The Unintended Consequences of Academic Pressure
I don’t have to tell you that the pressure to “make the grade” is greater in our society today than it’s ever been. For some strange reason, American adults have chosen to give one, single evaluation to our students of their worth…and it’s an academic report card. In our 2017 Focus Groups, we asked students what their greatest source of stress
Twelve Ideas for Students to Try During Summer Break
Summer is upon us. The time when school is out for a few months (although it seems shorter every year) and kids of all ages—even teens—have to figure out what to do with their free time. Some, of course, have it all mapped out in the spring. They plan to play travel ball or do gymnastics or attend summer camp. Most,
Five Steps to Develop Effective Communication
I’ll never forget hearing Zig Ziglar speak at a conference, back in 1978. It was my freshman year of college and he quickly became my role model for memorable communication. Zig was a salesman by training, and boy could he sell an idea. He became a best-selling author of several books, helping people build confidence, self-esteem and to set important
Leadership Lessons from Three Heroes at a School Shooting
Can you believe it? Another school shooting took place last week. Although youth violence has gone down over the last three decades, we still hear of too many tragic episodes like the one that took place just 20 minutes from my former home, in Highlands Ranch, Colorado (just south of Denver). The school is just eight miles away from Columbine High
When Is it Right For a Teacher to Lecture?
I have two distinct memories in my childhood of being “lectured” by an adult. The first was my girlfriend’s mother, after I disobeyed her curfew as a teen. I knew better, but I tested the boundaries by returning her daughter after our date 10 minutes after the curfew. I had a great time on the date, but the lecture afterward
How Nick Saban Develops Grit in His Players
Coach Nick Saban came up with a new way to define mental toughness for his football team. During spring training, 2018, the national champion head coach of the Alabama Crimson Tide told a story to his players. While Saban was weather-proofing his Florida home, storm windows were being chosen and installed. During the decision process, he asked the workers how they
How Generation Z is Changing the World of Dating
Have you noticed? High school and college students from Generation Z are approaching "dating"…uh…differently. I just spoke to Sophia, a sophomore in high school. The last time she and I talked she was dating a guy named Conner. In our recent conversation I asked if they were still dating and Sophia replied, “I don’t think so.” Wait. What? Why wouldn’t you know
Getting the Most Out of Advisement Period
Thousands of middle and high schools in the U.S. have changed “homeroom” to a block of time called, “Advisement Period.” It’s usually a period anywhere from 25-40 minutes at the start of a day that students can focus on non-academic topics. Or, they can simply waste time. Too often, that’s what I hear is happening. A 2017 Gallup Education poll on
Three Steps to Help a Student with a Learning Disability
Today’s blog is from Nautrie Jones, a contributing writer for the Growing Leaders Blog. Nautrie is the Director of Teacher Leadership Development at Teach For America where she manages coaches, develops strategy, and designs trainings focused on content, pedagogy, classroom management, racial identity development, culturally responsive teaching, and adaptive coaching. After years of confusion, we finally had an answer. We knew
The Dark Side of a College Student’s Brain
I know. That’s quite an audacious headline for a blog article, isn’t it? In fact, you may suspect the content would be rated NC17 or X, assuming I’m talking about students’ preoccupation with parties, sex and drinking. But I’m not talking about those topics. I am talking about what’s looming beneath their goofy humor on social media, or the trash talk on
“In Other Words” – Why is Teaching with Images so Effective? (Part 1)
Over a period of five days, I plan to blog about the research and history behind the idea of teaching with pictures. It’s actually quite fascinating, and sets up our release of three Habitudes® resources this month. Yesterday, we took a brief look at history and how cultures engaged their people with images. Below is part two. Picture Perfect Training Since the
Six Steps to Help Students Overcome Being Overwhelmed
It’s interesting to note that the number one word college students use to describe their life is the word: “overwhelmed.”
