I teach parenting classes and do some parent training at my local church and school.
As I've noted else where in this blog I was a play therapist in my earlier career and this volunteer work is an extension of that earlier Social Work stuff.

With that in mind I wanted to give some color commentary on the Love and Logic concept of 'contributions to the family'--chores to the old fashioned, and how that should affect character education in our classrooms. Essentially the Fayes note that chores are important for children to feel connected to the family and I couldn't agree more. That connectedness is what I wanted to write about.

The structure of chores-whatever structure one puts in place-is the lattice work of family and familial style relationships. Structure for the family is one hard won inch of ground every day, a bed time achieved and wake up time observed, a log or chore chart updated these are the things that are important in a family because they give parent and child a chance to fight, squabble, and grow close over a (mostly) dispassionate practice vs. over one another.

Through focusing on a job the child has the opportunity to express their genuine and authentic love for the family. The parent on the other hand has the gratification of seeing their child grow into self-sufficiency and in their awareness of themselves as part of a larger whole.

As chores are hung on the lattice work of structure they become grist for the relationship mill: Why do I have to do this chore, the hard chore? Why do I always have the hard chores? you didn't do your chores?-what should those consequences be? etc.

In describing this Eden of implementing chores with your kids I'm sure you are champing (it's really 'champing'- I always thought it was chomping, too) at the bit to get those arguments started! There's good with the bad-these same arguments will allow a million touch points to make your relationship with your kids better. Soon their chores will indeed contribute to the wellness of the family and in the meantime the structure provided will give you the platform to teach cause and effect & responsibility to your kids but also to enjoy them and their growth.

The final reason chores and structure are so important in the home is by virtue of the fact that chores in the home help build Agency in children. As I've posted elsewhere in this blog Agency is the concept that refers to the extent to which an individual controls their environment. Agency is about predictable, consistent, and reliable feedback such that the individual can take advantage of the prevailing circumstances to help themselves out. The more we can build agency in our kids the better. Chores are without question the best way to build agency at home (and probably at school, too but that's yet to be determined). In the Steven Pressfield sense of the word this is one of the highest callings of 'work' there is.

Growing agency is an important consideration for today's kids. Grit is the skill many schools and families are focused on when character education is considered but there's no clear formula for growing grit in kids.  The path to growing agency in kids is clear. Score another point for agency/grit.  

When my now 11 year old 6th grader was ending his 4th grade experience he had to take the "STAAR TEST".  It's the State of Texas Assessment of Academic Readiness, a high stakes exam that might result in a student not moving up to the next grade-for him 5th.  He was VERY nervous about failing and perhaps not moving on with his friends.  I got the impression his teeth might rattle out of his head-he was this way off and on for weeks.  Although we talked about the fact that he had done his homework, had brought home good grades, and had always performed pretty well on tests he was only slightly assuaged.
At about this time-perhaps a few weeks before that-he was to take a standard math test. It was a rather lengthy one that required some study on his part.  Prior to him taking it I asked how he felt about the material--"pretty confident!" was his enthusiastic reply.  As you may have guessed he came home with a 50 on the test he felt "pretty confident" about but he passed the STAAR test.

This experience left me thinking about how we teach and assess our kids.  I couldn't tell him all of what was going through my head at the time but 20+ years as a Social Services and IT pro in education had taught me that one of the strongest and most persistent predictors of academic performance was socio-economics and for good or ill he was in pretty good shape on that score with middle class parents in a middle class school. Statistically, this alone suggested he would pass the STAAR. However, Duncan also had very few absences (another big predictor), hung around with other kids who also did pretty well in school, and both his parents had advanced degrees.  Statistically, he was most likely going to do OK.

One thing Duncan didn't have, however, was a realistic confidence in his abilities.  When he felt 'pretty confident' it wasn't based on much other than school and homework. While he got a good deal of feedback from his teachers and parents it wasn't enough.  He needed a lot more feedback to allow him to realistically assess how well he understood the information and when he didn't have a good understanding he needed a way to communicate that to his teacher who could then fill in the gaps for him.
Duncan's class has 23 to 25 students in it and managing a class of that many students can be at the very least a challenging task.  More often than not it's simply herculean on a daily basis.  To provide feedback to the tune of 60 to 80 times a week on math problems is simply not possible but it's what Duncan needed to ensure he understood all of what was before him.

