Comments on: Simple writing exercise helps break vicious cycle that holds back black students

By: DrNHMc, Edu

DrNHMc, Edu — Fri, 12 Aug 2011 14:33:53 +0000

Unfortunately, issues relative to academic gaps, student self-esteem, education value and the stereotypical attitudes some teachers have about urban/public school student performance are also grounded in literacy, math, and science student performance—not just writing.

The 15-minute write is a very good brain start-up tool for children of all grades and races and certainly not a Black student vs. White student fix-it. I have used it. Raising the bar with students doing more in depth writing and having our Black President are not the only solutions as this article suggests.

It’s hard for me think about academic improvement soley for Blacks when US urban & public schools (which people of color and whites attend) are unequal in so many capacities—books, computer access, quality teachers, curriculum, student expectations, district grade cards, sociocultural backgrounds, education values…and so on and so on.

We should be advocates for equal education for all children…

By: From positive self-esteem to positive other-esteem and learning « Etherless Learning

Fri, 18 Mar 2011 16:49:05 +0000

[...] “Simple writing exercise helps break vicious cycle that holds back black students”[2]: In 2007, [Geoffrey Cohen from the University of Colorado] showed that a simple 15-minute [...]

By: New study: writing about test anxiety improves test performance « The ACT Blog

Tue, 15 Feb 2011 03:32:23 +0000

[...] http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/notrocketscience/2009/04/16/simple-writing-exercise-helps-break-vi… [...]

By: TL

TL — Tue, 13 Apr 2010 07:05:07 +0000

Dumb question: “During the years of middle-school, all students tend to show a drop in performance, regardless of ethnic background” — I assume this refers simply to a drop in GPA, but does that really mean anything? e.g. maybe middle schoolers are simply graded more harshly, or maybe the curriculum is more difficult, or whatever … is there actually a meaningful way to compare student “performance” across different ages?

By: joel

joel — Thu, 28 May 2009 01:53:29 +0000

@Dominic Ebacher: “Isn’t is possible that merely the inclusion in the study – that knowing that someone cared enough about them to monitor their progress was enough to give them the boost?”
That doesn’t account for the difference between the two groups writing the essays.

By: wybory sondaze demokracja

wybory sondaze demokracja — Fri, 24 Apr 2009 12:58:48 +0000

I wonder if it works on children of different background as well. Still if a child is from poor family their self-estime is lower, they have lower grades and teachers don’t pay so much attention to them… May this 15-minute-long writing exercise be the solution?

By: Dominic Ebacher

Dominic Ebacher — Tue, 21 Apr 2009 00:57:05 +0000

Isn’t is possible that merely the inclusion in the study – that knowing that someone cared enough about them to monitor their progress was enough to give them the boost? What about more people simply caring about children, rather than cramming their head full of useless nonsense so they can be good little consumers of either color or gender?
Perhaps the problem isn’t with the students, but with the system that teaches them: And rather than seeking to modify the system to make it better we need to consider having a different system all together – when will we realize that some things just don’t work for people?

By: Nigel

Nigel — Sun, 19 Apr 2009 01:55:15 +0000

Don’t most school kids get asked to write an essay like this sometime anyway? I mean, teachers have to keep coming up with different writing assignments and something like “write about something that is important to you” (or whatever, along these lines, they were actually asked to do) is a pretty obvious choice for a topic which might stand a chance of getting the students involved. If this effect is real, I think there must be more to the cause than has been made apparent.

By: MattK

MattK — Sat, 18 Apr 2009 04:59:59 +0000

Medical trials can be ended early if the treatment provides a clear benefit and this becomes obvious early on in the study. The HPV vaccine Gardasil is one example where the trial was stopped so that that control group could receive the vaccination.

It’s unlikely that a one-time 15-minute exercise would achieve the maximum possible reduction in self-stereotyping

There were follow up “booster” exercises.

By: arensb

arensb — Fri, 17 Apr 2009 22:59:07 +0000

It occurs to me that in real life, the act of writing essays about things that matter to oneself is called “blogging”.