Seven Emotions That Follow a Sense of Entitlement
Follow @TimElmore A few short years ago, corporate executives were asked what single word best describes the recent college graduates entering their workplace. The word they selected? Entitled. Interestingly, when recent graduates were asked to guess what descriptive word these executives had chosen that begins with the letter “e,” they guessed: exciting, enterprising, entrepreneurial and energetic. None of them guessed how
12 Must Read Leadership Books for Young Adults
As I travel and speak to college students, I’m often asked what are the best books for a young leader to read. Years ago, I created a list of “Must Reads” for established leaders, but below, I list what I consider great reads for emerging leaders—teens and twenty-somethings who aspire to leadership. Hope it’s helpful. 1. Leadership and Self-Deception, by the
Seven Steps to Empower Your Students
When I learned to teach students, it was a different world. Forty years ago, I was much younger and my methods were more about one-way communication. It was all about lecture, drill, memorization and test. Today, students come from a different culture, but teachers are often still about “classroom management.” Students check out mentally; fall asleep and get distracted. And
From Controlling to Connecting with Students
I am writing all week on student empowerment. How do we fully engage students in a classroom, an athletic field, a work team or at home? I believe we must first realize this is a process of four steps. Progress evolves one step at a time with our young. Four Levels of Participation with Students 1. Attendance Some administrators talk about BOBs
What We Must Do to Empower Students
More and more teachers today make a distinction between student engagement and student empowerment. It makes sense to me. Julie Diaz is the principal of Travis High School near Houston, Texas. She’s building young leaders within that student body—and discovered surprising things happen when educators do this. Two years ago, some of her students told her they felt their school building
The Truth About Ownership in Athletics Today
Most coaches I talk to today mourn the struggle they have with their young players taking “ownership” of the team. Why aren’t they more responsible? Why don’t they think for themselves? Why do they need me to confront poor behavior from teammates and not do it themselves? Where are all the leaders? My answer? We stole it from them. Youth culture today
Arrogance: What to do When Your Students Know Everything
I recently ran across three examples of adults who’ve encountered arrogance in their students. One high school teacher smiled when she told me the most popular statement her students say to her every week is: “I know.” One athletic coach told me when he gave instructions on how to do a drill at practice, one of his student athletes corrected him,
Five Signs of Entitlement in Our Kids
A New York based firm met with a group of recent college graduates to talk about their careers. During the conversation, the potential employer asked the grads this question: What’s the one word HR execs use more than any other to describe the mindset of your generation? It begins with an “E.” Do you know what that word is? The young
Are Your Students Setting the Right Goals?
Last month, I met with some college seniors to set some goals for the year. It was both an enlightening and hilarious experience, as student goals ranged from “I have no idea what to write down” to “I still want to be a professional athlete” to “I want to own a mansion and make a million dollars a year.” The one
The Right Time to Give a Second Chance
Ashton just got suspended from his high school for an entire week for cheating. His mother, Jan, was beside herself, because six other students (Ashton’s classmates) got excused for their misconduct, only having to serve one detention period. Jan, obviously, felt it wasn’t fair. Why should her son get a suspension when other boys who had cheated, get a lesser penalty. If
How to Help Your Student Athletes Win On and Off the Field
I’d like you to reflect on a statement that four student athletes made to me in 2018. Perhaps it will spark a relevant conversation on your team: “I feel my coach only sees me as an athlete, not as a human being.” Whether we know it or not, we can be adding to this narrative student-athletes have. Even though we know they
If You Want Your Students to Like You…
There is a subtle and sinister reality facing parents, coaches and educators today. Its source is invisible, but tangible. It can be spotted when we get caught up in the past, and begin to resent our present. Let me explain what I mean. I recently spoke to a group of university faculty who, during a Q and A session, groaned about
Is Every Kid Supposed To Be a Leader?
