Depressed Teachers, Low Class Performance

I notice this morning a report on a Florida study: Elementary teachers' depression symptoms related to students' learning -- ScienceDaily

Teachers experience some of the highest levels of job-related stress, and such stress may leave them more vulnerable to depression. How do elementary school teachers' symptoms of depression affect the quality of the classroom environment and students' learning? A new study has found that teachers who reported more symptoms of depression than their fellow teachers had classrooms that were of lesser quality across many areas, and students in these classrooms had lower performance gains, particularly in math...

The researchers looked at 27 teachers and their 523 third-grade students (primarily White and from a range of socioeconomic backgrounds) in a Florida school district. Teachers reported the frequency of their symptoms of clinical depression, and students' basic reading and math skills were assessed throughout the year.

My first question, though, is: cause or effect or both (i.e., causal loop)? Do classes do badly because the teachers are depressed, or are teachers depressed because their classes are (or are expected to be) doing badly? (Or both?)

If the depression results from job-related stress, and if (low) classroom quality results from many factors which contribute to job-related stress in many ways, then it would be really surprising not to find a correlation between measures of classroom quality problems on the one hand, and symptoms of depression on the other. I suppose a mild depression that we see may actually be making visible classroom troubles mildly less bad, if we believe in Depressive Realism | Psychology Today

While people with depression can suffer from cognitive distortions, the scientific literature suggests that those with only mild-to-moderate depression can also have more accurate judgment about the outcome of so-called contingent events (events which may or may not occur), and a more realistic perception of their role, abilities, and limitations. This so-called 'depressive realism' may enable a person with depression to shed the Pollyanna optimism and rose-tinted spectacles that shield us from reality, to see life more accurately, and to judge it accordingly.

So it's not an easy call, if you want to know what influences which -- but either way, it does seem worth watching for symptoms of depression...and one of those symptoms, though far from conclusive, is a class that's not doing well. Interesting.

3D Printing

The school's YouTube channel just uploaded a video, at Link 3D Printing at Hamilton Central - YouTube

Thanks to a gift from the Emerald Foundation, 3D printing is now a reality. Please check out this short video (sorry no sound), to see what we have printed so far and to see the assembly of a mechanical hand that can be used with children that may be missing some or all of one of there hands.

For those who haven't been following the 3D printing developments, here from two years ago is Dad Uses 3D Printer To Make His Son A Prosthetic Hand (VIDEO)

Leon McCarthy was born without fingers on his left hand, but with some help from his dad, he can now draw, pick up food and hold a water bottle using a homemade prosthetic.
CBS Evening News reports that instead of paying tens of thousands of dollars for a factory-made prosthetic hand, the 12-year-old's father, Paul McCarthy, printed one.
The Massachusetts dad had spent two years searching for affordable ways to give his son a prosthetic. Finally, he found inspiration on the Internet. He told Fox that he found a YouTube video detailing the work of Ivan Owen, who used a 3D printer to create a prosthetic hand for a 5-year-old in 2011. Following in Owen's footsteps, McCarthy used a 3D printer purchased for his son's school and began working on the hand with his son.
Earlier this summer, NPR reported that McCarthy used online directions from Owen to put the prosthetic hand together and -- with a little trial and error -- created a hand that Leon was able to try.

It's not just humans: 9 Animals Whose Lives Improved Thanks to 3D Printing

the fifth-grade students of May Howard Elementary School in Savannah, Ga., went well beyond your average class work when they designed and built a 3D-printed prosthetic for an injured box turtle appropriately named Stumpy.

(That slide show ends with a 3D printed replacement beak for an injured eagle.) And of course it's not just prosthetics. 3D Printing: Are You Ready for the New Decentralized Industrial Revolution? | WIRED

In the field of medicine, 3D printing of complex living tissues, commonly known as bioprinting, is opening up new avenues for regenerative medicine. ... This cutting edge technology in conjunction with stem cell research is likely to revolutionize the made-to-order organs, cutting across the transplant waiting lists.
The Aerospace industry, an early adopter of this technology, is already designing small to large 3D printed parts saving time, material and costs.
The Automobile world is already witnessing crowd-sourced, open-source 3D printed vehicles driving off of the showroom floors...

And yesterday's news included Scientists develop superfast 3D printed octopus submarine | 3D Printer News & 3D Printing News... And so on, and on and on.

