Positively Realistic

I fought the dryer, and the dryer won. I'm gutted. I really believed I could repair the broken belt. I found a YouTube video, and everything worked exactly like his until I got to putting the belt around the pulley.  I fought and and fought. I cut my thumb and had a massive bruise on one forearm and the other shoulder. I tried it with mom pressing on a crowbar to get the wheel into position. I tried tipping the machine on its back for easier access to the parts, but that just made it more difficult because the belt placement was no longer benefitted by gravity but rather falling behind the drum because of gravity. Tipping it over also meant that I had disconnected it from the vent, and you have to be a master yogi to fold yourself over to attach that and then climb out overtop of the dryer. (Note to the people who make these: Why do they need to be two inches from the floor? And can the tube be about six inches longer?) Anyway, after trying for weeks and using different methods, my mom stopped me while I was trapped in the space between the dryer and the wall and said, "Will you let us buy you a dryer." I said yes, but I hate that what should have been a $20 job became a replacement. I don't like admitting defeat. 

But, at some point, we all have to admit defeat. We have to recognize that there are things we cannot do. In spite of the messaging we got from children's television in the 80s and the proliferation of athletic clothing with Philippians 4:13 printed on it, we have limitations. It's part of our design as human beings. There are certain attributes that belong only to God. Omniscience, omnipotence, omnipresence and the like are not something we can achieve. We tried at the tower of Babel, and we seem to be trying again with AI, but no matter how far we advance technologically, we will remain limited.

Why am I talking about this on an education blog?  Well, partly because I needed to work through the hit to my pride from not being able to repair the dryer, but more importantly, we need to be realistic with students.

People who enter the education field tend to be idealistic. And, in an effort to support kids and their dreams, we get even more idealistic with them. That seems loving, but there reaches a point where it isn't. When we support things that cannot happen, we set kids up for disappointment and failure. There's a commercial on television where kids are asked what they want to be when they grow up. Most say doctors or lawyers, but one sweet little girls says she wants to be a unicorn. Now, she's about 4 in this commercial, so I think playing along with the understanding that it is make-believe is totally fine. But, as she gets older, telling her "if you can dream it, youe can be it" is not. 

It's totally fine to have dreams that are long shots. I'm not saying to crush the dreams of a kid whose ambition it to be a professional athlete. There are people who achieve that goal, and they were all at one point, children with a dream. I am saying that it is good to encourage that child to have a back up plan because the percentage of talented athletes that become professionals is small, and some of them sustain career ending injuries. People with back up plans are resilient. People without back up plans often wander aimlessly for years. 

My childhood dream was to pilot the space shuttle. I paid attention in math and science; I went to Space Camp; I somehow got my hands on an application for the Air Force Academy and started filling it out in the 4th grade. When I was 13, it became clear that this was not going to happen. First, I was taller than NASA's heigh limit (yes, at 13). Second, I have both eyesight and equilibrium issues.  While the eyesight could have been corrected, the balance and the height were insurmountable problems. Well meaning adults in my life told me not to give up on this dream. Some said, "You'll be so good that they'll change the height rules for you." Apparently, they didn't understand the constrictive nature of spacecraft. Several went as far as to say that God would not let me want something this much if it weren't His plan for me (Now, that's dangerous counsel if ever I heard it). Thankfully, I had other, more realistic, adults around me that said, "Well, you obviously love science. What kinds of jobs might allow you to use that?" I kicked around veterinary medicine, pharmaceuticals, and physical therapy until I walked into Mr. Barbara's physics class and decided I basically wanted to be him, a person who made people love subjects most were afraid of. After 25 years of science teaching, I achieved a lot of things, but my favorite was always when a kid came into the meet and greet saying that they didn't like science leave at the end of the year excited to learn more science.

