Dr. Kathy Masarie spoke at a Catlin Gabel parent community meeting in November 2011 about the courage it takes to foster resiliency in children, and how parents can model autheticity, honesty, and self-care. Click on the audio file below to hear her presentation (1 hour, 21 minutes).

Audio/Video: 

Kathy Masarie podcast.mp3

October 16-22 is ADHD Awareness week. Although medical and mental health professional know lots about the disorder, many families dealing with ADHD feel that they are alone. With proper education and networking with others this no longer has to be the case.

About ADHD

According to the American Academy of Pediatrics “attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder limits children’s ability to filter out irrelevant input, focus, organize, prioritize, delay gratification, think before they act, or perform other so-called executive functions that most of us perform automatically.” It speaks to reason that many children exhibit this form of distractibility. However, ADHD causes distress and impairs the child’s ability to function and learn academically. The symptoms of ADHD are excessive, pervasive, and persistent. Although many of us are distracted from time to time, living with ADHD can be quite overwhelming. 

What we know about ADHD is that it does not discriminate and affects people of all ages, races, genders, intellectual ability, and socio-economic backgrounds. The CDC reports that in 2011, 9.5% of children in the United States had been diagnosed with ADHD. Diagnosing ADHD is a complex process that should not be entered into lightly. It requires looking at variety of symptoms that cause impairment in major life areas and have persisted for a minimum of six months. A good diagnosis relies on variety of tools that might include observations across a variety of contexts, the implementation of screening tools, and ruling out other issues that might appear like ADHD such as Sensory Integration Disorder.

Treatment Options

Treatment for ADHD is a continuum from least restrictive to most. Often times, the first round of treatment is taking an inventory of what behavioral strategies can be employed and educating the child on ADHD and strategies for coping with the deficit. Changes to the environment or adding tools to the child’s repertoire might also be helpful. Using a collaborative process and taking stock of what works for the child and what doesn’t work is a good strategy. If these approaches are not making enough difference a behavioral plan might be created to help the child be successful. External rewards can be given to help motivate the child and help them use the tools being coached. An additional approach can be medications helping stimulate the executive functioning portion of the brain. The most typical and successful form of treatment is a combination of these methods.      

ADHD Awareness Week is an opportunity to reduce stigma and to learn the facts about the disorder and how it affects the community. Log onto www.adhdawarenessweek.org for more information.  

According to Izzy Kalman and Brooks Gibbs, both professionals dedicated to eradicating bullying from our schools, the concept of freedom of speech is the solution to verbal bullying.  We have all heard of “sticks and stones may break my bones but words can never hurt me.”  In fact, freedom of speech is the “constitutional version of the sticks and stones principal,” according to Gibbs and Kalman. 

The psychological concept that people’s words cannot and should not hurt us is a wonderful principal that teaches children that they can choose not to allow words to affect them negatively and diminish their sense of worth.  In fact, this skill is essential in teaching children how to be resilient.  Just because another child says something mean to them does not mean they have to feel badly about it or take it as a reflection of their own self-image.

Too often children are given the message from society that they should be hurt by other’s words.  As a result, all slander becomes a deep emotional wound.  What we want children to learn is that they are amazing and strong in their own right and no one can take that away from them.  This social skill will aid them in becoming emotionally healthy adults who can bounce back from hardship and not allow others to dictate how they feel about themselves. 

Of course there are exceptions to every rule and freedom of speech is no different.  Freedom of speech does not protect words people use that can cause objective harm.  It is illegal to yell, “Fire!” in a crowded theater because this can cause people to panic and trample each other.  Freedom of speech also does not protect against threats of violence.  No one is allowed to threaten physical harm.

The intervention for verbal bullying is paradoxical.  For example, if a child responds to hurtful words by trying to get that person to stop and deny their freedom of speech, the aggressor may want to do it more.  Instead, if the child understands that their aggressor has the right to say whatever they want AND s/he has the right to not be hurt by it, soon the aggressor becomes bored and runs out of things to say.  This skill can be taught and modeled and children can learn not to be victims to verbal bullying.  This is what we teach at school.  

By Zalika Gardner '90 and Herb Jahncke

From the Winter 2010-11 Caller

See 16-minute video below for more

For most people, classroom learning means reading, writing, math, and social studies— skills and facts. It’s easy to overlook some of the more fundamental questions bouncing around in a student’s mind: Am I good? Who is better? Will I be strong in math? Will I ever learn to spell? And the all-important: Am I smart?

