Raising Resilient Learners | Adina Glickman | Episode 174

Our kids face academic pressure far greater than we experienced as teens or college students. It’s frustrating for parents to navigate this with their kids. Whether your teen is buckling under the pressure, giving up, or doing well but pushing way too hard, you want a better academic experience for your child. Adina Glickman gets that. She’s the co-founder and co-director of the Academic Resilience Consortium, CEO of Affinity Coaching and spent 15 years as director of Stanford University’s Academic Coaching Program. She’s also a mom who’s walked this path with her now adult children. Adina joins Mighty Parenting podcast host Sandy Fowler to explore helping our kids become resilient learners. She shares insights and strategies that help our teenagers and college students respond to failure, learn about themselves as learners, and find academic success.

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A Favorite Quote from the Show: 

The concept of grades contradicts our own words when we tell our children it’s okay to fail.

High Points From Our Conversation on Raising Resilient Learners:

Being a resilient learner is a wholistic concept, not just an academic one.

The 8 pillars of Student Success and Resilient Learning are:

1. Academic Skills—autonomous skills used in the classroom, listening, watching, sitting, participating in discussion
2. Autonomic Skills—autonomous skills used outside the classroom, reading, writing, organizing, metacognitive skills
3. Mindset—intelligence grows with effort
4. Belonging—who am I and where do I belong
   When students have a sense of belonging in school, community, and in the family, they do better in school.
5. Academic Resilience—how students think about and respond to setbacks
   This is often conflated with grit and persistence. However, it’s really about themselves and the situation in which they find themselves.
   A ball bounces easily off a hard surface but not a soft one. The ability of the ball to bounce back has as much to do with the surface as how inflated the ball is. Your child is the ball and the institution is the surface.
6. Understanding the Institution—students need to understand the norms and policies
7. Meaningful Experiences with Technology—think about choices
   What we pay attention to has meaning.
8. Entire Scope of the Human Experience
   Everything in life impacts how our students do their jobs.

The concept of grades contradicts our own words when we tell our children it’s okay to fail.

The danger of over involvement lurks at every corner. Most of a parent’s energy should be in communicated in believing in our kids, in what they’re capable of and their ability to grow into themselves and become wonderful human beings. So much of the message they get at school is they aren’t good enough. They need to know we believe in them even when the school doesn’t.

Instead of parents spending their energy with the school, they should use it to nurture their child’s interests. Don’t focus on whether the interest will get them a job. When you nurture their interests you help them learn and build self-esteem.

Nurturing their interests tells our kids, “Who you are is just fine with me”.

Ask your child, “Are you getting what you need from me as a parent?”

One of the best things we can do is let them teach us.

Tell your teenager parents aren’t perfect. We’re figuring things out but we have 20-30 years of experience to help us.

Also, schools aren’t perfect. Systems are created to help schools function and students are only one part of that.

It’s hard for students to hear their own voices, their own internal monologue. Let them talk and hear themselves.

Help teens learn to ask themselves, “What was my experience?” “What did I think about this?”  “What did I like and not like?” This develops an ability to solve problems based on experience. 

Resources:

Unmotivated Teens Shift Gears When They Find Purpose | Tim Klein | Episode 146

Excelling At Average | Kristen Howerton | Episode 139

Why Kids Struggle In School | Rachael Gallows | Episode 114

Our Guest Adina Glickman:

Adina is the CEO of Affinity Coaching. She is also the co-founder and co-director of the Academic Resilience Consortium, an international association of higher education faculty, professional staff, and students who actively promote academic resilience in higher education. Adina was a psychotherapist before shifting into educational consulting, and was the director of Stanford University’s Academic Coaching Program for 15 years. In addition to being a certified professional coach, she has a Master’s degree in Social Work from New York University and a B.A. in Music from Reed College. You can read her advice column “Dear Adina” at collegiateparent.com. Adina is a mom and step-mom and lives in the San Francisco Bay Area with her husband of 25 years, two turtles, two cats, and maybe someday a dog but only if someone else will walk it.

To learn more or connect with our guest visit https://adinaglickman.com 

Our Sponsor:

Ditch your stress so you can be the parent you want to be and model good stress-relief strategies so your teen can learn Grab Sandy’s free video and Core Strategies Inventory at sandyfowler.com/stress-relief