I'm not advocating for pessimism. I'm not suggesting that negativity is best. I'm advocating for realism with a positive tone.  When a student shares their dream, you can be positive and say "What's your plan for making that happen?" As they tell you their plan, you can layer in nuances and back up plans without being a dream crusher. If a student has come to the realization that they can't be the thing they thought they could, be sympathetic. "I know how hard it must be to realize that, but you have a purpose. What did you love about . . .? How might you still have a job that utilizes that part?"  

Whether a glass is half empty or half full doesn't depend on your mindset. It depends on what direction you are pouring the water. If you are drinking from it, the last thing you did was remove water, so you made it half empty. If you are pouring water into it, the last thing you did was add water, so you made it half full.  Helping kids pour water back into their cup after a setback doesn't happen by being blindly positive. But it can happen by helping them find an achievable dream that still incorporates their "why" from their prior goals. It's both realistic and positive.

I don't believe in resolutions, but since it is January, let's make one. Let's resolve to be positively realistic with students.

Range of Healthy Balance

When I was a kid, my parents told me that there was no such thing as a job description. "Whatever your boss asks you to do," they said, "that's your job description for that day. You should always be the best employee they have." Now, listen, they weren't advocating standing for abuse or doing things that made you feel morally compromised. They were just saying that you should always do your best to contribute to whatever team you were on and never to say, "That's not my job; someone else should do it."

Fast forward a few decades, and I find myself doing something rare - muting a phrase on Twitter because I couldn't believe educators were part of it. That phrase was "quiet quitting." For those of you who don't spend a lot of time on social media, let me explain what it means. Quiet quitting means doing exactly what you are contracted to do and not one iota more. That means no sponsoring a club unless it is specifically in your contract. It means no chaperoning dances or field trips. It means no staying after school to help tutor a struggling student. It means you come to school at your contracted time, teach your contracted classes, and go home at the end of your contracted day. It means you don't do any of the things that make you a teacher besides the actual act of teaching class. 

Do I understand why this happened? Of course I do. There are absolutely schools and districts who take advantage of their staff, working them to their breaking point and then just replacing them when they do. I'm not suggesting that anyone put up with that. But this is a coward's way out. Even the name implies that you know what you are doing is the equivalent of not doing your job at all.  Meanwhile, there is an attempt to make it sound virtuous - like you are protecting everyone in the future. In reality, the jobs you are refusing to do still have to get done, and someone will do them.  All you have accomplished is shifting responsibilities from your plate to theirs.

You absolutely need to set healthy boundaries about what time you are willing to answer e-mails and how many extracurricular activities you are willing to commit to. Of course, it is important that you have a life outside of school, so if you are grading until 9PM, something is wrong with someone's expectations. If you are going home at the end of the day and dissolving into a useless puddle, you are working too hard. Please don't think that because I am against one end of the spectrum that I am in favor of the other end.

What I am advocating for is an acceptable range - one where we model excellence to our students without compromising our own health. Because it is a range, there may be days or weeks that lean more heavily towards work - exam preparation week, for example. And there may be days when you have to say, "I'm showing a high quality science video because I couldn't finish grading yesterday afternoon and need the class time to do it today." In a range of healthy balance, you might sponsor a club, but you might limit how many times a month it meets. 

Quiet quitting is anything but quiet. It is about stamping your foot and throwing a tantrum to demand you be paid for anything outside of your contract hours, as though every item, duty, and meeting could be made a line in your contract. It's about going online to brag about how little you are doing and how the system won't keep you down.  A person with healthy balance takes a PTO day when they need some rest; a quiet quitter takes every single one just because they can and will squeeze the last one in during exam review if they have to. 

The quiet quitter isn't virtuous. They aren't making the system better. A person who wants to change things goes through a process, petitions their leaders, has difficult conversations. A person who goes on social media isn't getting something done; they are getting attention.  It's raising slacktivism to another level.

Teachers, as you return from break, you get to a bit of a reset. You can set new boundaries with your students, administrators, families, and yourself. Recognize every week is not going to be the same and every person is not going to be the same.  Find your balance range - not someone else's. 