There I stood in front of a crowd of one thousand students and faculty members, at a university in the Midwest. One instructor stood up with a question I get almost everywhere I go, because I teach leadership to students. The person asking usually has an answer already—they just want to hear how I’m going to respond to this question… “Is
How to Increase Commitment in Students
Student engagement. It’s a topic every educator thinks about today. How do we get these kids with an eight-second attention span to stay committed to what they said they’d do? How do we get them to pay attention long enough to accomplish something significant? How do we get them to continue when they’re bored? Clayton was a good student, who performed
A Classroom Where Students Lead
I met Uduak Afangideh, PhD, at Faulkner University five years ago. We met again this past fall when I spoke on her campus and talked about what we were both learning about engaging college students today. Originally from Nigeria, Dr. Afangideh is the Science Department Chair and Professor of Biology on the campus. She is also a gracious, life-long learner
Four Healthy Coping Mechanisms Teens Can Use
The numbers were just released by the National Center for Health Statistics (NCHS), and American life expectancy has dropped for the first time since World War I. In fact it’s dropped for the last three years. When I first read this, I was stunned. Seriously? Isn’t science and medicine making advances to increase life expectancy? Absolutely. The trouble is—suicide rates
Anxiety: One Solution to Get Out of this Mess
Everywhere I go, I meet adults (most of them parents) who are afraid for our kids today. We are afraid of what can happen on social media, school shootings, drug abuse, cyber-bullying, terrorism, phone addictions, you name it. Since I see this in every state, I decided to dig and discover why we have become so fearful. How and when did
Five Dangerous Apps Parents Don’t Know Teens Use
One decade ago, high school senior, Jessica Logan sent a nude photo of herself to her boyfriend. When they later broke up, he forwarded the photo to everyone else at her school. This launched her tragic attempt to hide from those who teased her about being a slut. Jessica ended up losing the battle for her reputation. After attending a
One Great Reason to Reduce Social Media Use
I just finished speaking to both parents and students at a high school and—wouldn’t you know it—social media was the all-consuming topic of my two days on campus. So many parents felt obliged to purchase a smart phone for their child as a middle-schooler, and now years into the social media craze, many feel it’s an addiction. One parent called
The Consequence of Undivided Attention
I just met a mom at a parent conference who approached me afterward asking, “How do parents do it theses days?” When I inquired what she meant, she said: How do moms offer undivided attention to their children and still get everything done? Herein lies the new gauge for today’s parents. We assume that any good parent is able to provide undivided attention
How a Pig Increased Initiative in Students
With Thanksgiving upon us—I’d love to tell you about something I am thankful for. The story below fills me with both pride and hope. Paoli High School is one of the schools The Growing Leaders Initiative collaborates with. We’ve granted Habitudes® resources, to help them learn leadership as teenagers. (The Growing Leaders Initiative is the philanthropic arm of our mission that gifts
How Do We Build Good Leaders in High School Athletics?
A high school basketball coach surprised me when he told me recently that he couldn’t get any of his boys on the team to be the “captain.” Typically, he said, the team votes on each season’s new captains, but when the votes were counted, the two students who got the most votes turned down the job. They didn’t want the responsibility
Two Skills Every Student Needs Before Graduation
There’s an ongoing tension that educational leaders constantly feel on their jobs. Almost every educator I interact with these days faces a tension between two realities: The need to teach to the test, so students score high enough to get funding. The desire to prepare students to be life and career ready upon graduation. This is the dilemma of 21st century
When Positive Words Negatively Affect Students
I’ve watched the influence of the words of leaders, teachers and parents for years now. Far too often, when we speak we’re only thinking about how we feel at the moment or what we’re thinking in that moment—not how those words will affect our kids. It isn’t until later that we recognize what those words have done to the mindset
How to Manage Impulsive Reactions
When I asked student athletes recently what the number one change was that they’d like to make in their life—their response surprised me. Very insightfully, most of them agreed: “I need to be less impulsive in my decisions.” We live in a day where everything seems to be moving faster and faster. Additionally, we tend to be impulsive in our reactions, thanks
Building Resilient Students: How to Get Out of Your Own Way
