Thursday, August 20, 2026

Kids and Screen Time: What Kids Actually Say

From the Cool Cat Teacher Blog by Vicki Davis

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How do we help this next generation with their relationship to screens, to each other, and to the adults in their lives? That’s the question we’re digging into today. Betty Ray talks about rites of passage — those moments that help children move from one stage to the next. She also has a genius way of working with children so they gradually take on more responsibility with technology.

Lawrence C. Harris is a 20-year-old who looks back on his time in high school just a couple of years ago. He rose from a traumatic childhood to become successful rather than a statistic, and now he helps other kids move forward. He has tips for reaching kids like him — the ones who don’t act out, but need our attention all the same.

Finally, Luddite clubs and screen-free activities are growing fast, and — gasp — here’s one for you: bridge! Yes, bridge clubs are growing, and Patty Tucker shares how the ACBL Educational Foundation, a nonprofit, will help you get the cards, the supplies, and the curriculum you need to teach bridge, reinforce math concepts, and have fun in your classroom. We’re focusing on screen-free connections and reaching kids this week.

A note before you listen: Lawrence C. Harris speaks openly about abuse in his childhood home. His account is not graphic, and he frames it toward recovery and helping other young people — but if you have little ears in the car, listen first. If anything in this episode touches something you or a child you love is carrying, please talk with a counselor, therapist, social worker, faith leader, or doctor.

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Resources from the Show

Topic-specific resource links

Bridge is a fun activity, and the ABCL has an ABCL School Bridge Program that includes teacher stipends, free textbooks, and alignment with math standards. Some classrooms have a “bridge day,” and the kids come to school and play bridge at the beginning of class. Some teachers even say kids aren’t late that day! See the ABCL Teacher’s Lounge for more information.

People and ideas referenced

Parents, Betty has free resources for signal checks that can help you with technology and children. I recommend this as a way to work with your child and technology use.

  • STARS — Betty Ray’s model: Safety, Trust, Autonomy, Responsibility, Service. She mentions a download on her site; ask her for the direct link.
  • Signal Check — Betty’s red / yellow / green system for device privileges
  • Rites of passage — the anthropological frame underneath Betty’s whole approach
  • The George Lucas Educational Foundation and Edutopia — where Betty and I first met
  • Henry Salas — the artist, paralyzed from the neck down, who paints holding a brush in his mouth
  • American Contract Bridge League (ACBL) — Patty’s Hall of Fame, Class of 2019
  • Atlanta Junior Bridge — founded by Patty in 2006 to offer bridge to children free
  • Common Sense Media — the source of the screen-time survey data the AAP reports

Key Takeaways for Teachers

From Betty Ray

  • We hand kids a phone the way we’d never hand them car keys. Betty’s point isn’t that phones are evil — it’s that we give a twelve-year-old an object engineered to hold attention and then act surprised when it does.
  • The phone isn’t competing with nothing. It’s competing with identity, belonging, purpose, and agency. Those are real developmental needs. If the adults don’t build a place for them on purpose, the phone will.
  • STARS gives you the sequence: Safety, then Trust, then Autonomy, then Responsibility, then Service. Autonomy and responsibility slosh back and forth — Betty calls it the messy middle, and she means it kindly.
  • Signal Check is the one you can start tonight. Red is off limits. Green needs no adult oversight. Yellow is the workspace where a kid earns something by demonstrating a skill. Kids argue less because red is just red. Download them.

From Lawrence C. Harris

Lawrence speaks to teens. I like having student voices on the show and encouraging beginners. He’s overcome so much and is working hard to help kids. I think listening to those recently out of the classroom can help us stay grounded as we hear their voices and learn from them. I like to have lunch or breakfast with my former students and hear what they have to say about college, careers, and life. I’ve often gone back and reworked what I’m teaching when I find gaps in what they say they needed to know. School principals often do this too, interviewing graduates after their freshman year or after several years of college. Elementary teachers often talk to their students after they move on to middle school. Consider: how are you listening to your students who have finished your class to change what you’re doing today?

  • Watch for the student who is always fine. Lawrence didn’t act out. He got quieter — and he started performing happiness, because it distracted him from what was actually happening.
  • There is a list of things Lawrence said were not helpful when he was struggling, and many of us have said one: “it’s not that bad,” “you’re just a teenager,” “you’re just being emotional,” “just cheer up.” To a kid in pain, they might translate as your feelings don’t count.
  • The sentence that works takes four seconds. “I’m here for you. If you want to tell me, you can, but I’m not going to make you.” It respects the kid’s autonomy instead of demanding disclosure. I used this just this week with an adult, and wow, it was helpful.
  • Start smaller than you think. His advice to a struggling kid is to make the bed. That often makes a big difference and gives a sense of accomplishment. Other authors on habits also state this as a starting point.
  • His one ask of busy teachers: greet kids, and let one volunteer share something good from the weekend. Rotate who. It gives them something to look forward to.

From Patty Tucker

  • Bridge is a partnership game, so cooperation is the mechanic — not a bonus. Two kids have to work together to get anywhere, including kids who’d never have chosen each other.
  • You cannot quit mid-hand. When it goes wrong you move to plan B and finish. Patty thinks that lesson matters more than the math.
  • You do not have to know how to play. The curriculum was written for a teacher who has never touched a bridge hand — scripts, timing, objectives, and video of every lesson.
  • It’s free. All of it. Student workbooks, teacher manual, videos, and the playing supplies, funded through the ACBL and the ACBL Educational Foundation.

About the Guests

Betty Ray

And adolescence is the time to be awkward.

Betty Ray, Founder, Boss Battle Labs
Betty Ray
Betty Ray

Former Director of Innovation at the George Lucas Educational Foundation, Betty Ray is the founder and director of Boss Battle Labs, a consultancy that works with schools and families to imbue young people with the skills and mindsets for a healthy digital and real-world adolescence. Combining education and psychology research with the universal structures of traditional coming-of-age rites of passage, she created the STARS model as a culturally responsive, trauma-informed approach to designing a modern rite of passage that fosters healthy development in diverse populations of young people. Betty is also a DJ and lives with her teenage daughter and two fluffy cats in a cohousing community in Emeryville, CA.

Lawrence C. Harris

I’m here for you. If you want to tell me, you can, but I’m not going to make you.

Lawrence C. Harris, youth speaker and teen author
Lawrence C. Harris
Lawrence C. Harris

Lawrence C. Harris is a youth speaker who helps teens and young adults believe in themselves, think differently about their future, and make better choices. Growing up, Lawrence faced serious challenges. Those experiences led him to start speaking so other young people would know they are not alone and that their past does not have to decide where their life goes.

Patty Tucker

You can’t quit in the middle of the hand. You have to do plan B and finish the hand.

Patty Tucker, Director, Jump Start Bridge
Patty Tucker
Patty Tucker

Having played bridge since age 11, it’s no wonder that Patty is passionate about bridge! Patty is the founder of Atlanta Junior Bridge, which was created in 2006 to offer bridge to children for free. An ACBL Best Practices Teacher/Trainer and American Bridge Teacher Association Master Teacher, Patty brings over 30 years of experience to the program as a teacher and a writer. Patty was inducted into the ACBL Hall of Fame in 2019.

Screen-Free and Reaching Kids Resources for Teachers, Administrators, and Families

DISCUSSION GUIDE

I ended this show asking you to go have conversations — with your friends, with other parents, with teachers, and with your own children. So here are the questions. Two sets, because the room changes the question.

