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“A way of learning that’s full of connections”: Socratic discussion in Austin’s alternative schools

January 31, 2017/ Teri

One of the most inspiring forms of learning I’ve encountered is Socratic discussion (sometimes called Socratic dialogue or Socratic seminar). Yet I often find myself in consultations struggling to adequately describe it to families who've never experienced it themselves or seen it in action. So I suggested that our staff writer-researcher, Shelley Sperry, delve into some local versions of the Socratic method with the help of students who love it. Here’s what she learned from them.

I remember my old high school was so divided. You were an island. But Socratic is a way of learning that’s full of connections.
—Cade Summers, KoSchool

Socratic discussions are powerful ways for students to help each other explore ideas, values, and opinions on important political, social, philosophical, and artistic issues. The Socratic method originated, as the name suggests, in ancient Greek philosophers’ methods of teaching and learning. Today, in some of Austin’s alternative schools the focus of “Socratics,” as students often call them, is on listening to all members of the group and finding common ground and new approaches, rather than trying to persuade or rigorously debate. During Socratics students try to develop a shared understanding of a particular essay, poem, or problem through analysis and creative interpretation, but the goal is never winning or losing a point but rather deepening the students’ own thinking.

As a newcomer to this way of learning, I wanted to understand how various students employ Socratic discussion in daily practice, so I interviewed three students who are fans of it. I am deeply grateful for the time they took to talk with me. I came away impressed by their ability to reflect on their own learning and communicate with a novice like me. The students I interviewed are Jesse Estes, age 18, who attends Skybridge Academy; Sam Sandefer, age 14, who attends Acton Academy; and Cade Summers, age 18, who attends KoSchool.

I learned through these interviews that the three schools’ Socratic programs have much in common as well as some differences. For example, Skybridge Socratics place emphasis on drawing personal connections to the issues and ideas under discussion. At Acton, focused Socratic discussions often explore ongoing, overarching themes like the “Hero’s Journey,” but Socratic questioning also takes place throughout the school day. KoSchool’s Socratic courses, much like college seminars, encourage students to delve deeply into complex texts and write clearly about them. I’ve edited my conversations with the three students to make these connections and subtle differences among their schools’ approaches clearer.

A Socratic discussion at Skybridge Academy

How would you define or explain Socratic discussions for a total newcomer?

Jesse: It’s an open-ended dialogue where you make sure everyone has a voice, and the goal is less important than the process.

Cade: Socratic is a more personal way to learn. Even if the group is divided somewhat in terms of the points everyone is making, you’re always connecting and learning from other people.

Sam: It’s really about learning to ask questions instead of giving and getting answers.

Can you talk about how the discussions work in practice? What’s a typical Socratic like?

Jesse: In our school, the student leader or the teacher/guide has a topic or question to consider, but then the floor is open to all students. Groups vary in size, but it’s usually about 10–12 people, which I think is optimal. We sometimes have as few as five people, but then discussion is slower. We each voice our thoughts in response to what someone else has said. Sometimes in philosophical discussions people do take sides, but in a lot of discussions there aren’t sides—there’s more of a spectrum. We do things mostly freeform and orally, but there is a whiteboard if someone needs to illustrate a point.

Cade: We practice Socratic dialogues in normal classes every day and I also host a “Bonus Socratic” after school. We usually have around 6 people, but it can be as few as 4 or as many as 11. The number doesn’t matter once you have a group that functions well. Michael—we call him a guide, not a teacher—often brings in a text, but students bring in poems and articles too. We might read the text, or part of it, to start the discussion. Then students just start sharing ideas.

Sam: We weave Socratic discussions through the day, not just in one particular time period. When you ask questions, you usually don’t just get one answer, you get another question to help lead you to an answer. So for example, if I ask someone about a math problem, instead of telling me the specific answer, the person might say: “What do you think the first step is in finding the answer?” Or they might say, “Could you try this? Or could you try that?”

Do you have any favorite discussions or moments during discussions in the past year?