Eight years ago, researchers began to discover that children today acquire more allergies than children in past generations. For instance, no one had any idea why “peanut allergies” are surging in our day and age, since so many parents and schools are protecting kids from such exposure to peanuts. While such allergies were low among kids until about the mid-1990s,
Three Top “F” Words Teens Use Today
If you work with students, you already know they have their own language. I suppose my generation did too, when I was a teenager, but language expansion must be on steroids today. Pause and think for a moment about the common phrases a high school or college student may use today: - Netflix and Chill - I Literally Can’t Even - Turn Down
When Achievement Becomes an Unhealthy Pursuit
I’ve committed my life to building student leaders—young people who are almost always ambitious and high achieving. The last two generations have grown up as students who are predisposed to believe they can and will change the world. But I’ve seen some kids cross a line when it comes to achievement. I just spoke to a high school senior who told me:
Design Thinking Could Be a Game Changer for Students
Once in a while, I hear something that stops me in my tracks. I recognize I’ve just heard a life-changing idea. One of them surfaced this year. During a recent Twitter chat I participated in, one of the educator participants asked a question: “Have you heard of design thinking?” The fact is, I had read about “design thinking” in a Stanford education
Seven Ways to Prevent Athletes From a De-Commit or Transfer
I know a high school senior who was recruited to play volleyball at a NCAA Division One School. Emily told me the coaches “courted” her for months until she finally committed to play there. And then, when she actually showed up to play, things were different. After a week of volleyball camp, Emily “de-committed.” It’s a coach’s thorn in their side. It’s
Five Ways to Manage Disrespect from Students Today
During the 2017-2018 school year, more educators asked me for ideas about managing disrespectful students than any year in my memory. One teacher told me a student in her class was slouching and drifting off to sleep. She walked over to him and requested he sit up straight and pay attention. This 17-year-old high schooler replied, “Make me.” (This sounds
A Letter to My Kids’ Teachers at Midterms
The fall semester is halfway done, and students are entering midterm exams. Ahhh—there’s nothing like the fall, with high pressure fronts coming in with colder weather, in addition to high pressure expectations among our students. I also believe this time of year is a perfect period to evaluate our leadership. Teachers and parents have experienced several weeks of this school year and
Three Trends on the Rise as Generation Z Grows Up
Today, tech innovations are being introduced faster than I can keep up. Did you know that a flying car may be unveiled at the 2020 Olympic Games in Tokyo? Yes, I just said that. A rider in this flying car plans to light the torch at the beginning of the games. Toyota is funding a company that hopes to introduce
The Nobility of Working with Students
I recently led a workshop for administrators at a university. Attendees were college deans, vice presidents, heads of schools and high school principals. When I placed them in small discussion groups and posed the question, “What changes do you plan to make this year?” I overheard one administrator say to his colleagues: “I’m just biding my time until I retire in
One Cause of Entitled and Fragile Adults
A news story broke recently that made its away across the country. At first glance, I couldn’t believe it. My guess is—many of you heard about it. A Florida teacher was fired for refusing to comply with the school’s “No Zero” policy. This means, the school administration has created a rule that even if a student fails to turn any assignment
The Important Division Between Fault and Responsibility
My mom and dad told me over the years that I was a funny little kid, when I was very young. Whenever anything went wrong in our home—a spilled drink at the kitchen table, a lost item from a room, a torn sock, you name it—I apologized for it. Even if it clearly wasn’t my fault, I felt I needed
The Fine Line Between Excellence and Obsession
I recently met a family on a road trip who epitomizes today’s society. Their three children are the center of their lives. They spend most of their money to resource those children. Both screens and sports occupy the majority of their time. Because they have some discretionary income, they have built a literal sports complex at the house to enable their
Parents Say the Darndest Things to Educators
Most teachers would say they collaborate well with their student’s parents. Every year, however, teachers report some of the craziest requests parents make on behalf of their kid. Some of these true stories include the following: “I had a parent (and her son) who refused to sign my rules and expectations sheet at the beginning of the school year because one