The "Easy" Teacher and the Paradox of Motivation and Anxiety

Every Thursday, I receive an email newsletter from Peps McCrae, called "Evidence Snacks." If you aren't enrolled, go do it now. They are short, and they are fantastic.  The one a week ago was about motivation, a complex subject that benefits all teachers and students.  There's a part that has stuck with me because it's a bit of a paradox. As a physics enthusiast, I love a good paradox. Here's the summary. If you are familiar with Growth Mindset, it will sound familiar.  If a student engages in a task and is successful, they will motivated only if they "attribute their success to their own effort, ability, and approach."  If they attribute that success to anything external (the test was easy, the teacher likes me, or luck), they have no reason to feel more motivated because those factors are not within their control. I know you aren't seeing the paradox yet because it wasn't in the email; it was in my mind. His newsletter was about motivation, and this post is largely going to be about anxiety, but the two are related, so let me walk you through my thought process. Teachers and schools are currently dealing with an anxiety crisis in students. If you look at the data on reported anxiety levels, it remains pretty flat up until 2012-2015, depending on age group, when it makes an upward shift. The graph then increases in slope in 2020 due largely to pandemic concerns.  What happened in the time between those years? The smart phone became ubiquitous.  It was invented earlier, but for a while, it was only in the hands of wealthier adults, mostly businessmen (remember calling the Blackberry a "crackberry" and people wondering whether President Obama would be allowed to use his?). Around 2012, we started putting them in the hands of 16 year olds so they could call their parents if they were in a car accident or had an emergency. Each year after that, the age started getting lower and lower and the anxiety in younger kids (sadly, not shown in this graph) started climbing. Schools can't really address the source of the problem (24/7 access to social media and constant distraction) because we don't control when students are given these things. We can make rules restricting their usage at the school, but that is only minimally helpful to the anxiety problem if they are on them the rest of the hours of the day and losing sleep as a result.  So, we look for other ways to reduce their anxiety - things we can control at school.   Maybe if we didn't give them homework, they would have some down time, so school start setting stricter limits on the assignments teachers can give. Does it help? No. They have test anxiety because they didn't properly prepare for it with deliberate practice.  Also, they don't tend to use their down time as down time. They either schedule something else or hop on their phone, exacerbating the problem. Maybe we include breathing exercises in PE. It certainly doesn't hurt, but it's effects are rather temporary. It doesn't result in much meaningful reduction of anxiety after the few minutes they have done it. Feel free to do it, but don't expect massive results. Maybe we should make the tests easier, so they feel more successful. Here's where Peps' newsletter came to my mind and created a paradox. (Oooh, if it ever becomes a thing, we have to call it the Peps Paradox.) Making it easier will make them less motivated, especially if they know we have made it easier.  The best way to deal with anxiety isn't breathing exercises (again, I'm not saying not to do them); it isn't to have lots of free time (anxiety lives in our heads and we tend to ruminate on it when we aren't doing other things); it isn't even a trip to the spa (nice, but temporary help at best).   The best way to deal with anxiety is to reflect on the success you have had overcoming difficult things. It reminds you that you are stronger than you feel you are. When you have one of those weeks where it seems like there is a test in every class, reminding yourself that it didn't kill you trains your brain to fear it less the next time. It helps to reflect on what made you successful - you studied with good techniques, you spaced out your study time over several days instead of cramming. You paid attention in class instead of playing games on your computer. If, according to the studies cited in Peps' newsletter, a student attributes their success on a test to the test being easy, they will not feel good about their success, and they will have no ability to reflect on their strength. Thus, motivation will not be increased and anxiety will not be decreased.  Teachers, don't misread me.  I am not saying to go out and overwhelm the working memories of students in the name of rigor. I am not telling you to be mean to them.  I am saying that, if you believe lowering your standards will help them with their motivation or their anxiety, it will not. Don't fall into the trap of thinking you can help by being an "easy" teacher. Continue to hold the same standards you did before, but then walk students through the process of reflecting on the fact that they CAN and DID do hard things.