What was clear to me was that 1) we could use technology to provide the critical feedback that was necessary for both the teacher and student and 2) we could use that feedback, along with other available data, to make ongoing statistically appropriate predictions regarding Duncan's understanding.  And, in so doing, we could reduce and in the future hopefully eliminate the stress inducing high stakes summative testing with low key, ongoing, formative assessment that would still give an accurate assessment of his understanding.   This approach could help target Duncan's area of need and communicate that need to his teacher in such a way that student centered learning could be achieved with very little effort on the part of the teacher.  In addition Duncan could get the kind of feedback that would contribute to true confidence and understanding.  For a quick explanation take a look at the innovative STEM assessment video on this web site and let me know your thoughts in the comments below!  ​

I just finished reading my post why Agency > Grit.  And then I said-oh yeah, who are you?  Mr. So and So, to tell us about Agency!  So I thought I'd take a moment to make a quick  <- with regard to who I am and why I get to say this silly stuff. 
I got a psych degree ('Man', he said drinking his white Russian) so I get a pass on commenting on all things psychological.  Then I have masters in social work so that's social and clinical stuff, then I was a play and family therapist for a while so that's more social and clinical stuff.
I wasn't social and clinical enough in my understanding of people to see my impending burnout on the career highway.  I left social work to go into IT.  As it turns out in the late 90's one of the folks making a lot of money was the for-profit education industry.  They needed IT so I hitched my wagon to that train until July 2015.  Along the way I learned a lot about motivation, education, and IT and Fake Work.  Fake Work is just like you'd think it would be given what you already know about Fake News. 
I had a boss that would hand out Brent Peterson's Fake Work so I learned at least a little bit about it.  One of the things that the idea of Fake Work taught me was that lots of things can look like work-Steven Pressfield has a giant of a book called the war of art and in it he tells us about real work.  I'd highly recommend it to anyone.
I am interested in measuring with IT the kinds of things that in the past were measured by self-report.  'How are you feeling today'?  and 'Do you know the impact of the Pythagorean theorem'?  These are questions that computers can assess in individuals today and I am working on software solutions to do just that.  

When Character Education started right along with school itself in the 1800s it wasn't anything special-it was sort of exactly what school was all about.  Teaching kids their 3 Rs and how to be 'good'.  
This moral approach to character education worked well for decades, however, in the 50's this approach began to run into some headwinds.  Russian space achievements, coupled with Einstein's theory of relativity encourage parents and schools to question the value of religiously based values and as a result character education suffered.
Into the 60's and 70's value clarification was the order of the day for character education in the United States.  This approach sough to help students define their own values independent of religious structure, however, the approach was less than successful with critics noting that the morally relative stance of value clarification was not rooted with a firm enough grounding.  
The 80's saw a resurgence in conservatism in the United States and character education got a surge as well.  Although a return to early religious values was not in the cards neither were the values clarification efforts of the 60's and 70's.  The 80's saw a focus on the individual and an effort to measure the effectiveness of character education. While some programs had a demonstrated effectiveness this was not the case universally and character education again didn't fully live up to expectations. 
Fast forward to current, November 2016, and we see character education focusing on individual character traits with perseverance, long term dedication, and empathy leading the way in what has become a focus on the individual and his achievements. In future posts we'll take a look at why the individually focused and poorly measured character education programs most likely won't meet the high expectations parents and administrators had for them.
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I have a friend who is remarkable in so many ways. Really intuitive when it comes to his work.  A joy to be around when it comes to serious deliberation. 
We were talking the other day and he mentioned that his multimillion dollar, 21 employee commercial real estate company struggled to such a degree in the early days that he and his partners would pow wow to decide who would get paid that week. He came to the point, perhaps more than once, where he was within weeks of making a mortgage payment and he had no idea where the dollars were coming from to make that happen.

He had recently been laid off and was attempting to sell his skills on the open market. He had no track record of success in commercial real estate, he had just gotten his MBA and the laid-off job was his first after interning while in school.  Yet, not only was he trying to contract his services for a buck he was asking everyone he knew if they could hook him up with investors to take part in a deal.

Imagine what this guy's head must have been like as he went about convincing investors to write him a check: He'd just been laid-off and he was hustling to sell his services on contract right back to the industry that dissed him.  While doing this he was asking investors to give him money to invest. He must have been fighting the notion that he was a fraud to self and others 

Doubtless he had many dark moments. At those times he probably had to scramble to maintain his focus. He had to learn ways to persist time and again in the face of uncertainty and very difficult circumstances.  He had to dedicate substantial resources and maintain that dedication for long periods of time. To look at him now all you see is an extremely successful man.

My friend also has a boy who is into programming and seems to be destined for a career that has at least a passing relationship with technology.  That's great and wherever this boy goes to school I know ASIT can be there to ensure his learning environment is as supportive as it can possibly be.  

This said, however, most educators would agree with Carol Dweck and note that most any lesson he is introduced to will simply not be as powerful as the lessons he can learn from his father.  The focus, persistence, and dedication his father displayed are skills that will carry him over, under, around, and through any difficulty he encounters in his life. 

If your campus needs a partner to help create the kind of environment where big lessons are learned, call ASIT today. .