Nick starts things off today with a glowing review of Costco "Just Bare" lightly breaded chicken chunks. Nick scores it an 85% match with Chick-fil-A’s nuggets, but has plans to bump that up even higher. Rick talks his recent birthday present – a new family card game called “Who’s Most Likely To…” and shares a few superlative awards that he won while playing with his family.
Dr. Nick reads through the blog from this week entitled “Pretty Ugly.” Rick resonates strongly with this cognitive-behavioral themed story and plans to share this with all of his school counseling students. Rick reflects about how CBT is typically conveyed best by sharing personal and self-deprecating stories which help to teach others how cognitive restructuring works. The guys talk about what an amazing opportunity teachers and counselors have to provide kids with affirmation to nudge their thinking in positive and constructive ways.
In the "Building the Brochure" segment, Dr. Nick and Dr. Rick finally get back to the Search Institute’s Developmental Assets. This week, the investigate #19 – Young person spends one or more hours per week in activities in a religious institution and #20 – Young person is out with friends with “nothing special to do” two or fewer nights per week. Nick shares some of the positives opportunities for family bonding with #20 and Rick adds the importance of kids being productive with their friends to limit idle time. They guys then tackle #20. Nick shares a bit about his own experiences growing up going to Sunday School and Rick shares a bit about how his family has benefitted from engaging with church from over the years. As an example, Rick sings the praises of the positive impact of Blachard Church of Christ in particular and their pastor Dr. Russell Moldovan and his wife Raylene. Rick also identifies “Hope” as a key benefit that religious institutions can convey along with a positive identity formation, which is so important for teenagers in particular.
The Every Rose has Its Thorn segment this week provides the guys an opportunity to discuss Standardized Testing. Nick has some interesting thoughts on the topic drawn from many years in the trenches of standardized testing. While he loves sharpening pencils, he has plenty of concerns about how testing is used in addition to the time taken away from instruction to teach to and then take the tests. He does point out some advantages to disaggregating the data to identify achievement gaps related to subgroups. Rick is concerned that standardized tests reward affluent districts, while punishing less affluent systems and would prefer that results serve simply to identify strengths and areas for academic emphasis.
Don’t look now, but Rufus joins the guys for questions from the email bag today! First the guys tackle the positives and negatives of tenure in public education. Rufus has some interesting insights from the future. All three guys then respond to a question about their most feminine and masculine characteristics, which veers off into a discussion of Tina Turner music and rom-coms.
Enjoy Episode XIX of Rick and Nick’s Excellent Edventure!
