave in paradoxically uneven ways. Show love and respect to others this monthīut it’s not just what people tell themselves it’s the meaning others attach to our adversities that can influence how we experience them, too.
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