Jesse: One of the best questions we had—and one that people kept talking about after class, like a running joke, was: If you have a boat and you take away one piece each year and replace it, until every piece is replaced, at what point do you have a new boat? We talked about this for three hours with no conclusion, but everyone participated and people changed opinions, and then kept talking about it after class.

Cade: I remember at one discussion a friend of mine was feeling a lot of anger coming into it, but having the Socratic turned the way he was feeling around. Discussion can help you alleviate some stresses because you can say what you’re thinking about issues—political or social or other things—and you can get some different contexts from other people and see things in a different light.

Finally, what’s the value of Socratic discussion for you, carrying forward after high school or with your family and community?

Jesse: You learn how to draw people into conversation and to really listen to and understand their points of view. I think I have a much stronger voice than I had earlier, and my perspective is wider. We’re encouraged to lead our own discussions during the semester, so you also gain leadership skills, and now I’m leading my own class. It’s inspired me to look at something related to leadership and teaching when I go to college.

Cade: Learning how to discuss and communicate is invaluable. I definitely spoke more when I started, but I’ve learned gradually to be more introspective and really listen. I think at home I take a more introspective approach now, too, and work on my ability to empathize and understand other people, including my younger brother.

Sam: I think it’s made me much more independent—so rather than relying on someone else to give me answers, I want to find them on my own.

Shelley Sperry

December 01, 2016

Post-election in Austin schools: Finding comfort in community

December 01, 2016/ Teri

Photo contributed to the Teaching Tolerance #StudentsSpeak campaign

The past few weeks since Election Day have posed significant and unusual challenges for educators across the country. When divisions among adults are as strong as they have been during the presidential campaign, tensions, fears, and misinformation inevitably come out among kids on playgrounds and in classrooms.

In a report released this week, the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) found that schools and universities are the most common places that hate-based incidents take place—including attacks against immigrants, Muslims, African Americans, Jews, and the LGBTQ community. More than 10,000 teachers surveyed by SPLC detailed 2,500 fights and threats related to the rhetoric of the 2016 election, increasing use of racial and ethnic slurs, and the appearance of swastikas and Confederate flags around their schools. From the survey’s executive summary:

Ninety percent of educators report that school climate has been negatively affected, and most of them believe it will have a long-lasting impact. A full 80 percent describe heightened anxiety and concern on the part of students worried about the impact of the election on themselves and their families.

We asked some members of the Alt Ed Austin community to talk about what they are seeing and hearing among their students and what kinds of constructive, positive steps they’re taking to support kids, parents, and each other.

Individual and group discussions, with the goal of intellectually understanding the dynamics of the political conflicts, as well as sharing and processing a variety of emotions around the election are important to all the educators we heard from.

Kristin Kim of Sansori High School says, “I encourage [students] to see beyond the layers of realities created by polarization, and be aware of when they are drawn in to reactiveness.” She wants to help them avoid repeating patterns of conflict.

The team at Skybridge Academy focused on the question of vulnerability, and discussed bullying and how to be an ally to people who need support. Students were allowed to share their feelings anonymously and to discuss them in groups. Skybridge’s co-director, Ariel Dochstader Miller, says she believes the students’ open sharing and discussion helped students, but more discussions are needed to move forward “in a healed and unified space.” “We came to the conclusion that the way through these defensive walls, both literal and emotional, is empathy and compassionate relating and sharing.”

“We focused much more on what we could do for one another than dwelling on what we could not control,” says Antonio Buehler of Abrome. Antonio shares a detailed response on his blog, focusing on how Learners can “transcend electoral politics” and better society in myriad ways.

At KọSchool, the full student body of 8th–12th graders gathered to talk about personal empowerment in times of dramatic change. Students discussed feelings of victimization across the spectrum of political viewpoints and shared their own struggles to keep open minds and not condemn those whose beliefs clashed with their own.

There is also great value, for students and their families, in physical activity—whether it’s work or play—and intimately connecting with the natural world. Erin Flynn of Green Gate Farms says she’s been contacted by several schools that would like to get out among the plants and animals on a “medicinal” field trip. “Teens are especially upset,” she adds, “so I will be putting them to work, giving them some nature therapy.”

