Jennessa Burks is a fourth‐grade teacher in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Burks fosters higher level thinking among her elementary students by helping them recognize connections, form their own predictions, and synthesize new material. You will find her total embrace of growth mindset language is an excellent introduction to Chapter 9, which is dedicated entirely to “Growing.”

• How do you encourage students to discuss their strengths and weaknesses with one another?

  I think this one gets a little bit tricky for me, especially if we're talking about post‐pandemic learning. Right now we are verbalizing strengths and strengths only when we speak with each other. Academic weaknesses are a tough area right now. The only thing that we're talking about when it comes to addressing struggles and challenges with each other are the social emotional things that are coming out during restorative circles. That just feels like a safe time for students, but they always have the opportunity to opt out.

• Can you explain what a restorative circle looks like?

  Absolutely. I can't take any credit for it. This is something that's done all over the place. Restorative circles bring your class together as a community in a literal circle. You usually have a display at the center. Students start to take ownership of the circle and start to build themselves up to facilitate it. It is a tool for community building and problem solving. A talking tool gets passed around the circle and students have the agency to be able to pass or to share as much as they want. One norm that students have established in my circle this year is that “stories stay and the learning leaves.” So, what we learn from each other's stories can leave our circle, but any specifics we share about our own lives are asked to respectfully stay in the circle. So far, we're having a great time. When it comes to verbalizing strengths, we praise all different qualities, academic and social. I encourage students to share their own strengths and also recognize the strengths in other students and encourage them. We've kind of banned negative language. We never say “That person is just not a science person” because that's not really true. Maybe they're not doing great at science right now. We turned the conversation to ask, “What are they doing really well at? And why?” A lot of the praise consists of comments like, “I notice that person is trying really hard and I know they've practiced a lot on their own.” I think prior to the pandemic, this is something that students might have already had a grasp on without the restorative circle. But, we're noticing that things are different now because they have not necessarily practiced those skills for a year and a half. The last time my kiddos were in school was second grade and now they're in fourth. It's a big jump.

• How do you implement meaningful practice in your fourth‐grade classroom?

  When I think of meaningful practice, I think of students having the chance to confer with each other, whether it's that they've worked independently and then they're getting a chance to share their products or if they are collaboratively working together. I also think of students being given feedback from me or from peers. I think that praise and feedback helps them make meaning of their work. I often explain the “why.” We'll be practicing a task and I'll pause to say, “This is the task at hand, but let me tell you why this is gonna be important and why this is going to be helpful for you.” For instance, we're working on writing narratives right now. We were talking about what we would add into an introduction to hook our reader and why it's so important to hook a reader. We read some nonexamples of stories that we just wanted to put down because they didn't capture our attention. I think nonexamples help students make meaning and understand what their practice should be focused on. They're not just doing a task, they get to see the bigger picture of why developing the skill is valuable.

• And when you're giving this reinforcement and feedback, what kind of language are you using?

  The more specific you can be, the better. We don't say things like, “Good job! That looks great!” Instead, we would say, “I love how you persevered through the story problem. It had multiple steps that were really challenging and you didn't give up.” When students are having a difficult time with writing, I would say, “I really loved that you asked for help and then you were able to come up with five small moments to choose from because I know generating ideas can be a really difficult task.” I think it's important to provide specifics for students when we give positive praise and acknowledge times when things can feel tricky. We are a heavy praise classroom. I also praise them for giving me grace. I appreciate when they help me gather my thought process. I always praise them when the day gets really hectic and they maintain their composure, or for being flexible when the school has to change our schedule. As a result, I think they're more apt to praise each other and me.

• How do you create a safe environment for students to find their own voices and take risks?

  I think a big part of creating a space where students can speak up and take risks is maintaining a routine of predictability. Students have to know when it's okay to talk and when it's not. They also have to learn what language to use and how to be kind to one another. If they're worried that they're going to say the wrong thing or hurt someone's feelings or get in trouble for what comes out of their mouths, then they're not going to speak. Another thing is, I think you have to model and you have to give them the space to feel comfortable enough to correct, even you. I often give examples of things that I have flubbed up with throughout the day or said wrong. I make errors intentionally in my spelling and in my calculations so that the students get practice with correcting me in polite ways. Right now, we're doing phonics in fourth grade for the first time. It's a brand‐new program. We got a new curriculum and I was transparent with my students. I said, “Hey, friends, I've never taught this before. It's a very big curriculum for me to learn and there will be times that I make mistakes.” And they said, “It's okay.” They've been really great at rating me at the end. I got stuck one of the days and I said, “I think I need your help. How do we do this?” They said, “Miss Burks, it's a productive struggle. You can figure it out.” They threw my own words back at me.

• How do you teach synthesis at the elementary level?

  When we're trying to teach students skills, we have to move beyond seeing those skills in isolation. If the skills that we need students to learn are making text connections, students need to be able to make connections constantly between what they are learning and real life. For me, I make a lot of connections throughout the day and we even have a hand signal to show that I'm making a connection. I use hand signals as nonverbal cues for friends all the time. We've got a little hand signal that I can do that will demonstrate there's a connection to be made with something. We make connections across the curriculum. There's a lot of science and social studies content that gets pulled into literacy, and there's some science that gets pulled into math. We make connections to stories, events, or different occurrences that have happened in our community or in our families. We welcome them, even though sometimes the conversations get a little long. I think students need to be able to practice the skill itself before they can implement it. With higher level texts the connections may not feel normalized because now we're asking them to activate many different skills at the same time. If we're not making connections on a regular basis and then we're asking them to read at a deeper level to make inferences and to synthesize as well as write a response—they are going to struggle. And we know that all those skills require different approaches and we're asking kids to merge them altogether. We have to be able to practice these skills constantly if we want our students to become synthesizers.