20 Minutes to Change a Life?

Sometimes, there is serendipity in the way an idea comes to us from several different places at about the same time, making it seem like something that really requires our attention. In the last couple of months, I've had three different reminders of the difference that teachers can make to the futures of students, especially in high schools, and often with a remarkably small investment of time and effort. It seems that in many cases as little as 20 to 30 minutes of supportive adult attention can move a student from the wrong path to the right one. My first encounter with this idea was in a conversation with Amanda Cooper, a high school teacher who is now a graduate student at the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education. She recounted talking with colleagues about working with students in difficulty. At one point in their conversation, she asked the group how much time they needed with a student to change that student's trajectory in the school from negative to positive. The group concluded that quite often 20 minutes of concentrated time with a student was enough to make a significant change in the student's attitude, outlook, and behavior. Then, last March at the American Educational Research Association conference, Susan Nolen, a friend and professor at the University of Washington, said she asks teachers working with her to spend 30 minutes out-of-class time--for example, during the lunch hour--just getting to know a student with whom they don't relate very well. She reports that teachers overwhelmingly say this simple step not only gives them a deeper and more positive understanding of the student, but often dramatically alters the way the student engages in their class. Once students feel that the adults involved actually are interested in who they are, their willingness to make a positive contribution increases. The third instance of the same idea was in the September 2008 issue of Educational Leadership. An article on seeing the best in students cited work by Ray Wlodkowski about something he calls a by strategy (Smith and Lambert 2008). For two minutes a day for 10 consecutive days, a teacher has a personal conversation with a difficult or challenging student about something the student is interested in. The authors report that this simple strategy will almost always yield noticeable improvement in the student's attitude and behavior in the class. These are remarkably similar and remarkably encouraging conclusions. When evidence from different sources points in the same direction, it increases confidence that the findings are truly valid. Every time share this finding with educators, get further confirmation. A high school principal in Winnipeg recently told me about that school's graduation, in which each graduate is asked to say something about himself or herself. Very often, graduates name someone--a teacher, a parent, or someone else--whose belief and support they felt was crucial to their success. I could not have made it without X is the typical comment. Occasionally, it's the opposite: This is to show Mr. Y that can do it after all. Further reinforcement comes from studies showing how many adults, decades later, can recall, with considerable emotion, a remark made by a teacher that either was vital in encouraging them or, sadly, sometimes had the opposite effect. All these pieces of evidence support a point that emerges powerfully from the research on dropping out of high school--that the single biggest factor in whether students try or give up, leave or stay, is their sense that somebody in the school knows who they are and cares about what happens to them. Study after study has pointed to the importance of those personal connections in giving students, especially those facing real challenges, the desire to persist. These ideas put a new slant on the effort to improve high school success and graduation rates. Around the world, large-scale improvement has proven to be considerably more difficult in secondary schools than in elementary schools. …

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