For a staff meeting or teacher team meeting

  1. Lawrence didn’t act out. He got quieter — and he started pretending to be happy, because it gave him a distraction. Who in your building is “always fine”? Say a name to yourself. Challenge yourself to check in with that student this week.
  2. Lawrence’s sentence takes four seconds: “I’m here for you. If you want to tell me, you can, but I’m not going to make you.” What are other things that you say when you feel students are struggling? Share what has worked (or hasn’t) with your small group.
  3. He also listed what not to say — “it’s not that bad,” “you’re just a teenager,” “you’re just being emotional,” “just cheer up.” What are some things you think should not be said to someone struggling? Have you overheard kids talk about this? Share with your small group.
  4. As schools work to have meaningful screentime, they are also working to add “facetime” (not the app, like actually talking to people). Bridge and Luddite clubs are examples from this show but are there other examples you’ve seen or talked about or your school already does that you can expand to help kids develop skills?
  5. Patty’s teacher noticed kids stopped being tardy on Tuesdays because Tuesday was bridge. What kind of screen-free activity could you do? (Note that in our math episode last week, they gave us 19 screen-free math fluency activities, some of them, yes, with cards!) Share ideas.

For families — at the dinner table

A caution first: Lawrence talks openly about abuse in his home. If you’re replaying this for younger children, listen first. For older kids, he’s exactly the voice they’ll believe. As always, if you’re dealing with trauma, seek out help from your therapist, mental health professional, or faith counselor. These questions are not clinical but you are encouraged to adapt them for your home.

  1. Pew asked teenagers how they feel when they don’t have their phone. Nearly three out of four said happy. Does that match how you feel? Why do you think that is?
  2. Betty says adolescence is the time to be awkward — that being awkward is basically the job. What’s something you didn’t try this year because you were worried about how it would look?
  3. What’s one thing that used to be a big deal to grow up into — a license, a first date, staying home alone — that doesn’t feel like a big deal anymore?
  4. If we made a red / yellow / green list for screens in this house, what would you put in green? What would you argue about?
  5. Who is someone you’d go to if you were having a hard week? What would you want them to say?
  6. Are there any things that people say to you that don’t help when you’re upset.

GO DEEPER — THE RESEARCH BEHIND THIS EPISODE

  • American Academy of Pediatrics — Average Amounts of Screen Time (citing Common Sense Media research). This is where the numbers in the show come from: 1 hour 3 minutes a day under age 2, 2 hours 8 minutes for ages 2–4, 3 hours 38 minutes for ages 5–8, five and a half hours for ages 8–12, and 8 hours 39 minutes for teens ages 13–18. Boys run higher than girls as they get older — 9 hours 16 minutes versus 8 hours 2 minutes in the teen years.
  • Pew Research Center — How Teens and Parents Approach Screen Time. Nearly 74% of teens say they feel happy at least sometimes when they don’t have their phone. 72% say they feel peaceful. About a third have already tried to cut back on their own. Surveyed September–October 2023 with 1,453 U.S. teens ages 13–17.
  • Stateline — States Move to Limit Classroom Screen Time. Four states passed classroom screen-time limits in 2026: Iowa capped digital instruction at 60 minutes a day for K-5, plus Utah, Tennessee, and Alabama. Los Angeles Unified is barring instructional screen time before second grade. Useful if you’re the person who has to explain to a board why this is coming.
  • The Luddite Club. Started by students at Edward R. Murrow High School in Brooklyn and now running more than thirty chapters across high schools and colleges — including Stockholm and New South Wales, Australia. The chapter directory is worth showing your students.
  • Daily Inter Lake — Tournament Bridges Generations. Local coverage of the Kalispell, Montana school tournament Patty describes: three days in April 2026 at the Flathead Valley Bridge Center, hundreds of sixth, seventh, and eighth graders. Teacher Michelle Steele on what the game builds: “It’s long-term planning, you have to think the whole time, track patterns, notice small details, remember what cards were played.”

MORE Free Resources on Screens, Attention, and Reaching Kids

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Read the full transcript — See the Kid In Front of You, Not the Screen (S7E5)

This transcript was generated using AI and has been reviewed by humans for accuracy. Minor errors or artifacts may remain but I worked my best to find any issues with the transcript as I reviewed the show. – Vicki

Vicki Davis (00:00)
Welcome back to Cool Cat Teacher Talk, Remarkable Educators and Parents. Today we’re going to encourage all of us to see the kid right in front of us, not the screen.

Announcer (00:13)
Ever wondered how remarkable teaching happens? Find out right now at Cool Cat Teacher Talk with award-winning teacher Vicki Davis. Get insights from top educators, tech tips, and inspiration to elevate your teaching.

Vicki Davis (00:25)
I heard a grandfather the other day tell his grandson, Hey, come over to my house and I can watch you play on your phone. Okay. I know that was a joke.

Vicki Davis (00:36)
But screen time is not a joke these days. So what kind of screen time do kids have? And when we say screen, we mean TV, video games, phone, iPad, all those things. So the American Academy of Pediatrics says that children under age of two average one hour and three minutes of media use a day. Now, that’s only three minutes of video games, but still.

Vicki Davis (00:59)
The same survey found that children aged two through four years old average two hours and eight minutes of media use a day, while five to eight year olds average three hours and thirty-eight minutes. Okay, so we can see this pattern.

Vicki Davis (01:13)
When kids are aged eight through twelve, they average five and a half hours a day on screens.

Vicki Davis (01:19)
And teens aged 14 through 17 average about eight hours and 39 minutes of media use a day. That is a lot. Interestingly, our boys tend to use screens a bit more than girls as they get older. So understandably, there is a pushback on screen time. And even at ISTE this summer, everybody was saying, okay, not all screen time is created equal. Can we have students be

Vicki Davis (01:46)
producers and creators and not just consumers. So there was an article in Politico in June twenty twenty six and it said that people from both political parties in the US are agreeing on this, that screen time needs to go down for kids and they’re working to try to create distraction free classrooms. Now I’m not one to say that it always needs to be paper and pen, because certainly there’s some things that technology can help us do. But this show

Vicki Davis (02:05)
is not about that. I would argue that with the most addictive algorithms in history, if children are off screens at school, then they will come home, go right back to their screens, ignore their families, and still struggle. Screen time is an issue for all of us, and so is helping our children grow up healthy and strong.

Vicki Davis (02:34)
Now, even kids know this is a struggle. Pew Research asked teenagers about what happens when they don’t have their phone. Three out of four, nearly 74% said that when they don’t have their phone, at least sometimes, that they feel happy. 72% say they feel peaceful. And one-third of kids admit that they have tried

Vicki Davis (02:57)
to cut back on their phone use themselves. Kids know they’re happier with less addictive algorithm in their lives. They might just need the adults to see past our own screens

Vicki Davis (03:11)
So, on today’s show, we’re going to talk about how to see the children right in front of us and what we can do to reach kids and improve their world this week. We’re going to hear from Betty Ray about screen time and helping kids grow up healthy and strong. Then we’ll talk to a 20-year-old motivational speaker, Lawrence C. Harris, who

Vicki Davis (03:38)
Helps kids learn how to make good decisions to get their lives on track, even if things are tough at home. Finally, we’ll talk about a growing trend of offline clubs, Luddite clubs, and yes, bridge clubs. Bridge clubs are back and that old-fashioned card game is becoming a new trend. So first on the show, we’re going to talk to Betty Ray.

Vicki Davis (04:03)
She and I met when she worked with the George Lucas Foundation in Edutopia. And she now studies something ancient, rites of passage. And she helps parents know how to apply some of these ancient rites of passage today.

Vicki Davis (04:19)
Here’s Betty Ray.

Announcer (04:21)
Cool Cat Teacher Talk with award-winning teacher Vicki Davis.

Vicki Davis (04:24)
Hey everyone, we’re talking today with Betty Ray. She’s the founder of Boss Battle Labs and the creator of Pandora’s Way. I met Betty when she was the director of innovation at the George Lucas Educational Foundation. When she was there, she studied something ancient, rites of passage, and asked a modern question How do we help kids grow up well?

Vicki Davis (04:53)
In this digital age. So Betty, thanks for coming on the show.

Betty Ray (04:55)
Thank you, Vicki It’s a real honor to be here.

Vicki Davis (04:57)
Let’s talk about, rites of passage and rituals. Let’s talk about that so that we don’t, have any misconceptions about what you’re thinking here.

