Читать книгу EMPOWER Your Students - Lauren Porosoff - Страница 7
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Introduction
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EMPOWERING STUDENTS TO TRANSFORM WHAT SCHOOL MEANS
When our daughter Allison gets to high school, what will her experience be like? Will it be like her mother’s? Will she be mostly invisible in her classes, well-behaved enough that her teachers don’t notice that she isn’t doing homework or paying attention? Will she read none of the books in her English class but use her preexisting writing skills to get As anyway? Will she be so silent in the rest of her classes that her teachers won’t miss her on the days when she skips? What will happen on the days she does come to class? Will she sometimes pretend to take notes but actually write stories and poems in her notebooks? Will she sometimes have no writing ideas and instead draw little caterpillars with the same number of segments as minutes left in the period, filling in a segment for every minute that goes by, using the caterpillar as a measure of hope that eventually she’ll be set free?
When our son Jason gets to middle school, what will his experience be like? Will it be like his father’s? Will he be too much of a behavior problem to place into the “smart class,” even though he’s bright? Will he be condemned to sink to the low expectations of teachers who have given up on him? Will he read ahead in his history book but find no one with whom he can share his discoveries? And if he makes his way into regular education, or even an advanced class, will he talk too much in an effort to prove he belongs? Maybe he’ll turn out to be good at cello, and music will be the one period in his schedule that lets him interact with the bright students. Or maybe he’ll get into so many fights that his principal will invite him to come to school early for extra recess to get his energy out. Maybe at morning recess he’ll bond with a deviant peer group who will comprise the heart and soul of his high school’s wrestling team. And even if he goes on to succeed in high school and get into a great college, what will become of those friends he left behind?
These are only partial stories of what school was like for us. The other side is that when we were in school, we both read books that made us think and wonder. We learned about issues that held our attention long after the unit was over and did work we felt personally invested in. We both had teachers who made us feel like we mattered. Our school experiences were mostly good. They must have been, because we both chose to continue attending school far beyond when it was mandatory. By the time we were getting advanced degrees, we’d stopped seeing school as something done to us—as if it were an assembly line and we were the products—and started seeing school as something we were actively doing, as if it were a workshop and we were artisans crafting our own lives, guided by our own values. Do our students have to wait until after graduation to see school that way, or is it possible for us to empower them to actively participate in school right now?
Our students might not feel particularly empowered. They don’t design the curriculum. They don’t decide which teachers they get; how they’re taught and assessed; which peers are in their classes; how much homework they have; how many hours, days, and years school lasts; or what graduation entails. But while students can’t determine what happens at school, they can choose how they want to approach school. What if they could learn to approach school as a set of opportunities to serve their values?
This book shows middle and high school teachers how to help students do just that. All tools are for grades 6–12 and teachers can adapt them based on their students’ characteristics. Part I suggests a variety of activities that help students discover and develop their own values, imagine assignments and interactions as opportunities to serve their values, and overcome barriers to enacting their values at school. Part II offers strategies teachers can use to turn each part of their own work into a context for empowering students. The ultimate goal in both parts is for students to transform what school means—from a set of demands placed upon them into opportunities to make their lives meaningful. But first, let’s see how students respond when school means complying with someone else’s demands, how they might instead decide for themselves what school means, the role values play in transforming what school means, and how transforming school’s meaning is empowering.
Reframing School
We give our students a wide variety of tasks to perform. Have a seat. Read chapter 17 and take notes. Build the highest possible tower out of toothpicks and marshmallows. Calculate the molarity of this solution. Draw this vase. Circle all the direct objects. Fill in the bubble next to the best answer. How many tasks are students given in a school day? A year? A K–12 career?
Let’s look at how students respond to such demands. Imagine that in a seventh-grade history class, students have been given a physical map of North America and are asked to write a two-page analysis of how physical geography impacts a region’s economy. Riley cares about thinking deeply, but she also has trouble expressing her thoughts in writing, and she quickly gets stuck. She looks around the room and notices all of her classmates typing away. “I hate essays,” she thinks. She starts coloring in the lakes and rivers on her map, wears down the point of her pencil, and gets up to sharpen it. The noise gets the attention of her teacher, who chin-points her back to her seat. Riley says she isn’t feeling well and needs to go to the nurse.
