One of the things I love about psychology is that it encourages people to be courageous about looking inward and evaluating themselves honestly. This kind of thinking, in my opinion, should extend to your teaching practice.
It is normal for some students to experience back-to-school stress. Many challenges come with the start of a new school year. This article is geared toward the typical stressors of starting or returning to school, and is not intended to focus on students showing severe cases of anxiety or depression. Many of the school-related challenges described below can cause students distress, irritability, reduced focus or academic performance. Though many of these changes simply take time to adapt to, others are readily addressable.
In the past eight years that I have been working in the education sector, I have always been confronted with the challenge of making a meaningful learning experience for my students. That is, creating connections between students’ learning journey and their lives.
“Take a Break,” says a small sign in a small corner of a second-grade classroom. A small corner that represents a big change at Dan D. Rogers Elementary School in Dallas, Texas. Last year we began small changes such as these as part of a school-wide effort to have a uniform approach to Social-Emotional Learning on our Campus. With the help of my leadership team, a group of core teachers, and our district’s Psychological and Social Services Department, we met over the summer and began to formulate lessons, gather tools, and purchase materials to begin our program which we now call, “Our Mind Time.” This a title that was coined by one of our district social workers, Veva Lane.
What do young children need to be successful in school? Most people would say learning the ABCs and counting to 10. However, other important cognitive skills also are important. Inhibition (also sometimes labeled “inhibitory control” or “impulse control”) is a skill that is very important for children’s early success in school.
The infamous Google memo by James Damore rightfully struck a cord in social media, the popular press, and academia. The memo hit on many things, but in particular a core argument that has raged for thousands of years: are men and women innately different? And if they are different, should attention to these differences be reflected in policies in the workplace and society in general?
For most careers, providing professional services using psychological knowledge requires a doctoral degree in psychology, and these careers are often called professional or health service psychology. However, psychology careers for individuals holding master’s degrees are available in multiple occupational settings and in fields across the discipline. The demand for jobs at this level of training is reflected in the growth of master’s psychology degrees — from slightly below 18,000 in 2003 to nearly 28,000 in 2013. Similarly, the National Science Foundation reports growth during the past decade in research-focused psychology master’s degrees: approximately 15,000 in 2003 and 22,000 in 2011.
Are you a student thinking about a career in psychology? Not sure where to start? Or are you exploring options?
Psych Learning Curve is always working to help answer these questions. So we created a series of posts exploring interesting psychology fields.
In a quite popular Ted Talk, Every Kid Needs A Champion, Dr. Rita Pierson says many great things about relationships and education. I have no doubt she was an incredible educator and mentor to students and teachers. You can see it and feel it in the way she delivers her talk; she’s got it. I believe this quote best summarizes her talk:
Last month I gave a conference talk where I was one of several invited, keynote speakers. The audience was around 300 people, and I felt prepared, but a bit nervous. Giving talks like this are not necessarily new for me, but only a few times have I been featured in such a prominent role. Once I got going with the talk two things happened that I was unprepared for.