Betty Ray (05:06)
I’m glad you asked it at the beginning because rites of passage and rituals have been embedded in human societies since the Stone Age. They’ve taken quite a circuitous journey through all of the different eons of humanity. And some are really detours and some are in a lot of marketing. So what I really am talking about is an archetypal human practice that has been in.

Betty Ray (05:35)
Bedded in human societies, And they’ve got some really important psychosocial roles in communities. Ritual it’s a repeated practice within a community that is designed with intention and focus that enables a group to really come together to teach, to impart wisdom,

Betty Ray (05:47)
So ritual is a a huge practice throughout cultures, grand unifier. We don’t have a lot of rituals in our society anymore, although we certainly do have some. Rites of passage is a subset of ritual, and these are more one-off events in a person’s life. So they mark a giant life transition. So in our society we have weddings, we have graduation, we have funerals.

Betty Ray (06:11)
They highlight in our culture the celebration, the time together, the connectedness. But the ones that I’m really interested in are the rites of passage for adolescents, turning from a childhood into adolescent into adulthood. And I I think those are really fascinating and different than what we have in our society because there’s some elements that we don’t really include that have historically been included. Rites of passage.

Betty Ray (06:34)
Traditionally, we were a way that humans educated their kids, prepared them for life in the society. They marked the transition, but built skills and mindsets throughout a set of activities, So they were building the skills that were going to be needed in society. So we think of that as school, right? That’s how we build our society. In so doing, there is a shift in identity.

Betty Ray (06:56)
A kid goes from a child to an adolescent. There’s a recognition in community that this child has now moved into adulthood. And I think this is where it really differs from school, is that there’s a tripartite or a three-part structure. And that structure is designed to put kids in a very challenging, role where they have to use the skills that they develop they’ve built over time.

Betty Ray (07:24)
And and create something. So we see this in, things like capstone projects. Overnights where kids go out into the woods or they had, talk to a an educator here in Oakland who had kids go on an overnight at their camp at their track at the school. Do something that pushes them past their comfort zone and they come back to the so-called normal world and and reflect on what they’ve learned and how they’ve

Betty Ray (07:45)
Leveled up into adulthood. That’s the real specific definition I like to use because it really catalyzes not just cognitive learning, but there’s a sense of identity and purpose, belonging, a sense of agency, these really important developmental milestones that all the research tells us that people need to be able to feel like they can be contributing members of society.

Vicki Davis (08:05)
What kind of things are you recommending to families? With because I know in my family we have some rites of passage, you know, families and schools to help children grow up into adults and be contributing members of society.

Betty Ray (08:11)
Yeah,

Betty Ray (08:18)
It’s a really important question. And of course, in our very diverse and complex society, there isn’t really a one size fits all approach. We can’t say every kid has to do this one thing there’s just not something that’s going to resonate with all kids and with all families. Not all families can do all things. So my recommendation, I have a model that I use. That creates a a student-centered approach that can really be designed for the community. And and it really is a a framework. I know my educators like not more frameworks. But I think it’s a valuable one because it invites educators and parents, first of all, to work together, which I think in my work I was at Edutopia for a while. I saw it there, but more importantly, as a parent, I saw it, as a parent of a teenager where

Betty Ray (09:08)
There’s this giant white space between school over here and home over here, But I I really want to encourage us all to to find ways to collaborate with our families and to find educator family overlap. Because that to have that larger container for kids to explore some of these ideas feels really important.

Betty Ray (09:15)
Because it

Betty Ray (09:22)
Is a community experience.

Vicki Davis (09:23)
I was listening to a grandfather the other day tell his grandson, Hey, come over to my house so I can watch you on your phone. And sometimes it feels that way. We get all good together and everybody’s on their phone,

Vicki Davis (09:36)
So Betty, you have a framework.

Vicki Davis (09:38)
With rites of passage as you use it with devices.

Betty Ray (09:40)
Yeah, so I got into it through devices, but what I realized, kids really need scaffolding with devices, a lot of us parents, I was guilty of this myself. Hand the kid a phone at a certain age, here you go, off you go, have fun. You’re a digital native, you know what to do. And of course, that is like handing the keys t of a car to a kid and being like, Have it, go ahead and drive on.

Betty Ray (10:04)
They need a little bit more scaffolding than that. And so I sort of reverse engineered what I would have liked as the parent of a kid to so that I could give them some skills to be able to have a healthy relationship with this thing. That was the genesis of what I call STARS,

Betty Ray (10:18)
And it starts with the idea that kids need to feel safe in their homes. They need to feel safe with their educators with their in their schools. So prioritizing safety, building trusting relationships.

Betty Ray (10:31)
S stands for safety. And that is where a kid feels a sense of safety, that they can trust the adults around them, that they’ll have their back, that their community is strong. The second is trust. Trust is in the nature of the relationships that they feel that they can come to an adult or an older mentor, teacher, or another member of the community so that they can share their experience.

Betty Ray (10:55)
My experience parenting an adolescent is that sometimes they don’t want to go talk to mom or dad. Like they need to have a trusted advisor or somebody else that they can really lean on as they differentiate and become independent. The third one is autonomy. Once there’s safety and trust, autonomy is where kids practice using a device, they practice something that they care about, they practice advocating for something that they believe in.

Betty Ray (11:08)
Responsibility is R. That is the phase where they start to show that they can take care of things on their own. Now, autonomy and responsibility is a fluid system, right? There’s going to be autonomy and then they’re going to be like, whoops, I didn’t get responsibility. This is a little bit of the messy middle that we talk about in a rite of passage where I don’t really know yet if I’m am I an adult? Am I an adult? Am I trustworthy? I don’t know. Back to trust. This can be a messy.

Betty Ray (11:50)
Process, but it’s really important because here is where kids are learning how to identify who they are and what they care about and what they what brings them meaning and purpose, who are their people, who’s you know, how where do they belong? And how can they find a sense of of confidence and voice? So I love this little messy middle of of the responsibility and autonomy soup. And then finally, as many of us in education are

Betty Ray (12:15)
Conscious of is that the role of service is the S and how to bring that learning into whether it’s their community or to mentor a younger kid in their school or a younger relative, so that they’re doing things for not just themselves and for their own well-being, but to give back to their communities. This model is, I think, an an important redesign of this idea of a rite of passage that takes into consideration.

Betty Ray (12:41)
Modern context because we can find in any community something of service. In any community we can find some “what’s responsibility,” but it will look different in my, California town than Georgia than in, you know, England or, Asia. So that’s

Vicki Davis (12:48)
Mm-hmm.

Betty Ray (12:56)
The sort of the idea is to create something that could be scalable and can be replicable without being like, this is the rite of passage that some,

Betty Ray (13:05)
Crazy woman in California is talking about for

Vicki Davis (13:05)
Yeah.

Betty Ray (13:09)
Whatever. Like I want it to be really scalable and and

Vicki Davis (13:11)
Let’s look at this autonomy and responsibility. I’ve seen a lot more parents take a phased approach to the digital devices. For example, they may say, Hey, when you get in middle school, you’re gonna be able to have a phone to be able to call me after practice. But the moment you get home, it’s gonna go in a basket. We’re not loading anything on there. It’s just phone, text message, that’s it. And then they might, give a little bit more

Vicki Davis (13:35)
Autonomy and responsibility with the parent oversight with the goal that eventually by the time they’re a senior in high school that they are able to, responsibly have that device. Are you seeing that approach to rites of passage that people are actually saying, okay, here’s this device, but I’m not going to give you full access to it yet. Are you seeing that happen or do you have other recommendations for those who are struggling with

Vicki Davis (14:01)
What do I do with this really powerful tool that I used to be in the cell phone business. Parents were buying phones to keep their kids, quote, safe. Well, now the biggest danger is actually the phone itself,

Betty Ray (14:14)
I’m really heartened to hear you say that because I do think that when parents can spend the time and to really scaffold that learning, to really gradually introduce these different aspects of the phone to their kids, that is how they learn. Because it’s so compelling and it offers such

Betty Ray (14:38)
A messy and complex alternative to d identity, belonging, purpose, agency, these important developmental milestones can just get usurped on the phone if there isn’t someone in the real world saying, okay, here’s what is important for you to know about this. Here’s what, trying it out and then still maintaining their balance with real world, commitments, responsibilities, relationships.