Riley is avoiding the task. Putting heads on desks, looking at the clock, texting, whispering, skipping assignments, skipping class, sighing, groaning, complaining, doing the minimum amount of work, staring out the window, doodling—the list of behaviors that students use to avoid doing their schoolwork is depressingly long.
But even when students look engaged, they might be avoiding learning. Sitting next to Riley is Andre. Andre is very bright and cares about expressing his ideas. In fact, he writes lyrically complex songs in his spare time (and sometimes during class), and he’s a fairly regular contributor to the school newspaper. But when he gets the history essay assignment, he doesn’t feel inspired like when he’s working on a song or opinion piece. He decides to write about the Appalachian region because his teacher talked about it a lot. He types up what he remembers her saying, knowing his teachers usually like his writing and that he’ll probably get an acceptable grade.
As far as his teacher can see, Andre is deeply involved in his work. That’s because he isn’t avoiding the task (like Riley), but he is avoiding the challenge. Perhaps you’ve seen students choose topics or classes they think are easy; they know they can do a good job and get a good grade, but they’re avoiding the effort that might lead to better learning.
Next to Andre is Jake. Jake loves big ideas, often imagines alternative explanations, and shares his creative thinking during class discussions. But this isn’t a class discussion. It’s a graded assignment, and Jake feels anxious. He goes to his teacher’s desk and says he thinks he’s going to write about mining and recreation along the Western Cordillera. His teacher asks what his question is, and Jake says, “I just wanted to see if that was OK.” A few minutes later, Jake returns with his laptop. His word processing program is suggesting that the word Cordillera should be corrected to Cordially. The teacher says to leave it. After a few more minutes, Jake is back, asking, “Is it OK if I switch my topic? I want to write about the fishing and oil industries in the Gulf Coast region.” The teacher asks if this is because of the Cordillera thing, and Jake insists that he just wants to write about the Gulf Coast. “I made a new outline; do you want to see it?” The teacher says she’s sure it’s fine and sends Jake back to his desk to write. As class ends and most students turn in their essays, Jake is still working. “Can I finish at home?” he asks. When the teacher says no, he asks, “Is it OK if it’s almost two pages?” Yes, says the teacher, it’s fine. Jake prints and hands in the essay, and on his way out of the classroom he asks the teacher, “When do you think you’ll grade these?”
Jake most certainly isn’t avoiding the task, and neither is he avoiding the challenge. He might end up with a great essay, and he might learn a little bit about how to improve his writing. He might even bump up his grade, especially if his teacher rewards frequency of class participation or effort. But by asking for so much guidance, he’s avoiding the critical and creative process of choosing what and how to write, so he’s not growing much as a writer. When students ask for a lot of approval, or when they politely and obediently do as they’re told, undoubtedly they’re getting something out of following instructions. But they might also be avoiding the questioning, doubting, debating, and decision-making behaviors that involve more risk but that lead to deeper learning.
Whether students are avoiding the task itself, the challenges it might present, or the risk-taking and decision-making aspects of doing it, they’re all ultimately avoiding learning. When something elicits avoidance, behavior scientists call that something an aversive (Chance, 1998). We usually think of aversives as unpleasant situations like a bitter taste, loud noise, or rabid dog. What do people do when they encounter such situations? They spit out the bitter food, cover their ears to blot out the noise, run away from the dog—whatever it takes to escape. Eventually they learn to avoid it in the first place. Again, if students are avoiding school tasks, or at least some aspect of doing them, there must be something aversive about them.
When students act like their schoolwork is aversive, how do we respond? Sometimes we reward students for their avoidance behaviors by giving them the attention and good grades they’re after. Sometimes we don’t notice when students avoid learning or we accept the behaviors because they don’t hurt anyone. We can’t possibly call out every student for staring into space. If we ignore avoidance behaviors, the students get to escape engaging with difficult work and the learning that comes along with it. That consequence—escape—feels good for the students, so they continue the behavior (Geiger, Carr, & LeBlanc, 2010).
Sometimes we do respond to acts of avoidance—by altering the consequences. We give low grades, detentions, suspensions, and lectures. But punishing avoidance behaviors can easily backfire (Sidman, 1989). Let’s say you have a student who constantly talks to her classmate instead of doing her work. If you ask her to stop talking and threaten to call her mother, you might successfully decrease the talking, but now your class is more aversive for this student. She’ll find a new way to avoid engaging in class (or find a way to avoid getting caught talking), and she’ll probably keep talking in other classes. Punishing avoidance behaviors might reduce future instances in a specific context, but it also makes school more aversive and ultimately leads to more avoidance. Because there are so many different avoidance behaviors, students have no trouble finding new ones (Friman, Hayes, & Wilson, 1998).
