Cognitive outcomes vs intersectional traumas<\/h1>\n

We talk with legendary awesome stats guy Mark Olofson — now Dr.<\/em> Legendary Awesome Stats Guy Mark Olofson — about his research into adverse childhood events and school performance.<\/p>\n

It’s some pretty important stuff, about how the intersecting traumas that affect students have some long-reaching consequences.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Olofson:<\/strong>\u00a0It goes back to the idea that schools can only do so much and that there is a threshold of adversity of kids walking in the door with enough bad stuff going on that it kind of doesn\u2019t matter what you do in the school, because all the stuff at home:<\/p>\n

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• they live in a home characterized by conflict;<\/li>\n
• they are coming from neighborhoods where they don\u2019t feel safe walking on the street;<\/li>\n
• they don\u2019t have an adult in the neighborhood that they identify with;<\/li>\n
• if the people in their home are their parents are not;<\/li>\n
• if somebody\u2019s been incarcerated;<\/li>\n
• if there\u2019s substance abuse in the home.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n

  You get to a certain level of all this bad stuff is happening and it doesn\u2019t matter how good you have schools, you\u2019re not going to have a positive outcome.<\/p>\n

  What this means, and what this means in our local context first, is that schools matter.<\/p>\n

  Because for those low and middle adversity kids, which is a lot of kids, you make the school more safe, and that’s when you get the better outcomes. It\u2019s a great argument.<\/p>\n

  We also know that you make the school safe you get better relationships;\u00a0and those interpersonal relationships between adults and kids can<\/em> help kids from highly adverse conditions.<\/p>\n

  <\/p>\n

   <\/p>\n

  We know that that\u2019s true and we know that like principals and leadership make a big difference when you\u2019re trying to do school reforms of this type, when you\u2019re trying to improve your school climate you need strong leadership with good vision to say this is what we\u2019re going to do and this is why we\u2019re going to do it, right. All that stuff is true.<\/p>\n

  But what this final conclusion really points out is that just working on your school isn\u2019t enough.<\/p>\n

  We also need to think about how can we make our neighborhoods and our communities better to support these kids, how can we help families be better and how can we start to address those fundamental pieces of adversity in a kid\u2019s life.<\/p>\n

  If we want kids to be able to perform well at school, and have high cognitive functioning, and be able to get into the workforce, get into additional secondary education — all these things — it\u2019s not going to be enough just to have a\u00a0discrete program at the school. It can’t be:\u00a0\u201cOh, this is what we\u2019re doing to help kids and we\u2019re going to have a zero tolerance policy on fighting.\u201d<\/p>\n

  We need to think about wraparound services, and what folks call like \u201cpackages of policies.\u201d That means everything from improving food security at the home and improving working conditions for parents. We go back to that whole map of things that intersect, that whole bio-ecological map.\u00a0How can we help make connections, make stronger families, make stronger neighborhoods and help with wraparound support for kids?<\/p>\n

  For me, that was really kind of one of the big punch lines for this research.<\/p>\n

  <\/p>\n

  Even though I\u2019m an educator, I come from teaching. I come from schools, and while I know that schools can do a lot, schools can\u2019t do everything.<\/p>\n

  When we think about what does it mean to help kids from low socio-economic conditions to succeed, right, what does it really look like to help them?<\/p>\n

  I think that it\u2019s important for us when we\u2019re individually working with kids, to keep in mind that there\u2019s this whole constellation of things that ends up being reflected in an\u00a0endpoint.\u00a0For us as teachers, as school leaders, as citizens in our community, and as voters in the state of Vermont, we need to\u00a0think more widely about what types of policies, what types of programs are going to be necessary at these multiple different levels to support all kids to be able to be successful in our state.<\/p>\n

  Q: How did you come up with your research question?<\/h2>\n

  Olofson:<\/strong> That\u2019s a really good question. I think I got to my research questions in a few different ways.<\/p>\n

  I\u2019ve been working with this framework for a while now.\u00a0It’s really kind of directed my attention, thinking about what teachers can do and what are the domains that teachers can effect. I think also part of it for me is being able to be embedded here at the University of Vermont, and be surrounded by people who are talking about similar things, and thinking about similar things. Everything just sort of like percolates and kind of combines into some question that then I get to go out, and research and see \u201cIs anybody tackling this same stuff in this same way?\u201d<\/p>\n

  Then starting to slice things into discrete and testable research questions; getting to work with other students, like peers in my doctoral cohort, and with the great research team here at Tarrant.\u00a0I did always have this strand of the importance of communities, and neighborhoods and families, this wider constellation of influencers and the outcomes, but\u2026 it’s just there\u2019s been a lot of focus and I really appreciate that about kids and really having kids at the center.<\/p>\n

  Q: What do you hope are some concrete steps that result from the findings of your research?<\/h2>\n

  Olofson:<\/strong>\u00a0The first paper for my dissertation has been published in Child Indicators Research, 2017, and the other ones are in process of submission to journals. The outcomes from this research and additional research have the ability to allow me to speak and to write directly for types of policies that \u2014 and policy is such a big chunky word and it just means things we should do, be those formalized things at the state level or for me working in more at a community level where you can have sort of direct effects to influence the way that different organizations, different schools think about these things.<\/p>\n

  Being able to add to these collective bodies of research, and be able to nudge in certain directions, and to be able to provide additional pieces of evidence, that\u2019s really right now where I see my work. \u00a0Just like before when I said the ACEs started looking at only adults, but then they saw they could look at adolescents? I\u2019m adding to the emerging literature that says we can also see outcomes in elementary and middle school, right.<\/p>\n