Betty Ray (14:57)
And so on. So I am really heartened to know that. I do see parents really struggle with that. It’s hard because you don’t know what the kids always need. Parents aren’t educators, so there isn’t a sense of how to teach it even. And parents struggle with their own device addiction and needs So it’s a messy situation.

Vicki Davis (15:16)
Well, as you think about rites of passage, okay, so you’re gonna laugh at this, but my mom always

Betty Ray (15:19)
Ha.

Vicki Davis (15:22)
Said I had to be fifteen and three quarters to go on my first date. Well,

Betty Ray (15:22)
Mm-hmm.

Vicki Davis (15:22)
’cause she was fifteen and three quarters. So where that came from, I don’t know, And one thing that I’m observing quite a bit and and parents are saying is that kids

Vicki Davis (15:38)
Are not going on their first dates because of the phone. There’s so many things we may be blaming on the phone. I’m not entirely sure it’s all the phone. Society is different. But, there are these things that, used to be part of your rite of passage.

Vicki Davis (15:48)
You know, I used to run out and get my license like right when I could. And I know kids that delay two and three years getting their

Betty Ray (15:52)
Yeah.

Vicki Davis (15:56)
License. These all feel like rites of passage, but now that you’re talking about it, my mind is turning and I’m like, we really do have a problem with rights of passage in our society, don’t we?

Betty Ray (16:06)
I a hundred percent. There is the sense that the rights of passage, the driver’s license. I’ve talked to so many eighteen, twenty-year-olds who still don’t have their license. They take Uber, they don’t care, or just ride their bike, or they don’t leave the house. They work from home, Like it’s so interesting how those symbols of freedom, your first date, there’s a whole other sort of school of thought that I’ve been recently

Betty Ray (16:29)
Diving into which is that a lot of young people don’t do risky things because they don’t want another kid filming them and have it show up on TikTok.

Betty Ray (16:37)
That’s like speaking up in class, making mistakes in class. That’s doing something that could conceivably be awkward. And adolescence is the time to be awkward. That’s sort of their job, you know? It’s trying things out and learning and failing and trying again

Betty Ray (16:52)
So I do think that we need different kinds of rites of passage that will enable kids to have that state change, you know, that identity shift that really says, I am now competent and confident in the things that I choose and I’m learning and that I care about. We have a lot of problems in the world and kids need to know that they can do something about them. And rights of passage can help catalyze those shifts in

Betty Ray (17:00)
Self concept.

Vicki Davis (17:08)
Yeah. I

Vicki Davis (17:16)
One of my children said, you know, I don’t like to ask people out on dates because there’s a trend of girls filming guys, asking them out on dates and humiliating them and then posting it and it’s like,

Vicki Davis (17:28)
All that awkward that you and I probably live through. I live through a lot of awkward, you know, and I saw guys

Betty Ray (17:32)
Same.

Vicki Davis (17:36)
Ask girls out and it didn’t work. And then they got better at it, when they got older. But I you know, I hope that phones being put out of places like schools. We had a great school year at my school because we we didn’t let phones come in the school anymore. And

Betty Ray (17:46)
Good work.

Vicki Davis (17:57)
And it was great. It it changed the dynamic in many, many positive ways. But of course then, you know, when it came to quote promposals, a lot of more elaborate than my

Vicki Davis (18:02)
Husband when he asked me to marry him.

Vicki Davis (18:04)
And for some time I’ve kind of felt like, are these kids living life or they feel like they have to be on a show all the time. And that’s a lot of pressure

Betty Ray (18:04)
Yeah, I think that’s true.

Vicki Davis (18:14)
To put on just a kid.

Betty Ray (18:15)
It really is. I have to say I’m really heartened by movements like there’s in New York City, there’s a school, I I think it’s in Brooklyn, they have a Luddite club and it’s the kids,

Betty Ray (18:26)
The students started it and they all carry flip phones they are really against the whole way that smartphones are

Betty Ray (18:36)
Designed to capture and and hold their attention. They’re looking at it from this like hold up here lens. Why do these companies get to command our attention? And it’s great on so many levels. They’re critically thinking about where their attention is going. They’re spending time in person. They’re looking at corporate malfeasance, and like, wait a second, there’s court cases that are, this is really not appropriate for young kids. And then I just discovered this little

Betty Ray (18:54)
Sam for little, they’re not little, they’re awesome. They’re middle school kids and they have a band and they’re singing and they’re super punk rock and they’re singing about AI and like how they don’t want to have AI in their lives. Like they’re just taking a stand. Like, we don’t want this. I don’t remember the lyrics, and I’m really terrible at that anyway. But it was really great. I know, right? I

Vicki Davis (19:12)
Well, good luck with not having AI in your life because you can’t search Google without it, right?

Betty Ray (19:18)
Know. But I think it’s just that they’re making a stand and making art.

Betty Ray (19:22)
Together in a basement with their guitars and their music. But I think it’s a change from sitting in your bedroom, having a relationship. I talked to one mom whose daughter fell in love with her AI agent and had this whole relationship.

Vicki Davis (19:29)
Yes.

Betty Ray (19:35)
That’s not new anymore, but I think I’m hearing that young people s are taking back their relationships with technology and not being 10 years ago it was a lot less worried about it. It just seemed like, okay, well. The techn it’s not gonna be bad. It’s just gonna be it’s helpful, you know. That’s the other thing. A lot of it is.

Vicki Davis (19:49)
So what is your advice to parents and educators about applying this framework and helping our children grow into adults I think it’s great. If you decide, hey, I don’t want anything to do with AI and I’m gonna make music in the basement, I think that’s really healthy, I think it’s really healthy to say, Hey, I’m gonna choose a flip phone. As somebody who does social media, I think it’s good to know how to do social media too. You know, being able to unplug and

Vicki Davis (20:14)
And be a human being and not a human doing is

Betty Ray (20:15)
Yeah.

Vicki Davis (20:16)
Important.

Betty Ray (20:17)
I think for sure, having a parent and educator commitment to balance and ensuring that kids get a balance of online and in real world activities. And notice I don’t say offline, it’s real world because I don’t want to

Vicki Davis (20:25)
Yeah.

Betty Ray (20:32)
Make the absence of you know, it’s the real world. So I you know, having a balance in amount of time spent, building agreements that are ensure that on that online behavior is contained and that real world

Betty Ray (20:45)
Commitments are upheld and that relationships are maintained and that self-regulation is a constant practice because we know that it can be compromised in device addiction scenarios. I think if there is time and agency and s and effort and availability for a parent or auntie, somebody who has time who maybe doesn’t have kids, can be really empowered to

Betty Ray (21:06)
Help kids learn new skills. And maybe that means we getting on AI and you know, I was helping my kid with math and I was looking at Chat GPT right beforehand to figure out how to teach it to her, because I didn’t know how to do some of these, equations that were really confusing to me. I think using the tools that we have as adults to really support kids through challenges so that they find balance, to do so in community is just really important.

Vicki Davis (21:31)
So we’ve been talking with Betty Ray, she’s the founder of Boss Battle Labs and the creator of Pandora’s Way. Betty, what are some of the resources that you share on this? Where can people get those?

Betty Ray (21:36)
Yeah,

Betty Ray (21:42)
I was gonna offer a lot of this is just helpful to see a resource instead of, go on to the details. But there’s I have a a framework called stars and there’s a download on my website at BettyRay dot net.

Betty Ray (21:54)
There’s also a model that I use with parents mostly, although it does work in classroom settings. It’s called signal check. And that is another very beneficial way to start to introduce this idea of rites of passage to young people. And it what it is is it’s uses the three colors of red, yellow, green. Red is a

Betty Ray (22:12)
Indication that no, this is off limits. This is websites that are not appropriate. This is chatting with people who are not in your friends list, using it after 8 p.m., whatever it is, is the red zone. No. The green zone is not a problem. Go for it. You don’t need adult oversight. Right. So that might be texting with your family or using Zoom to hang out with grandma.