The other way we try to limit avoidance behaviors is to make the learning environment appealing so these behaviors are less likely. We design active lessons, play learning games, give stretch breaks, create fun projects, use cool technology, smile, tell jokes, give inspirational speeches, and use any other tricks we’ve discovered. Of course we have the responsibility of engaging our students in class, but teachers aren’t always equipped to deliver engaging lessons. Some schools pressure us to drill for standardized tests. Some schools offer no funds for professional development, so those of us who lack know-how never learn. Some schools have no budget for the supplies we need to create more dynamic learning environments. And even a brilliant teacher in a well-funded school won’t be able to engage all students at all times, as different lesson formats appeal to different students; some skills are less fun to practice; and factors like time of day, social dynamics, and life stressors affect students. We can minimize the effects of these factors, but like any externality, they’re almost impossible to control completely.
However we respond to student avoidance behaviors—whether we reward them in students like Jake, ignore them in students like Andre, punish them in students like Riley, or try to make school less aversive in the first place—our responses don’t consistently work for everyone and sometimes make matters worse. What all of our unworkable solutions have in common is that they’re ours. Any time we do something to reduce student avoidance, we are doing something. The student him- or herself is not.
Avoidance is a natural response to an aversive. Instead of trying to change students’ avoidance behaviors, we could help them think of school as something else. We can empower them to transform what school means, from a series of demands they find aversive and do their best to avoid, into a series of opportunities to serve their values. If they can learn to see school as a context for serving their values, they’ll approach it differently.
Making Something Meaningful
How is it possible to transform something aversive into something meaningful? Say a student borrows your pen and discovers it’s out of ink. She returns it and says, “It doesn’t work.” You scribble to try to get ink to come out, but it’s no use. “This pen is garbage,” you say, and throw it out. If your goal is to write, a dry pen has no worth at all. But you might imagine situations where a pen with no ink has more worth than a pen with ink. A sculptor might think the dry pen is better because he can scrape clay out from under his fingernails without turning them blue. You can imagine times when it doesn’t matter if the pen has ink or not, like if you want to poke holes in the ground for planting seeds or use the cap as a whistle. We define the pen’s function and therefore give it worth. Decide something has a different function, and we change what it means to us—even though we haven’t changed the pen. When we change what something means, we relate to it differently. Students can change what school means and relate to it differently, too.
Let’s look at a different example. Tina Marie Clayton (2005, as cited in Blackledge, 2003) studied employees who thought of their workplace as chaotic—a feeling teachers likely relate to. Employees who were told the workplace wasn’t really all that chaotic didn’t develop better attitudes toward it. But employees who learned that chaotic places are conducive to creativity did develop better attitudes toward their workplace. The place itself didn’t change, and their assessment of the place didn’t change either—but what a chaotic workplace means did change.
Now let’s look at an example related to school. Say Teddy is doing poorly in mathematics. He tends to give up quickly on his homework because it’s so frustrating and exhausting and it makes him feel stupid. Sometimes he does it, especially if his parents are there to nag him. Sometimes he does only the easy problems and then gives up. Sometimes he rushes through the work and suspects most of his answers are wrong. And sometimes, he just doesn’t do the work at all.
Asking his mathematics teacher for different homework might help, but she could say no or assign different but equally difficult homework. If he receives an easier assignment, Teddy could get the message that he’s too dumb to do the “real” work. But imagine if, instead of changing the homework itself, Teddy learned to connect the homework to goals that matter to him: “This homework will help me learn math, and that will help me when I become a sports agent” or “Persisting in math will help me learn how to keep going when something gets tough, and that will help me during baseball practice.” Armed with these understandings, he has a better chance of confronting the struggle rather than avoiding it. Students can learn how to reframe their schoolwork to make it serve their values.
Meaning is not inherent in a thing, whether it’s a pen, a work environment, or a school assignment. Meaning comes from our history of relating to the thing. We might have a history of seeing dry pens as garbage, chaotic workplaces as stressful, and mathematics assignments as torture—aversives we’d understandably avoid. But at any moment, we can notice that dry pens, chaotic workplaces, and mathematics assignments might have other meanings, and we can choose meanings that reflect our values. Things we’d ordinarily avoid become things we readily approach when we connect them to our values. Since values are central to transforming meaning, the next section explains what values are.