Most important, we in the Alt Ed Austin community adhere to the belief that schools must be safe and nurturing homes-away-from-home for all children. We could not say it better than Austin School Board Trustee Paul Saldaña said it in a moving letter to all the families of Austin ISD:

I want you to know how much I admire the concerns you have expressed this week for your friends, classmates, and schools. And I encourage you to have these thoughtful conversations among your peers and with your teachers in the classrooms. It’s okay for you to express any concerns you may have and to find your voice and use it with conviction. Most importantly, I want to reassure you, that your school and classroom is your home and your sanctuary. It belongs to you and you are safe.

Please take a look at Paul Saldaña’s letter here.

You may also be interested in some resources designed for Teaching Tolerance by the SPLC. Using the hashtag #StudentsSpeak, the Teaching Tolerance program is collecting photos with a wonderful variety of heartfelt advice for President-elect Trump on their Facebook page (a sampling of which we’ve included in this post). Take a look, and see how your students can participate here.

Peace.

October 31, 2016

Time to get your story-loving kids on board for NaNoWriMo!

October 31, 2016/ Teri

We WRITE, practicing the arts of storytelling and poetry. We SHARE—reading our own work aloud in the classroom, performing in public, or having work published; sharing brings writers in contact with readers, helping build literary communities in our own backyards.

—The Badgerdog writing program of the Austin Public Library Friends Foundation

For most of us, November 1st means digging a few sweaters and sweatshirts out of the back of the closet, ramping up the panic as Thanksgiving’s culinary pressures approach, and enjoying the sights, sounds, and tastes of peak autumn. But for a certain group of word nerds, November 1st means one thing above all: It’s time to begin the NaNoWriMo marathon and not look up from the notebook or keyboard until midnight, November 30th.

NaNoWriMo, an acronym for National Novel Writing Month, is an international writing challenge community that started as a tiny idea in 1999 in San Francisco and eventually turned into a nonprofit in 2005. Today, hundreds of thousands of people across the globe participate by signing up online and pledging to write the first draft of a 50,000-word novel in the month of November. If you make that goal, you “win” NaNo, but even if you don’t reach the word mark, participants get a great sense of camaraderie and accomplishment just from process.

For young people, there is a special community, called the Young Writers Program, where kids of all ages can join in the challenge with their teachers and parents. In 2015, more than 80,000 students and educators took part, not counting the teens who participated, as many do, in the main NaNo community. Kids generally set their own word limits, and aren’t bound, of course, by the 50,000 goal, which is about the length of The Great Gatsby. For a little taste of the excitement involved in plotting, world building, and sharing stories, take a look at some of the many videos created by past teen participants by searching “NaNoWriMo2016” on YouTube.

In Austin, the place for young writers to learn more about the NaNoWriMo experience is at the Austin Public Library. At Faulk Central Library, kids ages 10 and older are invited to attend a NaNoWriMo kickoff Tuesday, November 1, at 5:30 p.m. called “What’s Your Story.” This will be followed by “Keep It Up,” a meeting halfway into the month, on November 15. At the end of the intense and fabulous month there will be a celebratory meeting on December 1, when kids can talk about their experiences, learn a little about how to revise the first draft they have created, and even share their work.

In addition to the library activities, if you have girls in 3rd through 8th grade who are aspiring writers, they may be interested in a couple of workshops happening on Saturday, November 5, as part of the We Are Girls TX conference. Here’s the schedule.

The NaNoWriMo activities at the library are sponsored by the Badgerdog writing program, which operates year-round and sponsors spring break and summer writing workshops for elementary, middle, and high school kids all over Austin.

Cecily Sailer, Programs Manager for the Austin Public Library Friends Foundation, says her best advice is that kids of all ages should have fun with NaNoWriMo and set their own, personal goals. “If you spend November writing a little more than normal, you win!” says Cecily. “And make sure to talk about what you’re creating with someone else—take it outside the keyboard or notebook and into the world.”

Follow the Library Foundation on Facebook for updates about this program, and definitely check out the Unbound blog, which features writing and artwork by students!

Need more inspiration?