Betty Ray (22:33)
The yellow zone is this creative space where parents and kids can work together. And what I love about it is that as a parent, it can be really overwhelming. So this is a place that we can carve out to address very specific skills. So you have to learn to get up on your own. I wake you up every day and I’m really tired of that. So we’re gonna put that in the bucket of yellow. And when you can show me that you can get up every day for two weeks without me getting in there, then

Betty Ray (23:01)
We’ve moved that to green and then maybe you can get a little bit more device access. Now you’ve shown me that you can do this positive skill. Now you get the reward of maybe you can use your, procreate app a little bit longer so that you can do some drawing. So that’s those are the kinds of ways of using yellow. Because parenting and I know educating too can be so overwhelming that having this very focused area to just build skill

Betty Ray (23:27)
Keeps some of the noise out. And then kids don’t argue because red is red. Nope, sorry, that’s red. And that’s green. You can do all these things. So it gives a nice, very easy to understand set of boundaries. So that part is just really beneficial. So that yeah, that’s another one.

Vicki Davis (23:54)
Hmm. Yeah. And a rite of passage from moving things from red to green. You know, hey, we’re moving it

Betty Ray (23:55)
Exactly. And so

Vicki Davis (23:55)
From red to yellow. You don’t have to constantly explain the status of, well, you said I could do that. No, this is something, this is in yellow. We’re I really like that. That’s really nice, Betty.

Betty Ray (23:55)
Yes, exactly.

Betty Ray (23:56)
That’s exactly it. The rite of passage. And it teaches that there are these little mini wins, right? You can get there. And then you know what? If you slip up, we’re gonna have to put that back into yellow. And that’s okay because we learn. And that’s growth mindset in there. And then you practice again. And then you know what? What I know you can do this. I’ve seen you do it. I know it was hard to slip

Vicki Davis (24:05)
Mm-hmm.

Betty Ray (24:15)
Up. Let’s understand what the circumstances were around that slip up so that we can mitigate those in the future.

Vicki Davis (24:20)
Betty Ray, it’s been a

Betty Ray (24:20)
Mm-hmm.

Vicki Davis (24:20)
while since our Edutopia days, but I’m so

Betty Ray (24:22)
Yeah.

Vicki Davis (24:24)
Glad that we’ve reconnected. And

Betty Ray (24:25)
Me too.

Vicki Davis (24:26)
This is this is just a a really interesting conversation. So thanks for coming on the show.

Betty Ray (24:32)
Thanks, Vicki. Thank you so much for having me.

Announcer (24:35)
Cool Cat Teacher Talk with award-winning teacher Vicki Davis.

Vicki Davis (24:38)
I hope that Betty’s conversation helps us all think because here’s the thing about this show. This show is not here to judge you or tell you what to do. It’s to share the facts and the conversations. You’re a parent or an educator or policymaker. You care about kids. That’s why you’re listening to this show, I hope. And you can listen to the opinions of the educators and experts I bring on the show. I work really hard to have diverse opinions to treat each person with respect.

Vicki Davis (25:08)
And you can make up your own mind about what will work for your child in your situation. Parenting and teaching are difficult jobs, and we need us to work together. But as we face companies, they’re trying to addict us and attach themselves to us. We need to become united about the behavior that we want to see. We need to say,

Vicki Davis (25:31)
What kind of human being do we want to be so we can decide what we want to be doing? This is for the sake of our children. We need to work together and find the right solutions for each child and each school in each community, because we’re all different. Now, this next guest, Lawrence C. Harris, is a 20-year-old motivational speaker. He talks openly.

Vicki Davis (25:53)
About the hard situations of abuse in his home. I’m giving you this warning if you’ve got little ears in the car, because remember, you can get today’s show notes and program at coolcatteacher.com/reachkids if you have older kids who can handle the conversation,

Vicki Davis (26:15)
He really might make a great topic for your dinner table if you want to replay this to your kids later. I want you to listen how Lawrence said he behaved in class, even as he was struggling, because it’s not what you would expect.

Announcer (26:27)
Cool Cat Teacher Talk with award-winning teacher Vicki Davis.

Vicki Davis (26:31)
Today we’re talking with Lawrence C. Harris. When Lawrence was 13, his father disowned him. He’d already survived more than most kids should ever have to. He was afraid to be seen and unsure of himself, but today he stands in front of thousands of students, telling them the one thing he needed to hear back then.

Vicki Davis (26:55)
Your past does not get to decide your future. Lawrence is a youth speaker, a teen author, and he’s here to help us reach students who are struggling right now. Lawrence, thanks for coming on the show.

Lawrence C. Harris (27:06)
Course it’s great to be here.

Vicki Davis (27:10)
So take me back to 13. What was going on in your life then and what did you need most that you were not getting?

Lawrence C. Harris (27:18)
Well, there was a lot that was happening in my life at thirteen. At the age of twelve, my dad became abusive to me and my younger siblings. Being the oldest, you want to protect them, but not much you can do. Thirteen, he disowns me in front of a church. So

Vicki Davis (27:27)
Wow.

Lawrence C. Harris (27:36)
My mental health was spiraling down. And the one thing I needed most at that time was just

Lawrence C. Harris (27:43)
A feeling of hope and a feeling that I’m understood.

Vicki Davis (27:48)
How did you act in the classroom at the time?

Lawrence C. Harris (27:50)
A lot more quiet, but also pretending to be happy just because it gave me a distraction from what I was actually dealing with.

Vicki Davis (28:01)
So were there any adults in your life who helped you?

Lawrence C. Harris (28:05)
There were plenty. I had a therapist, my mom did her best to help me. I had teachers who I never really told them what was going on, but they had a feeling and they tried to help. But sometimes as young people we push people away because we’re scared to admit how we truly feel.

Vicki Davis (28:22)
So let’s fast forward your your story a little bit. You didn’t want to be seen, so you you retreated, but now you’re on stage telling your story. What is that story and why do you think it’s resonating with students?

Lawrence C. Harris (28:38)
Well, the core of that story is simply that no matter what you’ve been through, you can move forward. Because when you have people who are bullying you, that’s one thing. But when it’s the people that are supposed to protect you, that’s a lot deeper. It really can do a lot to your feeling of self-worth, your feeling of, am I even lovable? It it does a lot to you. And

Lawrence C. Harris (29:03)
A big reason why I openly share it now is because when you learn to stop being afraid of your past and you embrace that happened, but I can keep moving forward, it resonates with a lot of people. Because even though a young person may have not gone through the exact same things I did, they can see similarities. They can see that if he was able to move forward, so can I.

Lawrence C. Harris (29:31)
And that transfers into things like a lot of young people today, they might not tell you, but they could be struggling with not only issues with their family at home, but issues with lack of food, lack of water, lack of resources. And it comes out as behavioral disruptions and as these things. So by me sharing my story, it resonates with them because they know that it’s

Lawrence C. Harris (29:46)
Possible.

Vicki Davis (30:01)
Lawrence, you, I’m sorry that the things have happened to you. You are a person of worth. I’m glad that you have pulled through to tell your story, but it still doesn’t make all those things that happened to you okay. I’m sorry.

Lawrence C. Harris (30:08)
Yeah.

Vicki Davis (30:15)
I mean, it’s that’s just we can’t minimize what happened to you. And you are a person of of worth. So what’s your message to the kid right now who’s in that moment?

Vicki Davis (30:26)
And what are the things that we teachers can say that will help students know that, hey, you are important. You do matter. And help students because the messages we teachers send need to be the messages that help kids know they matter more than what we’re teaching. We want them to understand their own value.

Lawrence C. Harris (30:48)
One thing I would say to the student who’s in that place right now is start small. Start with the simple things. Like as cliche as it is, making your bed. It gets the day off to a good start. Brushing your teeth. You don’t need to move the entire mountain all at once. You just need to move one pebble every day and eventually you make a tunnel and you see the light on the other side.

