The Orthodox Conundrum released a podcast today (link here) entitled “Problematic Behaviors in Yeshiva High Schools: Binge Drinking, Gambling and More.” This is based on Rabbi Tully Harcstzark’s and Dr. Rivka Press Schwartz’s original article in the Jewish Link in February 2021 on the same topic.
The podcast covered many interesting topics including but not limited to:
Proactive public health interactions (as opposed to reactive approaches)
The fact that many kids know more than 5 adults who have gotten high or drunk within the past two weeks at the time the survey was given
Many kids gamble (online gambling/ betting and otherwise) and this is something that should be discussed
Parenting programs to make sure parents explicitly discuss their values with their kids around topics like drinking and gambling
But I was most struck by a segment in which our yeshiva day school students noted that we as their teachers do not sufficiently praise them for doing the right thing. Below is a quote from Dr. Rivka Press Schwartz (it appears around minute 21).
I think the thing that was the hardest to see was that there is a protective factor called school reward for pro-social behavior. Pro-social is the opposite of anti-social. And what is that? That’s student’s answer to a question “If I do the right thing, how likely is the school to let me know? How likely is the school to let my parents know?” And for two years in a row, with two different populations of kids, these thousands of kids in our Centrist and Modern Orthodox community rated their schools as less likely to give them positive feedback for doing the right thing than a sampling of American kids as a whole rate their teachers in American schools as a whole. We have yeshiva day schools that are full of incredibly devoted educators who are making this their life’s work because of a sense of mission and values and Torah and mesorah and everything else- and our kids are saying that we are less likely to give them positive feedback when they do the right thing than random American kids from a sampling of public and private schools report that their teachers are.
So aside from the fact that’s a little bit of a kick in the gut as a teacher, and what does that mean, and it’s two years in a row and the data are consistent so we have to take it seriously, so what does that mean? So another partner of ours in this undertaking, Rabbi Yisroel Kaminetsky who is Rosh Yeshiva/ Principal at DRS offered us the following suggestion, which I think is very compelling. Which is that in our community we expect so much of our kids. And those are just baseline expectations. You should show up for minyan. And you should learn and you should do well in school and you should be respectful to your parents and you should do chesed and do extra-curriculars and get into college and, and, and, and. There are so many things that are just baseline expectations. And if kids meet those expectations we don’t say, “You’re amazing, you’re awesome, fantastic, you came to Shachris.” That’s just what you do. You come to Shachris everyday. And daven. And go learn. And go play on a sports team. And then and then and then and then. And if you don’t, that’s somehow a negative thing. And maybe we’re in a community with such high levels of expectation and so many different axes along which we expect things of kids that the kids aren’t feeling like they’re being recognized, appreciated, seen for what they’re doing right and they just feel like they’re being seen maybe more for what they aren’t doing yet or what they aren’t living up to. And how that’s affecting how they feel about us, their educators, how they feel about their schools, how they feel about the whole way of life we’re trying to get then to buy into, and what role that plays in some of these other behaviors.
I think there’s a lot to this. Catching students doing things right is an ideal, and one we need to actively work harder as teachers on achieving. We all need to write home the logs that indicate a student is not doing well; it’s harder to muster the time and energy to write the log indicating a student has done something outstanding. And yet we need to do that. We need to catch students being amazing even when it means it’s taking extra time out of our day to do so, not only because it’s worthwhile for us to acknowledge what they’ve done but also because it is worthwhile for them to realize they have been seen and their work has been valued. Words of affirmation are powerful, and it’s important to build students up. We see hundreds of students so these kinds of comments become repetitive- but for each student, our comment is unique, and it may mean something- it may matter- and that’s why we, and I mean myself here in particular, need to commit to doing more of this.