Shelley Sperry

August 17, 2016

Hack to School: Making the transition easier for the whole family (part 2)

August 17, 2016/ Teri

If you missed the first installment of back-to-school hacks from Shelley Sperry and Mari Frost, which addressed tips and tricks in the food, shelter, and clothing categories, you can catch up here. All photos are by Mari Frost, a 15-year-old who attends high school in northern Virginia.

Our second set of back-to-school hacks is about easing into the school routine in ways that will make the transition better for your mind and body. For lots of kids that means moving from thinking of your computer, tablet, and phone as entertainment (Find those Pokemon!) to thinking of them as learning tools.

Tech Prep: Your Digital Health

We suggest taking an hour or two several days before school starts to set your family up on all computers, phones, and tablets for the school year:

When you get your school schedules (including extracurricular activities), put them on everyone’s phone (the easiest way is to just snap a photo of a paper schedule) and put paper copies in a spot that’s easy to find (a bulletin board, the front hallway, the good old fridge). And at the same time, make sure everyone has all important contact numbers updated, including the school office phone numbers.

If your kid is heading to a brand-new school, make the schedule or an annotated map his or her lock screen shot, so it’s always immediately available to glance at. And it doesn’t hurt to practice asking for help finding your way around the school—that’s not always easy for shy kids.

Students! Set up the bookmarks in your browser so you can easily get to Google Scholar, Google Books, and the public library’s search pages. Those are all better places to start than an ordinary Google search, if you’re doing research. And never forget to check .gov sites for information—you’ll often find terrific resources there. Use sites like the Library of Congress, the National Park Service, and the USGS for trustworthy information.

Avoid disaster now by making sure that your word processing software is automatically backing up anything you’re writing at least every couple of minutes. For real peace of mind, set up a cloud account where you keep all your papers and notes. Something like iCloud, Google Drive, Dropbox, or similar services are usually free for small amounts of storage, which is all you need for your school projects—unless you’re making a lot of videos or taking a lot of photos. Trust us—there will be a panicky moment when you’ll be extremely happy you have old drafts of a paper or notes saved in the cloud.

If you take notes mostly by hand, consider taking photos of the most important pages. You can then study anytime—on the way to pottery class or grandma’s house. You’ll always have them with you. Even if you much prefer to read paper books, it doesn’t hurt to invest in a few digital versions (or better yet, check digital copies out of the library) so that you can read a few pages of Catcher in the Rye while waiting for your Dad to get through the line at HEB.

Put a label with your name and school on your calculator and any other gadget you use regularly outside your house. If someone finds it, there will be no doubt it’s yours, and they can return it to the school. It should go without saying: Don’t put your home address or phone number on the label.

Wait until everyone is in a great mood, and then start a family discussion of the contentious subject of limits on screen time for the coming school year. Serve ice cream and cookies. Good luck.

Body Prep: Exercise and Sleep

A few days before school starts, try to get into the best falling-asleep-and-waking-up pattern for you. If you’re a kid or teen, eight hours is really the minimum you need to function well. We all love to cuddle with our phones and tablets, but try getting a regular alarm clock and putting the gaming, video-watching, texting, Instagraming device as far from your bed as possible so you’re not tempted to look at it at 3 a.m.

If you have superhuman self-control, and can have the device near your bed, you could try a sleep-cycle app that monitors your sleep and helps you determine the best time to wake up—but really, an old-fashioned simple alarm clock, your parents, or a pet that wants breakfast is the best alarm.

One thing that may help you de-stress and get a good night’s sleep AND will help the morning go more smoothly is taking a relaxing bath or shower the night before.

Consider making it a rule to eat a healthy snack and get some sort of exercise before starting homework. Kids often need a period of transition and relaxation when they get home from school. If they start immediately on homework or jump into fun screen time, they may not be at their most alert and efficient for the rest of the afternoon and evening. A routine of skateboarding, basketball, or biking outdoors—or dancing or yoga indoors—whatever gets them moving a little—will help energize them and make homework time easier.