Defining Values
When people and institutions name their values, they often use abstract ideas like courage, creativity, and excellence. Abstract ideas, by definition, don’t exist in the physical world, and it’s not particularly empowering to look for something that doesn’t physically exist. People also say they value their relationships with certain people, their time spent in certain places, and their achievement of certain things. But people, places, and things often aren’t in our control. We can lose them, they can change, or they can become less important to us over time. Of course, it’s wonderful to have important people, places, things, and ideas in our lives. But it’s not all that empowering to rely on these things outside ourselves to make our lives meaningful.
What if we decide to think of our values as how we act? One technical definition of values is “freely chosen, verbally constructed consequences of ongoing, dynamic, evolving patterns of activity, which establish predominant reinforcers for that activity that are intrinsic in engagement in the valued behavioral pattern itself” (Wilson, 2009, p. 64). When we refer to values in this book, we’ll use a simpler version: values are qualities of action that make life meaningful.
As qualities of action, our values answer questions like, How will I approach my life? or How will I choose to do this? In a student’s case, his or her values answer questions like, How will I approach school? How will I choose to do this assignment? How will I choose to relate to my peers? The words that answer these kinds of questions are adverbs: approach school courageously, do this assignment imaginatively, relate to my peers responsibly. The appendix has lots more examples of adverbs students might use to answer questions about how they want to live. We will refer to the appendix frequently throughout the book.
Every time we mention values, we mean the values people choose for themselves. At no point do we advocate telling students what their values should be. Rather, the activities and strategies in this book help students transform school into a context for enacting values they choose. We refer to these activities and strategies as EMPOWER work to keep the focus on its purpose (exploration, motivation, participation, openness, willingness, empathy, and resilience) and to distinguish it from work designed to promote particular values at school. Parents in particular might need help understanding this difference, because they’re the ones who do teach their children what to value. Visit go.SolutionTree.com/instruction for a free, downloadable letter to parents that you can use or adapt.
Values are positive qualities of action, so they sometimes get confused with other positives in life: preferences and goals. Let’s see how values are different.
Values Versus Preferences
Finding a behavior fun, enjoyable, or comforting doesn’t necessarily mean it serves values. Living in accordance with values often brings deep satisfaction and vitality, but the day-to-day effort of committing to values doesn’t necessarily feel pleasant, and sometimes it feels like a burden (Hayes, Strosahl, & Wilson, 2012).
Imagine that Teddy values relating to people authentically. He’s feeling lost in mathematics class, and he doesn’t like the teacher, but he decides to see her during office hours to improve his skills and build a more positive relationship with her. Asking for extra help might feel embarrassing and meeting with this teacher might feel stressful, but Teddy is acting on his values. Conversely, if he enjoys being the center of attention and making people laugh, he might tell jokes in mathematics class. If this behavior alienates some classmates and his teacher, then his pursuit of his own good feelings actually moves him away from his values, since he really wants to relate to people in an authentic way.
Values Versus Goals
Psychologists who write about values often distinguish them from goals (Harris, 2009; Hayes et al., 2012; Wilson, 2009; Wilson & Murrell, 2004). Values describe the function of the behavior, while goals describe the form. Unlike goals, which you can check off a to-do list, values are ongoing. For example, getting a B in mathematics is a goal. Once Teddy gets his B, he’s done working toward his goal. He could set a new goal of maintaining his B or even getting a B+, but that’s another goal. But working persistently is a value—an ongoing process he can engage in every day, in mathematics and other classes, and when playing baseball and fishing, and after he graduates and becomes a sports agent, and in marriage and parenting, and in any and all aspects of his life that he chooses.
Goals aren’t as empowering as values because achieving goals isn’t entirely in the student’s control. Focusing totally on the goal of getting into a good college means that if the student isn’t admitted, can’t afford tuition, or can’t make passing grades once enrolled, then he or she might feel lost and even worthless. But students who have clarified their values and don’t get into the colleges of their dreams can find other meaningful ways to, say, work persistently and relate to people authentically. They can also make their school experiences serve those values today instead of only preparing for a specific tomorrow.