Lawrence C. Harris (31:10)
As cliche had that phrase is, it’s true. Because it can feel like you’re trying to do everything all at once, but you just have to do one small thing every day.

Lawrence C. Harris (31:25)
But just for them to get it out their head and learn how to work through their problems in a healthy way. Other advice that you can give them is encourage them to find things that they like. Find things they like about themselves. Find things they like doing. Just find things they enjoy because when it feels like everything is falling apart in your life.

Lawrence C. Harris (31:51)
Making a painting or making a song or football practice these things that just make you feel a little bit happier, that can genuinely save a child’s life.

Vicki Davis (32:04)
So Lawrence, what are some things that

Vicki Davis (32:06)
You wish that maybe teachers would not have said to you that you think this wasn’t a good thing to say. And teachers mean well. It’s not that we’re trying to criticize, but we’re trying to bring attention to kids who struggle. Help us be more sensitive and understand what do you wish the the things that people didn’t say?

Lawrence C. Harris (32:27)
I never had a teacher that said this to me, but unfortunately I’ve had, family members who said these sorts of things Was this idea that it’s not that bad or you’re just a teenager or you’re just being emotional. Sometimes saying you’re just being emotional, even if you

Lawrence C. Harris (32:46)
Don’t mean for it to be, to that child, it feels like you are completely invalidating their pain.

Lawrence C. Harris (32:53)
It feels as if you’re saying that because I’m young, my feelings don’t matter. And that can really make a child retreat deeper and deeper and deeper into their pain.

Lawrence C. Harris (33:07)
Another thing that I can look back and see that teachers have said to me, even if they meant well by it, was just be happy or just cheer up. I can’t. You can’t just be happy. I know that it’s not meant in a

Lawrence C. Harris (33:24)
Offensive way, but telling someone who is struggling or telling someone who is obviously going through a hard time to just be happy, You need to show them, okay, what is something they can do? How can I start making progress? Like I feel lost. Help me find the way. So I would say that was a really big one for me.

Vicki Davis (33:48)
What are the things to say?

Lawrence C. Harris (33:49)
I’m here for you. If you want to tell me, you can, but I’m not going to make you. The note of I’m here if you want to tell me, but I’m not going to make you. I’m gonna really dig into that a bit. Because you don’t want that person to feel pressured to tell you. You don’t want that person to feel forced to tell you. You want to respect their freedom and their autonomy.

Lawrence C. Harris (34:13)
To come to you when they’re ready. Now, of course, if there’s obvious signs like that child is coming in with black eyes and bruises and things like that, you know, you’re legally required to report that as a mandated reporter. But if that child is simply, you know, less talkative or there’s things like that, let them know I’m I’m here for you. You can tell me if you want to. Or if you don’t want to tell me personally, if the school has one,

Lawrence C. Harris (34:44)
go to the guidance counselor. You can tell the support staff or the resource officer, whatever your school has available. You can also suggest to them things that might help them to cheer up. So, hey, what do you like to do for fun? You know, encourage them to find some hobbies, find some things to make them feel a bit better when they don’t know how to deal with their problems.

Vicki Davis (35:10)
So Lawrence, I’m curious, how did you go from 13 year old total heartbreak and devastation, to twenty year old keynoter helping students with a message that kids are saying, Hey, this is helping me. How how did you get where you are now?

Lawrence C. Harris (35:26)
Well, obviously there was a lot of people who helped me. There was a lot of events that happened and there was a lot of therapy and journaling and different practices I did to get here. But the biggest thing was I made a decision. I looked at my life and how it was going and said, Okay, my room is filthy. I am not taking care of myself. I had gone weeks without showering or brushing my teeth. Like I just looked at my life and said, Okay.

Lawrence C. Harris (35:45)
Is it the path I want to keep going down? No, it is not. I have to do the work. Yes, I have people who are helping me and supporting me, but I have to do the thing my therapist tells me. I have to clean my room. I have to start. And I made the decision that I was going to get better one way or another.

Lawrence C. Harris (36:12)
I looked at things such as my younger siblings and said, what’s the example I want to set for them? And I started to be the example. I started to do the work. But it really just started with the decision to get better.

Vicki Davis (36:28)
So you’re still young, you’ve got your whole life ahead of you, Lawrence. Where do you hope to be in ten or twenty years?

Lawrence C. Harris (36:35)
In ten years from now, I wanna do like an NFL Super Bowl halftime show, but instead of it being like music, it’s me giving a speech. I would love to do that. I’d probably have like an entire team helping me run my business, traveling, doing speeches around the world. That’s like

Vicki Davis (36:56)
So you love giving speeches?

Lawrence C. Harris (36:57)
Yeah. Which is Interesting ’cause I used to be really shy, but now I love going in front of hundreds of people

Lawrence C. Harris (37:04)
Sharing my life story.

Vicki Davis (37:06)
What was your first speech, Lawrence?

Lawrence C. Harris (37:08)
Official speech it would have been when I was working at a summer camp and I just started giving it wasn’t even prompted. I just started talking and got into like this flow sharing about how to just relax and how to manage your emotions to a bunch of sixth and seventh graders ’cause I was working at a summer camp at the time.

Lawrence C. Harris (37:29)
Then from there I started making YouTube videos and then I started volunteering at places around my city and just fell in love with it.

Vicki Davis (37:38)
Do you have a favorite social media platform where you’re resonating the most?

Lawrence C. Harris (37:42)
I would say the spot where I resonate the most is on YouTube because that’s where people actually can like watch long form content. Whereas on things like Instagram, people might just, you know, leave a comment because they saw a video that sparked their interest, but the real impact for social media is on YouTube.

Vicki Davis (38:03)
What are the things that when kids hear you speak or when they’re on your channel that resonate with them the most that you say?

Lawrence C. Harris (38:10)
Highlighting the fact that despite everything we go through, it is possible. And then I give examples of okay, let’s think of someone such as Oprah Winfrey. We see her now, but we don’t focus on the part she grew up in severe poverty, ran away from home, and her life was complete and utter chaos as a child, and we can look at her now. Or athletes or musicians or

Lawrence C. Harris (38:40)
There’s this guy named Henry Salas, he’s an artist who’s paralyzed from the neck down, but

Lawrence C. Harris (38:44)
He draws by holding pens in his mouth. And I use examples like that to show them that even in the most dire and extreme circumstances, we can find a way. And I’ve had people who have told me that there was this one girl who she was in foster care because, you know, her parents were addicts, she got

Lawrence C. Harris (39:08)
Taken by child protective services and all those sorts of things. She ended up in a really toxic relationship and after finding my videos, she started to genuinely love herself more, got out of that. Now she has her a job. She’s in college. Her life genuinely transformed. All because I decided to start making some YouTube videos. And it’s been impacts that

Lawrence C. Harris (39:30)
My younger self would have never dreamed I’d be doing this.

Lawrence C. Harris (39:34)
I don’t know any other word to explain it except I’m in awe of how I’m able to help people just by sharing what I’ve been through and what

Vicki Davis (39:34)
Yeah.

Lawrence C. Harris (39:34)
I’ve found works.

Vicki Davis (39:44)
So Lawrence, what is one thing a teacher could do this week to help a struggling student feel truly seen?

Lawrence C. Harris (39:51)
I’m aware that teachers are already under a lot of pressure with managing potentially hundreds of students per day, So I want to think of something that’s easy, as small as this sounds. Greet people. Ask them about their day. Ask them what makes you happy. Give them something that excites them. So it could be as simple as at the start of class, if possible, just ask someone if they want to share about their weekend. Is something good that happened over the weekend? And every day you could pick a new person. Whoever wants to volunteer.

Lawrence C. Harris (40:27)
It will give them something to look forward to.

Vicki Davis (40:30)
So we’ve been talking with Lawrence C. Harris. And Lawrence, how do people find you on YouTube?

Lawrence C. Harris (40:37)
Very easy. My YouTube channel is Lawrence C Empowers. You can find my website and everything else related to me by just googling Lawrence C. Harris and all that pops up.

