The website Breaking the Prejudice Habit began as an immersive learning project funded by the Virginia Ball Center for Creative Inquiry at Ball State University. Mary Kite, the project director, selected an interdisciplinary team of 14 students to find ways to “break the prejudice habit” (Devine, Monteith, Zuwerink & Elliot, 1991).
Stop me if you have already heard this one. Psychology is one of the most popular undergraduate majors in the U.S.; in the last year the data are available (2014-2015), 117,557 bachelor’s degrees in psychology were awarded. Said another way, in the past nine years, 1 million individuals received psychology baccalaureates (National Center for Education Statistics, 2017).
It was 2003. I was a first-year doctoral student attending my first research conference. I remember her as if it was yesterday. Except her findings. I was too consumed by the way she looked; her skin color, her tone, the way she looked at her students. At the end of her presentation I waited for my turn to speak to her – although I did not know what I wanted to say. All that came out was “Hi, I’m a student here. Thank you”, as tears ran down my face.
United Teachers Los Angeles (UTLA) released a viral video called “I am a teacher and you want to arm me?” in which the teacher’s union calls for more school psychologists, counselors, social workers, and nurses – rather than arming educators – to meet the needs of students and schools. Support personnel-student ratios were the subject of a Washington Post article calling these professionals “part of the human scaffolding constructed around students to help them do their best in school.”
Industrial-organizational (I-O) psychology—what a mouthful! The field originally focused on the prediction and improvement of job performance in industrial and military settings, but after World War II interests in broader organizational phenomena (e.g., leadership, groups, motivation, satisfaction) came into frame. Before APA Division 14 incorporated as the Society for Industrial and Organizational Psychology (SIOP) in 1982, it was called Division 14, Industrial and Business Psychology from 1945 to 1962. In 1962, “Business” was dropped from the name, and in 1973 “Organizational” was added to the name.
If you watch young children playing you’ll notice how they “check in” with their parents every so often, as if to make sure that Mom or Dad is still there, and that the world is still safe. A child who has been brought to an unfamiliar room with toys may begin by holding onto his mother’s leg and looking out at the possibilities. In order to encourage her son to leave the safety of her presence, Mom may engage in conversation: “Do you see that boat over there?” Or, “Hey, Jack, look! That’s the same Lightning McQueen car that you have at home!” Eventually, with the implicit blessing that these prompts provide, Jack is likely to walk over to the toys and begin exploring.
Teachers know first-hand how trauma can make learning nearly impossible for a student and they’ve seen how it has become increasingly more common among school-aged American students. As school shootings and gun violence have captured the attention of many, there’s a more significant problem lurking in the classroom. It’s the student chronically exposed to trauma, and it’s often masked by stigma and shame.
Consider this, “On average, only 25 percent of children with mental health needs receive services. Of those receiving care, 70—80 percent receive that care in a school setting.”
But it’s not all doom and gloom. Psychology also shows us that most humans are resilient in the face of trauma and students can flourish with the right support.
But how can teachers help?
If you’re like me, there are so many tasks pressing for time in my calendar that I tend to feel as though I don’t spend enough time on assessment data. Really coming to understand what my students know feels like one of those things technology can help make more efficient. There are great ways to capture and collect snapshots of formative assessment using technology, which can also be a tool to enhance learning.
Procrastination is one of the most damaging characteristics that students display because it robs them of good grades and prevents them from maintaining productive and healthy relationships with their teachers, families and friends. Procrastination can have both external (e.g., situations involving work overloads) and internal causes (e.g., personality characteristics).
As a child of poor immigrants from rural Philippines, I often heard about how my parents grew up without running water and limited electricity. They told my brothers and me stories about the things that they didn’t have while growing up, and how they overcame traumas of war and poverty. These anecdotes made me feel equally grateful and guilty, while also motivating me to strive for success. In fact, it is through these stories that I learned the importance of attaining a college education as a way of fulfilling our parents’ American dreams and somehow compensating for the historical trauma that my family had overcome for centuries.