  I get to push that down to that level which helps us think about, \u201cOh, adversity has direct effects on my elementary school kids, and adversity measured in these ways.\u201d<\/p>\n

  Q:\u00a0That\u2019s where the richness of your stats background comes in and that\u2019s where you get to apply of the awesome stats knowledge that you possess.<\/h2>\n

  To point out that you can make amazingly graded pictures of data and make it tell you amazing things just by using equations.<\/h3>\n

  Olofson:<\/strong> That\u2019s one of the things that I think moved me over into being a quantitative researcher for my dissertation work, because I got exposed to some cool methods that hit me at a personal level. That was like, \u201cOh, you can do really interesting, descriptive and rich work if you go down the right routes with your methods.\u201d<\/p>\n

  Yeah, so being able to influence the way that these questions are tackled? Being able to influence the types of indicators or considerations that we make when we\u2019re asking questions, and then being able to add to a growing consensus about what\u2019s important in the lives of kids, in the development of kids? And then on top of that being able to add to what types of policies or programs should we be arguing for in order to help kids that are coming from highly adverse conditions?<\/p>\n

  The larger goal was to be able to have an impact with my research.<\/p>\n

  Q:\u00a0Do you think that there\u2019s anything in your experiences as a teacher that informed the choice of your research?<\/h2>\n

  Olofson:<\/strong> Absolutely. As a teacher I saw all types of kids come through my door and I had\u00a0the direct experience of being able to sometimes make an impact. And then other days you just had to give kids space because stuff had happened. Stuff that I couldn’t\u00a0control.<\/p>\n

  For all students, you can\u2019t be a social worker, and a surrogate parent and a safe person in the neighborhood. You also have to be a teacher.<\/p>\n

  I really saw that. I saw that kids day to day would be different. In a school where I worked with an advisory system, and I got really close with my advisees, and got to hear personal stories from kids, and helped connect kids to services.<\/p>\n

  How am I going to, coming from sort of a traditional teacher background, go and have a conversation about accountability and schoolwork with a\u00a0student knowing that there\u2019s all these other things in his or her life that are going on, right?<\/p>\n

  Being able to add to this way of thinking about kids in the classroom as human beings who\u00a0have these conditions at home, these conditions in their neighborhood, these fundamental conditions and experiences in their childhood, can that\u00a0change the\u00a0conversation of:<\/p>\n

  \u201cThis is an incomplete. I can\u2019t believe this is an incomplete. This was supposed to be done two weeks ago.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

  Can we change that conversation, because that\u2019s not doing a kid any favors and it\u2019s not helping with their learning. It\u2019s not helping with their overall development.<\/p>\n

  Q: What\u2019s the one takeaway that you hope that educators get from learning about your research?<\/h2>\n

  Olofson:<\/strong> It may seem a little\u00a0conventional\u00a0but I think it\u2019s the most important thing and its relationship with kids. It\u2019s just so vital for every kid to have a solid relationship with an adult in their life. You can be that adult.<\/p>\n

  You can\u2019t be that adult for every kid in your classroom and you don\u2019t need to be, but these kids need relationships. Potentially they don\u2019t have strong relationships with adults, and as a teacher you can be another person, another adult in their life who is holding them to unreasonable standards that they don\u2019t understand and that they don\u2019t have the capability because there\u2019s too many things going on for them to meet those standards.<\/p>\n

  Or you can be an adult that they form an interpersonal relationship with. And that they can start to identify with, and find a safe space. And be able to express themselves and be able to like learn and grow and open up.<\/p>\n

  <\/p>\n

   <\/p>\n

  I just think that it\u2019s so important because teachers are right there. They see kids every day.<\/p>\n

  And it\u2019s not just teachers. It\u2019s principals, it\u2019s staff members. Kids just need an adult. They need an adult to identify with.<\/p>\n

  You don\u2019t have to take care of everything in a kid\u2019s life. You just need to be a steady solid understanding and open presence that they can form an interpersonal relationship with. I\u2019ve seen a special educator working with a kid who\u2019s not even on his caseload that he just sees in a hall and like they get lunch sometimes, and having a fundamental change on that kid\u2019s life, right. I\u2019ve seen like random after-school coaches who don\u2019t even have this student in their class, but you just hang around a little bit before practice and after practice and ask them how they\u2019re doing. Ask them if when they go home if there\u2019s going to be somebody there; these types of things can make a really big difference.<\/p>\n

  Yeah, I think that being open to having relationships, to being that solid steady adult in a kid\u2019s life, because it may not even seem like it was that big of a deal to you, but it can make a world of difference to them.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

  Cognitive outcomes vs intersectional traumas We talk with legendary awesome stats guy Mark Olofson — now Dr. Legendary Awesome Stats Guy Mark Olofson — about his research into adverse childhood events and school performance. It’s some pretty important stuff, about how the intersecting traumas that affect students have some long-reaching consequences.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9,200],"tags":[802],"class_list":["post-12235","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-science-saturdays","category-21st-century-classroom","tag-sciencesaturdays"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/tiie.w3.uvm.edu\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12235","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/tiie.w3.uvm.edu\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/tiie.w3.uvm.edu\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tiie.w3.uvm.edu\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tiie.w3.uvm.edu\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=12235"}],"version-history":[{"count":20,"href":"https:\/\/tiie.w3.uvm.edu\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12235\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":12289,"href":"https:\/\/tiie.w3.uvm.edu\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12235\/revisions\/12289"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/tiie.w3.uvm.edu\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=12235"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tiie.w3.uvm.edu\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=12235"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tiie.w3.uvm.edu\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=12235"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}