Low Tech Prep: Handmade Fun

For young kids who are walking or taking a bus to and from school for the first time, spend a morning or afternoon creating a cool, illustrated map of the route and walking or driving it a couple of times so it becomes familiar. Find a friend in the neighborhood who will be your kid’s bus buddy or walking buddy as they get used to the new route. They may find other friends to walk and ride with later, but it’s great to start out with someone they know.

Walk around a new school, play on the playground or sports fields a few times, and look at photos of teachers online so that the school doesn’t feel strange on Day One.

Sometimes it’s non-academic things that stress us out the most, so spend a few hours at lunch or dinner brainstorming about the kind of extracurricular clubs and teams you might want to try and the service projects you want to do, if your school includes service as a requirement.

Make a COOL IDEAS folder for all the kids and hang up in their rooms or a common family area. Anyone in the family can toss in photos, articles from magazines, or random notes whenever they find something that might be helpful for school or extracurricular projects. For example, if you know your son likes getting outdoors in the mud and needs a community service project, clip out the calendar of watershed clean-up days and put it in the folder. If your daughter has to write and illustrate a paper on the Odyssey, jot down information about an art exhibit on ancient Greece you saw in a magazine. Set a time each week to sort through the folders and choose the ideas you’ll act on.

DIY Day: Think of something you know you’ll need when October, November, and December roll around and do a family craft night now, when you’re more relaxed than you’re likely to be in the middle of the fall. Make cute scarves and hand-warmers for cold morning walks to school out of fleece and rice. Get started on Halloween costumes. Make pennants you can wave at school football or basketball games. Create a place to display photos, playbills, and memories on kids’ bedroom walls using fishing line and clothespins or a DIY bulletin board out of an old picture frame.

Ahhhh, now we’re ready for the learning to start!

Shelley Sperry, with Mari Frost

August 16, 2016

Hack to School: Making the transition easier for the whole family (part 1)

August 16, 2016/ Teri

Staff writer Shelley Sperry enlisted her teenage daughter, Mari Frost, to contribute photos and expert tips for this special back-to-school post. It’s full of useful ideas for both parents and kids, so pick out some favorites to share with your family.

Some kids and parents get wistful when summer ends, and some can’t wait to get back to the routine of books, friends, and after-school activities. We’ve had a quiet, laissez faire summer at our place, so we’re all pretty excited to begin the more structured school schedule again. But there are bound to be anxieties, no matter how eager you are for the learning to start.

My teen daughter and I decided to collect some back-to-school “hacks” we thought might help everyone transition gracefully. There’s no shortage of ideas in magazines, on YouTube, and, of course, Pinterest and Instagram right now, so you can have fun making your own lists—and please share ideas in the comments. Here we’ve selected the ideas we think are especially helpful for the week right before the madness begins, to relieve potential flailing and stress. We’ve broken them down into a few key categories: Food, Shelter, and Clothing. In part 2, we’ll share Mind and Body health hacks.

Food

If you have room in your fridge and pantry, designate a particular shelf or space as the lunch station—and if you have even more room, create a breakfast station too. Get a few cheap bins or baskets and use them to corral the fruit, cheeses, sandwiches, and salty and sweet snacks kids will be putting into their lunchboxes. We like the idea of using a small corkboard—or better still, a magnetic blackboard or dry erase board on the inside of the cabinet door. That’s where kids can leave messages for Mom and Dad, like, “We’re out of peanut butter!” and “Can I have Oreos next week????”

Walk kids through the process of washing their lunch containers or putting them into the dishwasher. Create the expectation that they’ll do this right when they get home—before snacks and homework—to make sure they’re ready for the next day. This is the hack designed to relieve Mom and Dad’s “Why are there 26 dirty containers in the sink?” stress.

Don’t forget after-school snacks and on-the-go breakfasts, especially for constantly hungry teens. Keep it simple. Ask each kid to name two snacks and two breakfasts they like, and then put a week’s worth of those in the fridge, freezer, or cabinet. We love having all the ingredients for smoothies in individual freezer bags so all you need to do is pop them into the blender.

Keep things cold in lunchboxes the easy way: use frozen water bottles or drink pouches or frozen grapes (a yummy, nutritious treat) to keep the rest of the lunch cold.