Acting Upon Values
If values are qualities of action that make our lives meaningful, what exactly are the actions? Without concrete, specific behaviors through which we can make our values manifest—what contextual psychologists call committed action (Hayes et al., 2012)—the articulation of values is just talk. Or worse, if students identify qualities of action that make life meaningful but don’t find ways to enact their values at school, then school just gets in the way of a meaningful life and becomes even more aversive.
Committed actions are positive behaviors—dos as opposed to don’ts. For example, a student who values treating people respectfully might decide she wants to stop interrupting in class. But it’s hard to stop engaging in a behavior when the behavior serves a purpose. Perhaps the interruptions make her feel less anxious or solicit immediate attention. Stopping her interruptions will take away these benefits without replacing the function they serve. What could this student do in class that would actively show respect? She could look at the person whose turn it is to speak. She could listen for dismissive comments and make a more validating comment. She could express appreciation for a classmate’s interesting idea. Maybe she’ll stop interrupting others and maybe not, but if she values treating people respectfully, then these positive behaviors would probably give her a sense of vitality and contribute to a more meaningful experience at school.
Commitments to values-consistent actions “are not the same as promises, predictions, or historical descriptions. Although they extend into the future, they occur in the here and now” (Hayes et al., 2012, p. 329). The activities in this book focus on today, this week, a current assignment: What will I do now? A present-focused committed action, followed by another and another, can develop into a pattern of actions that makes school more meaningful. Students might find new ways to live by their values in the future, but they don’t need to wait until they’re older or until someone gives them permission. They can do it right now.
The I in What will I do now? is important too. Only the students themselves can make and keep these commitments. But teachers can help them imagine possibilities: what to do, when, and how. We can also strive to create a safe environment in which students can discuss their values and what changes they want to make in their lives. If behaving in a particular way is truly important to them, they’re vulnerable. They might fall short of achieving their own expectations, and then they have to confront their failure to be who they most want to be. They might believe that they can’t, shouldn’t, or don’t want to change, or they might worry about embarrassing themselves, getting in trouble, or disappointing those who care about them. Sharing values invokes many difficult thoughts and feelings, which is why trust is crucial. How can we build that trust in our classrooms?
Establishing Trust
Having our students’ trust begins with making sure they can trust us. In class, we make sure they learn essential content and skills, and we give them assignments that are worth the time we expect them to put in. We prepare, focus, listen, and use every minute productively. These might sound like basic teaching principles, but planning meaningful lessons and assignments sends the message that our students’ time matters, and by extension, that they matter. When they see that they matter to us, they’re more likely to do hard work—including the work of clarifying and committing to their values. When everyone in the room—the students and the teacher—is doing hard work, we build a sense of solidarity: we’re in this together.
Like any learning experience, learning about their own values will involve attempts, mistakes, questions, and doubts. You can affirm these moments of risk with statements such as, “I’m not sure you quite got the idea, but I really appreciate that you’re trying to understand what I’m saying.” Or, “You seem hesitant, and I think it makes a lot of sense to take your time working out an idea like this.” If taking a risk becomes a source of affirmation instead of embarrassment, students are more likely to do it. Affirming responses also make you a source of compassion and reassurance, which helps students feel safer as they explore and share their values (Gilbert, 2014).
Beyond treating your students like they matter, you can also help them treat each other like they matter. One way is to give them opportunities to respond to each other’s work in an interested, nonjudgmental way. For example, on a writing assignment, you can ask students to summarize what a peer is saying, indicate lines that stand out without saying why they stand out, or ask questions to show curiosity (Elbow & Belanoff, 2000). This type of responding is different from typical peer review, where the point is to critique. Even critique, when offered in the spirit of improving work, can build trust. Again, these are fairly basic practices you can use while teaching regular old academic content, but they help students become the kind of supportive community required for them to talk about their values.
Whatever you do to build community among middle or high school students, you’ll get moments when they’re disrespectful or outright mean to each other. In these moments, you can simply say, “We’re not doing that.” Saying we holds not only the offending student but the entire classroom accountable for treating each other with respect and kindness. Of course, you can follow up later with a particular student if a longer conversation is warranted. Chances are that student is feeling vulnerable, and his or her behavior is an effort to avoid that feeling.
Yet another way to make space for vulnerability is by being vulnerable yourself. You can notice and name your attempts, mistakes, questions, and doubts. For example, you might say, “That made no sense. Now I’m embarrassed.” Or, “I feel like this isn’t working and I don’t know why. What do you all think is going on?” or even, “I have this thing I want us to try but I have no idea if it’ll work. How would you all feel about trying something weird?” Just as your students’ behaviors will sometimes cause problems, yours will too. You can notice and name those behaviors: “That came out sounding really critical. I’m really sorry.”
