Thriving in High School (Part 1)

Every high school is filled with students who are thriving and others who are just surviving. Attentive educators can identify these students quite early in the school year; the best educators act on that knowledge by encouraging those who are thriving and intervening into the lives of those who are merely surviving.

What characteristics should we use to identify thriving and surviving students. Following a positive psychology paradigm, this blog series will focus on the attitudes and behaviors of thriving students.

Most of the information will be from my experience ... what stands out to me after working with high school and college students for 30 years. Additionally, over the past 10 years, I've lived with five high school students (who were mostly thriving ... even with their dad as the principal). 

Let me start with the academic side.

Go to Work Every Day!

Thriving students see being a student as their job, and school as their workplace. This doesn't mean that they don't have any fun at school, rather they embrace "school" as a vocational calling for this season in their life. Like the workplace, school has expectations of attendance, dress, respect for the teacher/supervisor, job performance, and attention. 

Students who thrive have a "going to work" attitude that ensures that they show up on time and are dressed in a way that follows the dress code. They literally are "ready for work." Students who struggle with these two areas, being late and not complying with the school expectations on dress, begin the day in conflict, and start the day in survival mode. 

• Side Note: Tardies and dress code violations are the two most frequent discipline issues that I deal with as a high school principal. While I am thankful that it is not something more serious, I do take it seriously because grasping the importance of these two relatively minor behaviors will help students thrive in the workplace. Yes, showing up on time (or early) and dressing to the expectations set by your employer places employees on track for advancement.  

Students, as well as employees, are not going to like every "supervisor" that they have in school. However, the students who thrive academically are the ones who respect the teacher and strive to achieve whatever task is placed before them, even overcoming a teacher who doesn't teach to the individual student's preferred learning style.

• Side Note: Students who fail to thrive are ones who continually complain about a teacher (or class), and ultimately give up because of a conflict with a teacher. Thriving students also have teachers that they do not like; in contrast, they will ask questions in class, reach out to that teacher for clarification, seek additional support, and work doubly hard to achieve the tasks assigned to them (and they will ultimately take these attitudes and behaviors into their future workplaces).

Every job has performance and attentiveness expectations. If you want to thrive as an employee, you will prepare for meetings, work collaboratively, take on individual responsibility (and "do what you say you will do"), and meet deadlines. This is similar to each class in school; students must prepare for class, work diligently in groups and independently, and complete classwork and homework on time. Thriving students do these aspects of school well, and they are preparing to be thriving employees in the future. Additionally, most employers expect their employees to be working when "on the clock" and would frown on employees being off-task. In fact, many workplaces have rules restricting social media or gaming while on the job because of the distraction they can cause. Staying focused and on-task, both at work and at school, is a characteristic of thriving students (and employees). 

• Side Note: I see students unable to focus for long periods of time, and they are taking frequent work breaks to be on their phones (messaging / social media / gaming). I realize that phones are ubiquitous today, even in the workplace, but productivity wanes with active phone use. If an employee wants to merely survive in a job, remain connected to your phone throughout the workday; however, if an employee wants to set him/herself above others, be positioned for advancement, and thrive in the workplace, limit phone usage and stay focused on your work. Of course, same for students.

Engage Academically!

When I visit classrooms, it takes me about 2 minutes to identify the thriving students. They are the ones who are academically engaged in the lesson. I have become quite adept at identifying academic engagement through my experience in teaching and administration. Our school also use the "Effective Learning Environment Observation Tool" (ELEOT) from AdvancEd for classroom observations, and this tool focuses on the academic engagement of students. 

So what are characteristics of an engaged learner?

Active Listening -- an engaged, thriving student is an active listener. While not everyone actively listens in the same way, looking at a student's posture, facial expressions, and eyes are usually good indicators of active listening. An active listener leans forward toward the speaker, nods, smiles (or frowns) as appropriate. and the eyes are locked into the teacher or task. As an educator, you can almost see the brain spinning or capture an "aha moment" by observing posture, facial expressions, and eyes ... and that is one of the joys of teaching. Posture, facial expressions, and the eyes, of course, show good listening, but an engaged learner also participates as an integral part of the learning environment. 

Participation -- While participation can look different for each student, thriving students ask and answer questions. This is probably the easiest element of participation to observe, but if you've been in a classroom, you know asking/answering doesn't always align with academic engagement. The level of questions asked or answers given correlates to the level of engagement. For example, a question, "when is the assignment due again?" can actually show a low level of engagement, but an answer that challenges or expands the classroom discussion by referring to previous voices would indicate a higher level of engagement. Engaged and participating students can be identified by "jumping to it" when teachers give an activity or assignment. Whatever the task, there is little delay from teacher instruction to student work.

• Side note: I recognize that it is difficult to remain engaged in classes in which one has little internal interest. However, the "fake it until you make it" principle works well. If students act engaged (even if they would rather be somewhere else), the teacher typically becomes more animated and the lesson becomes more interesting to the student. In contrast, when students respond to a "boring" lesson by not actively listening and not participating, the lesson gets even more painful ... I only have to say "Anyone, Anyone" to conjure up pictures of disengaged students in Ferris Bueller's Day Off  (video of scene). Yes, engaged students could have even made that lesson better.

Thriving students "go to work" and are engaged in learning the entire day. Students who are failing to thrive should try these two things ... It will make a difference.

There are many more characteristics of thriving students ... stay tuned.