During a family dinner about a week before school starts, ask everyone to write down a couple of favorite quick and easy (15-minute) dinners. Break out the recipe apps and websites for ideas. Make a shopping list based on those dinners and try to make sure you always have most of the items on hand. Make a card with each item, including the recipe, and put into a paper bag that you clip to the refrigerator or pantry door. When you get stuck with no plan and no inspiration 30 minutes before it’s time to go to soccer practice, reach into the bag and make whatever you pick.

Helpful stuff to put on your shopping list: cups with lids and straws for on-the-go smoothies or other breakfast drinks; magnetic dry erase or blackboard (or blackboard paint), magnets or cork board with push-pins for inside cabinet door; a case of freezer bags and zip-top plastic bags!

Shelter

What every house or apartment with kids needs is a designated school stuff area that is not the dining table or kitchen counter or middle of the front hallway. Get your kids involved in creating a spot in your house for backpacks and a small school paperwork center. Unfortunately, it’s easiest if the spot is in plain view, and not hidden away in a closet. It will be used morning and night!

Create a system that meets your needs, but at minimum, try to have plenty of hooks for backpacks and any additional gear bags (for sports, ballet, etc.). A table with a few baskets or a small set of cheap drawers (plastic drawers work just fine!) that you can label: PAPERS TO SIGN; IMPORTANT ASSIGNMENTS; and ARTWORK.

Put a family school calendar on the wall—a paper one or a dry-erase board—and make sure kids can reach it to add their own events, if they’re old enough. They can draw pictures or use stickers too.

Helpful stuff to put on your shopping list: hooks of all kinds—heavy duty, preferably—to hold backpacks, hoodies, umbrellas, whatever your family wants to keep out of the closet and in plain sight. Over-the-door hooks for our front hallway closet have been a game-changer in our house because they are the perfect spot for all our raincoats and Mom’s purse. Efficiency sometimes has to trump style.

Clothing

There are three shoe tricks we learned recently, and we love them all!

We all know we’re supposed to lay out clothes and schoolwork the night before so it’s all ready to go, but sometimes there’s that little extra item you REALLY don’t want to forget—your new locker combination, the extra keys, the bus pass you only need on Wednesdays, the calculator that’s required for the big test. Put those things inside your shoes. You can’t walk out the door without remembering them!
Do your kids leave stinky gym shoes and clothes in a locker for days or weeks at a time? Give them a few herbal teabags and shove them inside the shoes to absorb some of the odor and leave a hint of lemon ginger or chamomile scent in the locker.
New shoes? Wear them around the house for at least two or three days—or have a new shoe dance party with friends to make sure they’re worn in and won’t create blisters or be too slippery on the first day of school.

School clothes shopping is not usually much fun, but maybe a family pizza night that includes some school clothes prep could be?

If your kids need labels in some of their clothes, make them together with colorful permanent markers.
Roll tops and bottoms into outfits and tie up with a ribbon or twine and stack in an easy-to-reach drawer.
Let kids help pick out a few cute dollar-store bins and baskets, label, and put them in the closet or dresser so they can put away their own underwear, socks, and pajamas. Forget about folding—just getting things put away in roughly the right place is enough!

Don’t wait until after you have the emergency to put together your emergency clothes kit. The littlest kids may need to have this ready to go on Day 1. For older kids, it’s just a good idea to have an extra shirt and shorts or pants rolled up and available in a locker—or even in your car, if you are often rushing from event to event, eating and spilling. Put the items into a small plastic bag and squeeze out as much air as possible to reduce the size.

Other items that might be helpful to have in a very small backpack emergency kit: ibuprofen (if allowed at your school), pads or tampons, extra pencil and pen, travel deodorant and hand wipes, dental floss for kids with braces, a tiny roll of tape and/or glasses repair kit—or for kids who play sports, a whole extra pair of glasses, an extra reed or violin string for orchestra, a few dollars for the inevitable “I forgot my lunch” day.

In making this list, we discovered we have a lot more tips related to prepping not only your family’s kitchen and closets but also your kids’ minds and bodies for the transition to school. We’ll do that in the next post!