Finally, you can invite students to be vulnerable with each other. Understand, though, that they don’t, won’t, and shouldn’t trust each other. Distrust is a safer bet in ambiguous circumstances (Wilson, 2009). If we trust someone who’s untrustworthy, we face consequences from social humiliation to financial ruin to death, but if we don’t trust someone who turns out to be trustworthy, we just miss an opportunity to build a relationship. Middle schools and high schools aren’t famous for being havens where no one hurts anyone. If students avoid making themselves vulnerable, that just means they have normal responses to realistic fears; they are not doing something wrong.
The very students who find school highly aversive and would benefit most from connecting it to their values will often be the most avoidant. You might notice an urge in yourself to convince them to participate, to argue with them if they say they don’t care, or to use your power to coerce them into the work. These urges come from our passionate desire to make our students’ lives better. But if we try to convince, argue with, or coerce students, will that make school more or less aversive? Will that get them closer to discovering their values? Will that help them be vulnerable the next time? We recommend simply inviting students to participate. Whether they take you up on that invitation is, as always, up to them. But even if they don’t take you up on it—even if they make sarcastic jokes or roll their eyes or refuse to talk—they will also understand that you respect them enough to give them an authentic choice. That builds trust, too.
Despite all these suggestions, there is no rule book you can follow to create trust in your classroom. In fact, if you start focusing on doing the “right” thing to encourage trust, you’re no longer focusing on the actual human beings who need you to be your authentic, lumpy, vulnerable self if they have any hope of being theirs. Your best shot is to be as present, attentive, compassionate, and flexible as your beautifully imperfect self can muster.
Moving Toward a Science of Empowerment
Again, values are qualities of action. Contextual behavioral science is a modern version of behavior analysis that proceeds from the assumption that actions—behavior—can only be understood in relation to their context (Villatte et al., 2015). In your classroom, for example, student behaviors are influenced by contextual factors such as the furniture arrangement, the time of day, their moods, your mood, the words you use, current events at school and in the world, their relationships with each other, race and gender dynamics, and their various physical needs. Altering elements of a person’s context, whether that means moving the furniture or changing the way he or she thinks about school, can profoundly affect that person’s behavior (Hayes & Brownstein, 1986).
Contextual behavioral science’s ultimate goal is to help people notice the various elements of their context and then do what’s consistent with their values—not what’s easiest or most fun, not what makes them look cool or sound smart, and not what relieves them from unpleasant feelings like sadness, anger, fear, shame, and boredom. Accepting unpleasant thoughts and feelings is a normal part of living in accordance with our values. That ability to choose, in any context, a life guided by values is what we mean by empowerment.
Using This Book in an Empowering Way
Part I of this book (chapters 1 through 7) offers activities that help students transform school into a context for values-consistent behavior. These activities help students discover the elements of empowerment: exploration, motivation, participation, openness, willingness, empathy, and resilience. Chapter 1 covers exploration, which begins with curiosity; chapter 2 covers motivation and helping students find reasons for doing their schoolwork; chapter 3 addresses participation and helping students create opportunities to enact their values; chapter 4 is about openness to sharing one’s values; willingness to serve one’s values when it’s difficult to do so is addressed in chapter 5; empathy, which allows us to treat others according to our values, is explained in chapter 6; and chapter 7 covers resilience and helps students treat themselves according to their own values. The activities in part I help students increase the influence of their values and reduce the influence of unhelpful judgments about themselves, others, and school itself. By accepting difficult thoughts and feelings as a normal part of living in accordance with their values, students are empowered to find meaning and purpose at school.
While part I is about what students themselves can do to connect school to their values, part II (chapters 8 through 13) is about what teachers can do to empower students through various aspects of their work. Those aspects include dialogue with students, partnerships with parents, collaboration with colleagues, curriculum development, and self-directed inquiry, as well as practicing the values that are important to you.
In contextual behavioral science, something is good when it works in a particular context—not because it fits a predefined image of what’s good (Biglan & Hayes, 1996; Fox, 2006; Hayes, Hayes, & Reese, 1988). We encourage you to approach this book’s strategies and activities flexibly so they work for your students and school. We hope the freedom to do what works for your classroom empowers you to empower your students.
