12. Building Blocks

How exactly do the neurobiological adaptations that result from an adverse early childhood evolve into the social and academic struggles that so many disadvantaged students experience in school? How do most schools deal with those students? And what alternative approaches might produce better results?

When educators neither prioritize these skills and mindsets nor integrate them with academic development, students are left without tools for engagement or a language for learning,

Which means that when children arrive in kindergarten without these foundational skills, there are often few resources in place to help kids develop them, and school administrators are often at a loss to know how to help.

hat creates more stress, which often feeds into behavior problems, which leads, in the classroom, to stigmatization and punishment, which keeps their stress levels elevated, which makes it still harder to concentrate — and so on, and so on, throughout elementary school.