Shelley Sperry, with Mari Frost

May 31, 2016

Exercise, sleep, and unplugging can help lower stress and anxieties in teens

May 31, 2016/ Teri

For part 2 of our series for Mental Health Awareness Month, Shelley Sperry interviewed local psychologist Dr. Mike Brooks, who shared his insights and practical advice for reducing or preventing the stresses and anxieties so many teens are experiencing today.

Dr. Mike Brooks, a licensed psychologist and director of the Austin Psychology & Assessment Center (ApaCenter), says that there is some alarmism around the issue of rising anxiety disorders among teens. “We haven’t dropped off a cliff,” he says, but in many schools in Austin and across the nation the academic and social pressure is intense. “A lot of pressures come to a head in high school, and kids feel the weight and react in a variety of ways.”

Teachers, school administrators, coaches, parents, and peers all have high expectations in terms of grades and extracurricular activities. “I work a lot with stressed teens who think if you have one bad semester you won’t be able to get into your top school, or if you don’t take at least 5 AP classes, you’re falling behind,” explains Dr. Brooks. “These stresses can lead to anxiety and depression.”

But, Brooks says, most kids can find new ways to deal with stress and significant relief through some common-sense behavioral changes. Others will need counseling, often in the form of more formal cognitive behavorial therapy, and a few will need the assistance of drugs along with therapy to balance brain chemistry.

Dr. Brooks believes that the most basic solutions often work well, if kids are really motivated to make some changes. Exercise, sleep, and putting some limits on technology can work wonders to destress teens’ everyday lives.

Exercise. “We are meant to be active,” Brooks explains, “so if we don’t move enough, stress sets in.” Exercise breaks are essential for teens who study long hours, because exercise improves alertness and focus. “We get all that exercise time back later in higher productivity.”

Sleep. The same thing goes for sleep. Here, the science is clear: According to the UCLA Sleep Center, teens need more sleep than adults—an average of nine hours per night. But as a result of busy schedules at home and school, social expectations, or difficulty falling and staying asleep as their bodies adjust to puberty, most teenagers don’t get enough. Lack of sleep can be both a contributor to and a symptom of mental health problems. According to Harvard Medical School’s Mental Health Letter:

The brain basis of a mutual relationship between sleep and mental health is not yet completely understood. But neuroimaging and neurochemistry studies suggest that a good night’s sleep helps foster both mental and emotional resilience, while chronic sleep disruptions set the stage for negative thinking and emotional vulnerability.

Unplugging and single-tasking. Dr. Brooks specializes in helping parents and kids navigate technology, which often increases stress levels in teens. He has one word for those who spend their study time multitasking: Don’t. Most high school students today are instant-messaging, snapchatting, texting, checking Instagram, and watching YouTube—or some combination of these distractions—while doing homework or reading. The science is still in early stages, but multiple studies show that multitasking decreases the quality of work, can actually inhibit one’s ability to filter out irrelevant information, and can diminish working memory.

As a result of the time and attention lost to multitasking, stress levels and anxiety can increase. So encourage unplugging for part of every day—taking technology breaks—so students can focus on one important task at a time.

When asked what role schools have in lowering students’ anxiety, Dr. Brooks said, “I’d like to see schools be more aware of students’ emotional state. Allow them to step back and observe, and practice mindfulness. Encourage them to check in with themselves to figure out what they want and need.”

Many schools in the Austin area are developing programs that focus on mindfulness and allow students to monitor their own anxieties and feelings of stress. We’ll take a look at some of those solutions in the next installment.

Many thanks to Dr. Mike Brooks for taking the time to discuss his work for this post. Dr. Brooks is a licensed psychologist and the director of the Austin Psychology & Assessment Center. The ApaCenter is a group of psychologists and other practitioners who provide psychological and neuropsychological assessments, therapy, consultation, and coaching to individuals, couples, and families of all ages. Dr. Brooks works with a variety of patients but specializes in helping parents raise balanced kids in a technological world. He is writing a book on this topic and can be found online at DrMikeBrooks.com.