So, is this a good thing to be doing in school? I think so. Will it improve test scores? Um... probably not, which for me is one more reason for not over-emphasizing test scores. Will it measurably help students get Ready For Jobs? (I.e., has the prospective unemployment rate among HCS graduates ten years hence been measurably lowered?) Some will say yes, but I think probably not. Why, then, is it a good thing to be doing in school?
That's not an easy question...but I think that I think that school, to a significant extent, ought to be about feeding dreams. So personally I approve. Yay!

College Advising

CONVERSABLE ECONOMIST: High School Career and Technical Education

How will those who do not attend college... make a connection to jobs...? The most popular answer is that public policy should encourage... college, but I'm skeptical about that answer.
From the student point of view, imagine someone who has struggled to make it through K-12 schooling, perhaps consistently ranking in, say, the 30th percentile of academic performance. That person has for years received a consistent message that academic studies are not their strong point. Telling such a person that the route to adult success involves yet more years of study, this time in a more academically intense environment where they are likely to be closer to the bottom and to struggle even harder, doesn't seem like a positive message to send.
This point is an uncomfortable one to make. It's emotionally much easier to remember true stories about a student who didn't seem to be doing well, but then soared. ... We need alternative pathways to job and career success that don't assume a college degree is the right path for everyone.

It's not obvious what a high school can or should do, but it's worth thinking about.

Feb 4: Global School Play Day

I've mentioned educational psychologist Peter Gray many times, e.g. here and here and here. Right now he's promoting an event. Spread the Word: Feb 4 is Global School Play Day | Psychology Today

Global School Play Day is more than just a day of play. It's a day of acknowledgement that play matters, that kids need play, that our society has gone amok with testing and drilling and making kids sit in seats and has forgotten what childhood is all about. This is for affirming the child’s right and need to play. It is a day for parents, educators, playground directors, city planners—for everyone—to think about what they can do to make free play once again a major part of childhood.

Take a look at the website. Listen to the official Play Day Song (at the website). Announce it on your Facebook pages. Tweet it. Do everything you can to spread the word. Wouldn’t it be great if every school everywhere signed on?

Maybe so.

Teaching Tolerance?

It would be nice to think that niceness is improved by education; ignorant people are less nice, e.g. less tolerant, than the educated. But maybe that's not what matters. Does economic freedom lead to greater tolerance?

...the data shows that when a society has impressive scores on property rights security and low inflation ... these characteristics are strongly and positively correlated with tolerance of gays. It’s possible that low inflation, and the behavior of a central bank, are stand-ins for the general trustworthiness of a nation’s government and broader institutions, and such trustworthiness helps foster tolerance....

We are often told that education is an important remedy, yet it does not register as a meaningful factor in the cross-country data in this paper. Higher levels of education simply have not correlated significantly with higher levels of tolerance across countries.

I suppose that "I have a post-secondary degree" ... "I have a PhuD" might translate as "I have learned to absorb, echo and elaborate on whatever my culture/government wanted." That might be it. Sigh.

Google Classroom, mobile version

Google Classroom is a big deal, just as a set of utilities to make instruction work a bit better. Now it's an app: Google rolling out Classroom mobile app for students, teachers | ZDNet

The mobile version of Classroom, Lugo explained, is designed to further facilitate communications between teachers and students, namely through the addition of a teacher assignments page and the ability to archive classes.

Students will also be able to attach files (i.e. PDFs) and use the mobile device's built-in camera to attach photos to their assignments, whether they be drawings for an art class, a family tree for social studies, or diagrams and results for science experiments.

"And if they've forgotten their homework, they can ask someone at home to snap a photo, text it and then turn it in with the app," Lugo remarked. "Of course, if the dog has actually eaten it, Classroom can't help you."

My main reaction to this is a memory of correspondence-school courses in elementary school, just over half a century ago while living in Veracruz. Writing under Mom's supervision had advantages, even with the actual teachers being weeks away by snail mail. Google Classroom utilities can't replace teachers -- but they can expand the set of available frameworks for teaching.

Or then again, maybe not.

Timing the Vegetables

The Journal of Preventive Medicine (via TreeHugger) says that in elementary school, Kids will eat more veggies if you let them play first : TreeHugger

Moving recess to before lunch increased consumption of fruits and vegetables by "0.16 servings per child", which might sound small, but it represents a 54% increase, which is huge. Pre-lunch recess also increased the number of children eating at least one serving of fruits or vegetables by 10% points.
Another beneficial effect of this simple change was the dramatic reduction in wasted food, by about 40%.

It's the sort of thing that I would class as "worth a try", both for schools and households. Wouldn't you?