COFFEE BREAK: Students stressed for success

“People don’t go to school to learn. They go to get good grades, which brings them to college, which brings them the high-paying job, which brings them to happiness ... or so they think.”“” Kevin Romoni, grade 10

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Wednesday’s PTA Coffee Break featured Denise Pope, author of “Doing School: How We Are Creating a Generation of Stressed Out, Materialistic, and Miseducated Students,” who spoke about the effects of stress on students.

Pope also gave a special presentation to district and school administrators and counselors later that day.

Having experienced a love of learning in her own youth, Pope “” a Stanford-educated researcher and former high school English teacher “” sought to find out how to engage today’s youth in school.

Pope founded the Stressed Out Students Project at Stanford University, which holds biannual workshops for schools and other organizations that deal with kids and seeks to improve students’ health, engagement and integrity.

She shadowed five “high-achieving” students in the Bay Area for a school year, including Romoni, who loved history but planned to be an engineer to please his Berkeley-educated engineer father.

The students ranged from a disadvantaged Latino boy who worked 35 hours a week at McDonald’s to support his family on top of trying to get good grades in school to an Asian-American girl who worked so hard at studying and keeping up with various extracurricular activities, in hope of attending an Ivy League school, that she developed a bleeding ulcer.

Pope detailed how the girl would be up at all hours instant-messaging her best friends while working on her homework, yet refusing to tell them about certain extracurricular activities, thinking that they gave her an edge to getting into a good college.

“They were comrades in battle, yet they hid things from one another,” Pope said. “They wondered, ‘What will make me look different to admissions officers?’”

Pope described common coping mechanisms like establishing allies and forming treaties with teachers for good grades and decreased workloads; multitasking to the point of frenzy; and rampant cheating, most commonly among those students with the highest grades.

“They know it’s wrong, but they have no other choice,” Pope said. Students also told her that they didn’t think copying notes or homework from friends was cheating; they saw it as a survival mechanism.

She recommended that parents explain clearly to their children whether they prefer them to get a higher grade by cheating or to get a lower grade by doing honest work.

Pope added that many parents, when faced with a child accused of cheating, are in denial of the truth, saying their child could never do such a thing.

Another coping mechanism for kids is simply to opt out of the system, which can run from getting B or C grades to developing a video game addiction to becoming dependent on alcohol or drugs to escape.

Pope recommended that parents carefully edit the first words that come out of their mouths when their kids arrive home from school. Immediately asking about a child’s grade on a history test, she said, could cause the child to believe that grades are the parents’ No. 1 priority.

These “robo-students,” she said, describe school as being lifeless, despite the best efforts of a few excellent teachers. Nationally, 75% of high school students report cheating regularly; the same percentage reports not being engaged in school.

College and business leaders report a lack of creativity or ability to solve problems in their incoming students and employees.

“We don’t know if there will be another Silicon Valley,” Pope said of the flourish in creativity that culminated in the development of the technology industry in the 1990s.

“Kids aren’t used to working on and being graded as a team.”

Despite the University of California’s stringent admittance policies, there is a greater than 50% remediation rate at Berkeley, Pope said; more than half of its incoming students have to take “catch-up” math or English because they’ve already forgotten what they learned in high school.

Health tolls from the current education system include a lack of resilience; increased depression and anxiety (particularly in affluent areas); higher incidences of drug and alcohol abuse (in particular, prescription ADHD stimulant drugs like Adderall); and sleep deprivation (despite expert recommendations that students need more than nine hours of sleep per night, more than 40% of students get less than six hours).

Despite the staggering odds, Pope said change can happen. One school that has participated in the Stressed Out Students program reported that 80% of its students said changes the campus has made to reduce stress have worked, while their GPAs and test scores didn’t go down.

Schools that participate in the program survey students and themselves on sleep and homework habits, AP policies and exam calendars.

Findings indicate that schools that hold longer class periods every other day activate deeper thinking in their students. In addition, holding exams before vacation breaks relieves stress considerably.

Program schools also focused more on project-based learning, rather than teaching for testing, and increased alternative methods of assessment and rewards.

Pope made the following recommendations for parents to ensure their child’s engagement in learning:

? Give your child unconditional love, and explain in detail exactly what that means; praise the person, not their performance.

? Listen both to your child and your gut.

? Define your expectations for success. If top grades aren’t a priority, be sure your child knows that.

? Examine subtle messages that you receive from your child.

? Avoid overscheduling your child. They are not a mini adult.

? Limit media and screen time. Consider removing media from a child’s bedroom before bedtime. If they say they aren’t finished with their homework yet, discuss with them how they may fix the situation in the future; perhaps by removing some commitments from their schedule. Then turn the lights out.

? Debunk the college myths. Ask your child why he or she has to go to a particular school. Countless studies have shown that students who go to second-tier schools end up with the same wealth, happiness, etc. The only time a school’s name matters is for grad school, and many Ivy League grad schools are less likely to accept a student who attended an Ivy League school for their undergraduate education.

? The most important thing a parent can do for their children’s health and well-being is a regular family meal time. If it seems difficult to enact, start with one day per week. Remember to talk about your own day, as well; you are not an empty shell.

For more information, visit sosconference.stanford.edu.