When we explain to the students what we see about how they approach tasks, this helps them learn about their own learning. When we infuse them with optimism about their unique ways of thinking, we help demystify how their brains work. We replace the worry and misinformation children tend to attach to their challenges with specific information and observation, supportive recognition, and tailored intervention. When learners are clear on their strengths and recognized for their affinities, they are much better able to sustain effort and identify growth.

What does that look like in the classroom? In 2nd grade we want the students to recognize that everyone is different, and that’s actually a really great thing. Some students can think numerically and solve math problems quickly. Others in the class may be challenged by writing. Some may be reading challenging chapter books. Our goal is to help them understand who they are and how they learn. We also want them to learn who the other individuals are in the classroom and how they learn. Our journey towards learning about the individuals in our community begins with the work of Howard Gardner, who proposed the existence of multiple intelligences. We all know that people seem to possess particular affinities and strengths. After all, adult careers generally are not “be good at everything” endeavors but rather the practical application of specific strengths. There is a reason we are teachers rather than accountants or electricians or astronauts. While certainly “nurture” or the combination of people, events, and experiences in our environment play a role in our adult successes and choices, clearly “nature” provides different brains with innate strengths that affect our school success, from academics to relationships.

It’s OK (cool even) to be different. This was the big idea that we started with in 2nd grade in our exploration of ourselves. We looked at our outsides, including the colors of our skin, eyes, and hair, recognizing that we are all a mix of dark and light shades of brown. We also looked at the globe and discovered that skin color, along with the rest of our outside features, comes from our ancestors and where our families are from in the world. As we studied ourselves we also considered that there is so much to know about people that you “just can’t tell by looking!”

Our students, after considering this list of brain strengths, identified their own super brain strength, their super power. Of course, when you have a super power, you really need a superhero identity. And a cape (you really need a cape when you have a super power!). The students created their superhero identities based upon their brain strength, designed their superhero logos on capes, and illustrated comics about their superhero identities. Taking what they learned about physical features, affinities and brain strengths, we invited families and friends to join us in celebration of a lot of hard work and learning. Everybody in 2nd grade loves this project. It’s fun, it’s active, and it involves some serious thinking.

By Allen Schauffler & Jonathan Weedman

From the Spring 2010 Caller

Community is not an elusive quest at Catlin Gabel. It is the granite cornerstone of our foundation. We can reach back into the school’s earliest history and find references to community woven throughout Ruth Catlin’s writings. In the mid and late 1960s, when the influence of the Black Mountain College group among the faculty provided foundational ideas about community, the school as we now know it took shape. Ideas about community have come from many sources since then, but those two influences are the driving forces behind what we teach and model today. From Beginning Schoolers, where community is taught and experienced as concrete cause and effect, to Upper Schoolers, where community becomes an internalized and essential ingredient for living, its teaching is intentional and direct. Beginning with the littlest children, both in the classroom and outdoors on the playground, one can hear the mantra “Be Safe and Be Kind” over and over. In the Lower School that mantra becomes the essential question when a child is learning behavioral expectations.

As children move through the grades we use both implicit and explicit interventions to further set the stage for community development. We teach kindergarteners the fundamentals of working in a group and how to get along with others. They are taught to discover if the choices they make are wise and ask themselves, is it safe? Is it kind? Is it honest? Is it fair? A good problem solver is a good community member, and from this early stage of their academic career children are taught the steps to problem solving, through stories, coaching, or through a tool called Kelso’s Wheel, a list of strategies for conflict resolution. Learning to be a good friend is also imperative as a kindergarten Eagle. Children spend time Fishin’ for Friends and discussing the components of good friendship, such as empathy, taking turns, problem solving, sharing, and helping each other. In fact, children learn that being a good friend helps their classroom and ultimately the entire community work well.

In addition to the children of Catlin Gabel, a parent body that embraces the school and its ideals is imperative for successful community building and to further solidify community engagement. We encourage parents to participate across the school in official and unofficial capacities, carry over classroom lessons to home, and serve as extended eyes and ears of the faculty while supervising children on the playground and on class trips. Elected Parent Faculty Association representatives for each grade strive to relay communication between parents and teachers. Unofficially, parents celebrate community with their children by attending Friday Sing in the Beginning School and Community Meeting in the Lower School. They volunteer across the school in a variety of capacities and are essential for successful completion of fundraising initiatives, conferences, and special events. Engaged parents model to children the emphasis on community and demonstrate a desire to make it a stronger and better place. Parents are asked to help each other’s children, to intervene in conflicts, and to help children understand that every adult at Catlin Gabel is there to support them.