Vicki Davis (40:49)
Lawrence, you have your whole life ahead of you. I hope that you continue to encourage and that you continue to grow and to learn. Thank you for telling your story. I think it’s important for us to hear from people who were in the classroom not too long ago to try to help us

Lawrence C. Harris (40:58)
Yeah.

Vicki Davis (41:06)
Understand that there’s so many difficult situations and we’ve all got a situation, Most of us are walking through difficult times, but

Vicki Davis (41:15)
As a teacher, we can never truly know what’s happening in a student’s life. And you’ve given us some phrases to say, I’ll never forget one time I had a a student I was dealing with that was depressed. I didn’t know she was depressed. And I had talked about the keystone habit of making your bed.

Vicki Davis (41:33)
And so many people recommend that as such a habit. And her mom contacted me two weeks later and said, I want you to know what a difference it’s made in my daughter’s life that you encouraged her to make her bed and how it’s changed her whole life. And you’re thinking, wow, that’s small, but it’s actually big, isn’t it?

Lawrence C. Harris (41:53)
Yeah, it is, because you if you spend eight hours a day sleeping, that’s thirty three percent of your life. So if you lay in a messy bed, it’s going to lead to messier thoughts, messier habits, messier life. And once you clean your bed, you know, you’re like I might as well clean the rest of it.

Vicki Davis (42:12)
You’ve given us some real things to think about. Lawrence C. Harris, thanks for coming

Lawrence C. Harris (42:15)
Yep.

Vicki Davis (42:18)
On the show, Lawrence.

Lawrence C. Harris (42:19)
Thank you. It was wonderful.

Announcer (42:21)
Cool Cat Teacher Talk with award-winning teacher Vicki Davis.

Vicki Davis (42:24)
Sometimes it seems like people think that kids acting out always has to do with trouble in the home. But we know that kids are kids, we’re seeing more and more that kids like Lawrence may get quieter and pretend to be happy. We’re trained to watch for the kid who blows up, but the kid who’s always fine needs to be noticed too. Every child is important and

Vicki Davis (42:48)
None of us knows what another person is going through. So earlier in the show, I talked about a Pew study that kids said when they didn’t have their phones, then it were 70% of them, so they felt happier. They felt more at peace. So kids are taking steps to disconnect as well. The Luddite Club with kids who carry flip phones, and Meet in Person started in one Brooklyn high school and has more than 30 chapters in high schools and colleges from Stockholm to Australia. Kids and adults are looking for screen-free activities. Our next guest, Patty Tucker, is in the American Contract Bridge League Hall of Fame.

Vicki Davis (43:30)
And she’s teaching Kids Bridge. And this activity is growing. They have lots of free resources for schools. This is just one example of how kids are disconnecting with technology and connecting with each other. Let’s learn more and talk to Patty Tucker.

Announcer (43:49)
Cool Cat Teacher Talk with award-winning teacher Vicki Davis.

Vicki Davis (43:53)
In schools today, there are many people calling for screen free options to build student brains. Well, today we have one of those options for you. We’re talking with Patty Tucker. She is a bridge hall of famer who’s on a mission you might not expect. She’s teaching kids to play bridge. Her program Jump Start Bridge, she has reached more than 12,000 students. And the teachers say something surprising.

Vicki Davis (44:22)
Surprising is happening. Better focus, better math, and better grades. Patty, explain just a little bit about what the game of a bridge is and why you think that it’s really helping kids think better.

Patty Tucker (44:35)
The Game of Bridge is a partnership game. The kids are actually going to be working with another child to be successful. It teaches a a lot of teamwork. It’s a trick-taking game. There is a lot of strategy. There’s a a lot of math, but I think some of the social aspects are even more valuable than the academic aspects. The kids learn about

Patty Tucker (44:56)
Getting along with people that they may not have met before. They meet new people and they have to learn how to work together to accomplish a goal. One of the things that I love about Bridge and that some of the teachers have found remarkable is it teaches you a good life lesson, too. In Bridge, some things are not always going to go exactly the way you want them to on every single hand that you play.

Patty Tucker (45:23)
In bridge, something goes wrong, you’re not successful, you don’t quit. You can’t quit in the middle of the hand. You have to do plan B and finish the hand. And if that hand doesn’t go well, well, you know what? The game isn’t over. You still have to go to the next hand. So just learning that things are not always going to go the way that you want them to, but you just keep on trying, I think is a really important lesson. And the kids have a lot of fun. They really enjoy it.

Patty Tucker (45:46)
We recently had an essay contest and we’ve got tons of quotes from the kids and they’re just marvelous.

Vicki Davis (45:53)
So Patty, what age student is ideal to start learning bridge?

Patty Tucker (45:57)
Fourth grade, but the majority of the kids that are in the program that teachers are teaching are ages nine through thirteen, so it’s third through eighth grade, a smattering of even first and second graders and a smattering of high school students. But elementary and middle school seems to be kind of the sweet spot.

Patty Tucker (46:19)
They are looking for new things, their minds are still stretching to find that thing that’s gonna be what they wanna do for the rest of their life or what they’re interested in. And I think they have a little bit more flexibility.

Vicki Davis (46:33)
Well, Bridge is is a r an interesting game. I have quite a few family members who love Bridge. It’s the the game I grew up watching, but it is something that kind of has to be taught a little bit because it is a partnership game. You are playing with a partner. How do you go about teaching? Like are there resources that

Vicki Davis (46:50)
Teachers can use that because they’ve got so much going on and and say they want to have it, but they’re like, my goodness, I’m not an expert. How do I even start?

Patty Tucker (46:59)
Well, I took that into account when I wrote the curriculum. The curriculum is designed for a non bridge player to be able to teach someone else how to play bridge. And from the reports that we got back, we ran some surveys after the first year. And on a scale of like one to four, we got all threes and fours for the curriculum. Everybody thought that the curriculum was well written and that the resources were great. Boy, that was a relief, let me tell you. I wanted everything to be good.

Patty Tucker (47:28)
But there’s a teacher manual that I wrote as a teacher’s like their work plan. It tells you supplies, objectives for each lesson. I timed it out and I gave them a script even. And there’s also videos of me teaching each of those eight lessons. I of course I didn’t expect the teachers to read the script. They’re going to use their own words, but I have a lot of teachers that are looking at the

Patty Tucker (47:49)
Videos, they’re working in the workbook, they’re using the PowerPoint and actually teaching themselves before they then go teach it to their child and they’re working kind of class by class. One teacher got on my I do a monthly Zoom, just open Zoom that they can come ask questions. And one of them got on there said, I’m two weeks ahead of them, but I need to get this down. And so she had questions about a certain part of it. So there can be a lot of different ways.

Patty Tucker (48:16)
Throughout the country, there are bridge players everywhere. And I can usually find someone if a teacher wants someone to come in and just help them for one class or help them for an hour. I can find people that are willing to, pop in or come over and talk to them and get them straightened out. But we supply for free every piece of student workbooks, teacher manuals.

Patty Tucker (48:40)
Videos, all the playing supplies, everything is free. You just

Vicki Davis (48:42)
Wow.

Patty Tucker (48:44)
Register your class with us, tell us how many students that you’re going to be teaching, and we send you the supplies. The American Contract Bridge League, ACBL and the ACBL Educational Foundation and a lot of private donors are behind us and that’s where most of our funding comes from.

Vicki Davis (49:01)
So obviously teachers who who are working with kids with math, are are reaching out to you. But what are some of the benefits because here’s the thing, you can convince most teachers to do something once. Those teachers that repeat and come back to you, what are they saying are the benefits of having bridge in their classroom?

Patty Tucker (49:17)
A lot of different things. One teacher was telling me that the attendance at at school was better, that they weren’t tardy on Tuesdays because Tuesday was bridge.

Patty Tucker (49:27)
They were they were not gonna be tardy and miss bridge. But the kids are excited to learn. They’re excited to be working with each other, they’re having a good time.

