If you are an educator, you have heard of Achievement Gap, in banking and economics there is the Economic Gap, and there are multiple different types of gaps to describe economic conditions in the stock market, and I’m am sure there are other gaps out there…descriptors used to describe a state of being, where a Gap exists between high and low. In schools achievement gap is used to describe the difference between a cluster of high performance and low performance with regard to student outcomes. Often this measure is used to rate, or define a school. But there is another type of Gap that impacts student achievement and school performance: The Affirmation Gap.
What exactly is the Affirmation gap, and why is this important at school? Students who are looking for love and belonging because they may not be getting this in their homes are looking for affirmation elsewhere. The sense of affiliation that students of past generations got from the family, including experiences in church, scouting, and other community activities is dwindling. I believe it has been dwindling for a while, and is one of the reasons that gang life is appealing for kids who are looking for somewhere to belong…hence Affirmation Gap.
The idea of Affirmation gap is nothing new. Maslow lays this out for teachers in their developmental psychology classes and the hierarchy of needs:
School staff has been trained to recognize when the physiological and safety needs of students have not been met…hello…remember the training you received on how and when to make a report to Child Protective Services? Because yes, in a school setting, students who are hungry, tired, abused or unsafe are also not going to learn. What we are now starting to receive training on is trauma, and the emotional, social and educational impacts it has…including a students’ perception of being loved and belonging in their homes.
You may have seen the Facebook meme about changing attention seeking to connection seeking….Boom. Powerful. Kids are all looking for affirmation and kids who receive it in their homes don’t actively seek it out at school, or in other ways. When kids need attention (affirmation) they will actively seek it, and not always in a positive way. Sometimes this results in student behavior issues in school: they will take what they can get attention wise, good or bad.
One of the most impactful practices an educator can take is to make connections to kids, and affirm them. As educators we need to make purposeful connections with all of our kids. We need to insure that all of our students are having meaningful interactions and feel valued by the adults in the school community.
I recall a little first grade student at a school I was at. Her teacher, a skilled instructor, was concerned about her lack of progress with reading and math. We made an intervention plan, a progress monitoring plan and started making sure that this little girl had small group and one to one intervention daily. After three weeks, we had a progress monitoring meeting, and this little lady hadn’t made any gains. None. Despite working with a highly skilled teacher and a reading specialist, daily, she wasn’t making ANY gains. We doubled down on our efforts. While she wasn’t making any academic gains, still…the time wasn’t wasted because we started to learn a lot about her. Her mom was 20, and at six, she was the oldest of four. We know that she loved to help, and would often be seen wiping tables, sweeping floors, and cleaning. And when she wasn’t cleaning, she was name calling and antagonizing others. After multiple attempts at interventions, and progress monitoring meetings where we discussed her lack of progress, we were at a loss for next steps. We didn’t suspect a disability- she was a bright, articulate and capable student. He teacher said to me, ‘It breaks my heart to see her struggle. She wants praise, and she wants to do well, but for some reason she just can’t’. I didn’t know what to do either. I had pulled out every trick in my arsenal. I told the teacher, ‘ Just love her, hug her at least three times a day, don’t let her see your disappointment, but let her feel your love’. This teacher thought I had lost my mind, I am sure. After a few weeks of hug fest in first grade, the teacher came to me with a little smile and a spelling test that this little girl had passed. Little by little, she started making the gains, and as the connection between her and her teacher grew, she grew stronger as a student. It could be a coincidence. Or it could be that this teacher filled some of her affirmation gaps.
This little girl’s mom wasn’t a bad mom. She wasn’t a neglectful mom, and she loved her daughter. But she was a mom at capacity trying to provide for four small children, alone, when she wasn’t much more than a child herself. In the day to day grind that was her life, those little moments of caring affection were left by the wayside leaving us with a little girl who needed to either be mommies best helper or a little bully in order to have her attention needs met. And this little girl is not an isolated case.
I see young ladies, tweens and teens, looking to have their affirmation Gap filled by the gentlemen they pursue. They are looking for someone to notice them, and give them attention and affirm they are worthy of someone’s affections. Sadly these young ladies are often going about getting their needs met in all the wrong ways, and are at risk for promiscuity …and a whole other can of emotional worms. And often these ladies are struggling in school.
I see the impacts of the affirmation gap every day. Students acting out to get the attention they need, crying out ‘somebody, please, care about me’. One of my favorite kiddos, a boy who as a middle child of five coming from a background of trauma, often acts out in order to be seen. His behavior was very frustrating for his teacher, and the more he acted out, the less she wanted to make a genuine connection with him. He got through the year, (so did she, and bless her because he was not her only student suffering from affirmation Gap, and it is exhausting) and went to a new teacher, who was new to the school, and who affirmed him with genuine interest and care from day one. Tons of small acts of affirmation…every day. We have a different boy on our hands this year. He still has his moments….but he is a kid. They all do. But he went from a struggling student, in our focus 30 group, to a boy making gains.
Moving forward, a practice I do with my staff each year is to list every student in the school on a 3×5 card. We post the student names on the board, and during a staff meeting we all (every person in the building, including the custodian) go put stars by kids names: green for kids we have positive interactions with daily, yellow for positive interactions weekly, blue for positive interactions monthly, red for negative daily interactions, and orange for weekly negative interactions. This is such valuable data. It helps us identify kids we need to be intentional about affirming. It helps us identify kids that may be invisible. It helps us be better practitioners of teaching the whole child by recognizing who needs a positive connection, and then making sure it happens.
Changing the adult mindset from attention seeking to connection seeking is the starting place.