Preschool teacher Allen Schauffler has been at Catlin Gabel for 42 years. Jonathan Weedman is the Beginning and Lower School counselor at Catlin Gabel. He has worked with children, youth, and families in the Portland area for the last 10 years.  

If you ask a 5-year-old what dieting means you are likely to get a variety of responses. Most of us would like to believe that a 5-year-old would say, “What are you talking about?” or the wonderful “I don’t know.” However, it seems that research is telling us that in fact we might hear something like, “A diet is when you don’t eat.” Research from Florida State University indicates children as young as three years old think about their bodies and how they compare to their classmates. 

Here at Catlin Gabel, it would appear we are no less victim to this potential research finding. In the last several months I have had numerous conversations with teachers, parents, and children about body image. In my previous work experience I was very accustomed to talking about body image with adults and adolescents. Never did I image I would be talking about body image to children as young as five years old. 

How children begin to have body image concerns is getting new attention in the research arena. From my experience children are like sponges. They soak up all experiences around them. Like most human beings, once they soak up the data, they attempt to make sense out of this information. However, young children lack the full cognitive ability to make sense out of this information. As a result, they create “cognitive tapes” of what might be an explanation. The tapes can be incorrect or at the very least overly concrete. 

For example, imagine you and your family are sitting around the dinner table. It’s after the holidays and you decide you want to lose weight you put on during the holiday season. You say to your partner, quite benignly, “I really need to stop being so lazy and get to the gym so I can lose this holiday weight.” You and your partner move through the conversation never imagining that your little one is picking up on the information. As an adult, we think about this information, analyze it, and then decide what make sense to us from multiple angles. We plan a sensible and healthy diet and we focus on being healthy in the coming months. The child hears this and thinks, “Lazy is bad and fat is bad. I don’t want to be lazy or fat.” They go to school the next day and see their friend at the table next to them feeling tired. They say to that friend, “You are tired because you are fat.” No malice or ill will is being expressed here, merely a connection s/he has made. 

What can we do?
First and foremost, our body image affects our children’s body image. We must learn to be careful about what we say even in the most simplistic form. Comments about our own or other’s bodies should not be centered around the negative or weight. We should be aware that what we say is being heard by our children and often times interpreted in child-like ways. 

Be careful in talking about dieting or about being lazy. Instead, focus on being healthy and talking about what that means. An article in the International Education Journal suggests that young children learn about foods that are healthy and unhealthy but they have little understanding of the context of what it means to be holistically healthy. What makes a person healthy is much more than just how much they weigh or what foods they eat. The article goes on to suggest that programs in schools could benefit from a more holistic understanding of health.

Finally, it’s important to pay attention to what kinds of media our children are exposed to and use this as a teaching opportunity. Media comes in all shapes and sizes including television, books, movies, music, and magazines. Open a magazine and you will see the modeling industry flooded with women who weigh 23% less then an average woman. And yet, these women are held as the standard for what is beautiful. We see retail stores called, “1, 3, and 5,” and television is constantly parading stories in front of us about childhood obesity. Depictions of body image are everywhere. Even children’s books often portray physically bigger characters as lazy or slow. 

We can not keep our children from being exposed to media entirely, nor would we want to. Instead, use media as a learning tool for your children. Talk about these forms of media and teach them that health is a broad array of characteristics, and that bodies do indeed come in all shapes and sizes. 

Here at school we have started to address these issues. We talk about media literacy as early as first grade and do several lessons on body image in fourth and fifth grades. The health curriculum has been expanded to talk about health as a variety of factors and that you really can’t tell if someone is healthy by looking at their body shape. In a recent health lesson we discovered that children as young as second grade knew what a BMI (Body Mass Index) was and what could be considered a good or bad BMI score. Our goal is for children to have a healthy lifestyle that includes exercise and good nutrition. Their ability to participate in activities (physically and mentally) comfortably is a good indicator of this.

Photo by Mario Alberto Magallanes Trejo

Just like learning reading, writing, and math children must sometimes learn the art of making friends. Making friends is a complex social skill which can take lots of practice. The main friendship making skills according to Elaine K. McEwan are:

Conversational Skills