Patty Tucker (49:37)
And I think everybody knows that if you are enjoying yourself and vested in something you’re learning, that you’re more likely to be successful at it. So the kids are interested in learning more. One of them told me she had in Bridge, the way that everything is set up, we have a there’s a new

Patty Tucker (49:46)
Technique that ACBL’s been working on called bridge battle, which is for teachers that maybe don’t know how to play and they’re a little bit nervous and they don’t play cards. It’s kind of a gateway into bridge. It’s just fun and it’s just this is how you play a hand. This is how you take a trick. And then the curriculum just slowly builds throughout the thing. What I’ve told the teachers is is you can go as fast or as slow as you need. You don’t have to

Patty Tucker (50:23)
Feel like you have to rush through everything. You know your students. You’ll know when they’re ready for the next piece when you should spend a little bit more time on something. So I thought that some of the teachers and some of the kids would want to take it very, very slowly. That was my expectation. And instead the reports I’m getting is they want to know what’s next.

Patty Tucker (50:41)
So the kids are driving how quickly they learn and how much they want to learn and how fast the progress goes through it. We had in Calisbell, Montana, last year they had a a bridge tournament at the local bridge club for the school. This year they had they had to do the tournament on over three days

Patty Tucker (50:48)
Because

Vicki Davis (50:53)
Wow.

Patty Tucker (50:59)
They had so many kids that were involved in bridge and that wanted to play that they didn’t have enough room.

Patty Tucker (51:05)
So they had over 350 kids over a three-day period, sixth grade, seventh grade, and eighth grade, participated in a bridge tournament. And that was driven by the kids and the s and the teachers and the school itself. And they’re expecting even more next year. So if a school can become that vested in a project or in a academic thing that the kids are involved in, that

Patty Tucker (51:30)
Should be some indication that they’re finding it certainly worthwhile for their students. But

Vicki Davis (51:34)
It’s interesting.

Vicki Davis (51:38)
This year I brought a couple decks of cards just on a whim. Somebody had given me them for Christmas. And I brought into my classroom and I have a computer lab. I was amazed that the most popular thing in my classroom were those decks of cards. It’s not just nostalgia. This generation some of them moving away from screens. And I know that us adults want the kids to move away from screens and interact with each other. We know that learning to read body language and cooperative type activities where you’re building emotional intelligence.

Vicki Davis (52:10)
Are so vitally important. It’s counterintuitive, but I don’t think it’s surprising to see how many are moving towards bridge.

Patty Tucker (52:18)
We first started going to teacher conferences right after the pandemic was over. It was November of twenty three. And we went to a gifted, the National Gifted Conference. And what some of the teachers told me was that the the children coming out of those COVID years who had been trying to do classes online and everything else, two things. One, they were tired of doing things online.

Patty Tucker (52:45)
And the teachers were tired of having to teach online. But one thing they noticed was the social skills that the kids develop, especially when they go from like elementary to middle school or middle to high school, were the word might be stunted. They didn’t have

Patty Tucker (52:57)
Those years that they went as they crossed from elementary to middle or

Patty Tucker (53:01)
Further on. So they were

Patty Tucker (53:06)
Actively looking for things that had the kids working together. So in Bridge, I have one poster that we put up at the conferences, which is Bridge Do’s and Don’ts. And it’s about manners and it’s about how you treat

Patty Tucker (53:15)
Your partner and how you treat your opponents. And they love it because those are the things that the kids didn’t have a chance to kind of practice over that two years of COVID.

Vicki Davis (53:19)
Yeah.

Patty Tucker (53:24)
We did I told you an essay contest and one of the eighth grade students wrote this

Patty Tucker (53:30)
She said, face-to-face interaction is scarce these days and most get lost in screens. So it’s important that we don’t lose the art of bridge.

Patty Tucker (53:39)
She was writing an essay for us, but she was recognizing,

Vicki Davis (53:41)
Yeah.

Patty Tucker (53:42)
That face to face interaction wasn’t there the way it used to be.

Vicki Davis (53:45)
Yeah.

Patty Tucker (53:47)
I grew up playing cards and games with my family, and a lot of the kids nowadays,

Patty Tucker (53:51)
Haven’t ever played cards. They’re not familiar

Vicki Davis (53:53)
Mm-hmm. That’s

Patty Tucker (53:54)
The lessons start with this is a deck of cards and, ace is the highest and two is the lowest.

Patty Tucker (54:00)
And these are the suits, you know. So we really do start from the beginning.

Vicki Davis (54:04)
So we’ve been talking with Patty Tucker. She’s a Bridge Hall of Famer and she’s working with Jump Start Bridge. So Patty, tell us how teachers can find your resources.

Patty Tucker (54:14)
It’s on our website, jumpstartbridge dot org. Everything is there.

Patty Tucker (54:18)
There’s a place that you can order your supplies. It’s through the American Contract Bridge League. Yes, you do have to sign up as a member, but you join as a guest member. There’s no charge or anything involved. They just do everything by number. If you have any questions about what you should be ordering or you’re finding it hard to navigate the website, feel free to call, text me.

Patty Tucker (54:40)
I can answer any questions you have and I can walk you through it. We’re happy to do that.

Vicki Davis (54:45)
We’ll include all this information in the show notes. And so if you’re looking for screen-free alternatives, and really all of us should be, and alternatives that build emotional intelligence, check out Patty Tucker’s work and what she’s doing with Jump Start Bridge. Thanks for coming on the show, Patty.

Patty Tucker (55:00)
Thank you, Vicki. I appreciate you having us.

Announcer (55:03)
Cool Cat Teacher Talk with award-winning teacher Vicki Davis.

Vicki Davis (55:08)
So I totally believed it when they reached out to me about having Patty on the show because.

Vicki Davis (55:13)
This past year I brought two decks of cards into my classroom on a whim. And I teach in a computer lab and they became the most popular thing in my room. There were lots of games the kids didn’t know how to play. Go fish and war and things we used to play in the car before we had any kind of entertainment. We had to make our own. And the kids loved it. They put down their computers, put down their screens, and they played card games almost every day at the end of the day.

Vicki Davis (55:43)
As we recap today’s show, Betty talked about what kids need to help them grow up. Lawrence showed us what it costs when kids don’t get what they need. And gave a great thing that we could say to kids when we’re not sure how they’re doing. I’m here for you. If you want to tell me, you can, but I’m not going to make you.

Vicki Davis (56:04)
Then Patty took us on a delightful trip into the fun that kids are having offline. Playing bridge. That one is random and different, but the kind of thinking that got us to where we are today isn’t going to get us to where we need to be tomorrow. I’m not one to idolize yesterday because every season has difficulties and challenges of its own.

Vicki Davis (56:26)
I remember one time one of my students said, man, I wish I had grown up in the 80s when you were in high school. And I said, Why? The student looked at me and said, Because we didn’t have this. And they pushed their phone across the desk at me. I hate what this has done to our world. That’s kind of extreme. I’m not saying we don’t need phones. I used to work in the cell phone business, but we need to grapple with this. And one thing I do know.

Vicki Davis (56:53)
Being worse than yesterday doesn’t make a better tomorrow. We need to stop getting by and start getting better. This starts with having conversations about what you heard on the show today with your friends, with other parents, with teachers, and with your children. This is our world, and today is the result of what we did yesterday. And tomorrow will be the result of the conversations and the actions that we take today.

Vicki Davis (57:19)
We can’t change the whole world, but we can start by changing one child’s world. Let’s start with the one right in front of us. That’s what the show is here for. I love children and we need remarkable educators and remarkable parents working together more than ever. You can find today’s show notes and the recording of this show at coolcatteacher.com/reachkids. This is Cool Cat Teacher Talk, and I’m Vicki Davis.

Vicki Davis (57:46)
I hope you’ll tune in next week right here on this station. See you later, educator.

Announcer (57:52)
Cool Cat Teacher Talk with award-winning teacher Vicki Davis.

The post Kids and Screen Time: What Kids Actually Say appeared first on Cool Cat Teacher Blog by Vicki Davis @coolcatteacher helping educators be excellent every day. Meow!

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