Professional Judgment - Don't Trade It In

I sat in a conference with a parent who was known to be particularly difficult. You know the type, the one who challenges everything the teacher does, knows she is right, and sees no nuance. She had a copy of my most recent test and was challenging questions that I had gone over in class after the tests were graded because if I had, in her words "felt the need to reteach it, you must know you didn't teach it well the first time." While I think that would be a valid practice, it wasn't why I went over frequently missed questions. I went over frequently missed questions because I wanted to students to engage in a little metacognition. I asked questions like "Why did you think the answer was B?" and explained the misconception that might have led to that choice and explaining the thinking that led to the correct answer.

She said that I should throw out any question missed by a large number of students, so I explained my process.  When I ran the tests through the scantron (which she also didn't like that I used), it told me how many students missed each question (one of the reasons I continued to use that type of test). If a question exceeded a certain number, I went to the question and the key and asked myself several questions.

1. Was the key marked correctly?  We do make mistakes, and if I marked the key incorrectly, I will immediately give everyone credit for that question.
2. Did I actually teach that this year?  Experienced teachers do pull up their old tests and edit them rather than creating new ones each time, and sometimes, changes to the calendar or interruptions to the routine mean I could have skipped something in class but forgotten to remove it from the test.  I would obviously throw that question out for everyone.
3. Was the question and answer list fairly worded? It doesn't happen very often, but every once in a while, I would be making the key for a test and think, "Was I half asleep when I wrote this question?  It doesn't make sense."  When that happened, everyone got credit for that one too.

If the answer to all of these questions was yes, then the question remained no matter how many of them got it wrong. This mom stopped me at the word remained and said, "Well, I imagine the students would have a different perspective than you do on that."  Of course they would. They were in the 8th grade, and I had been teaching for 15 years; we had a different perspective on EVERYTHING. It's their job to complain and pushback on anything they don't like, and it is my job to understand that what they want and what they need are two different things.  

I said to her, "I know they do, but I'm not going to trade 15 years of professional judgment built by experience to middle schoolers." That mom didn't speak to me for 3 months. (Oh, by the way, at some point during all of this, the dad popped up and said, "She didn't miss this question anyway, so we should probably move on." AARGH!)

In the age of populism, this problem has only increased. In the same way everyone was an armchair epidemiologist in 2020, everyone who reads an education blog is ready to challenge curriculum. They will sit across from someone with a PhD in curriculum design and say, "but this website says this book is better." We all (and I am including myself) decide we are qualified to counter arguments if we have done an hour of internet research. A man I encountered at the gym recently told me that he "know more than most doctors" because he read "five very long books" on nutrition and cancer.  He was saying this to a woman who has been seeing doctors at Johns Hopkins, Duke, and MD Anderson - three of the best cancer treatment institutions on the planet, but he thought he was qualified to overrule their judgment.

And now, as it always seems to these days, AI enters the discussion. Teachers everywhere are being asked to sacrifice their judgment to a machine.  

• Is the machine an expert on their subject? No. It's been fed a lot of websites.
• Does the machine know anything about their students? No. 
• Has the machine given an exam before? Of course not.
• Is the machine trained using only high quality sources? No. It is trained on every source - good, bad, and ugly. Right and wrong. Every source on the scale of credible to nutjob is represented in equal measure.

A friend of mine did an experiment with one of the AI platforms last week.  She put in her midterm exam and asked it how long it would take students to complete. She doesn't need to ask it this. She has given nearly the same exam (tweaked for the reasons discussed early) for several years, and she knows that the first student will turn it in somewhere around the 65 minutes mark and the last last student will finish it just before the 90 minute allotment is up). The AI told her it would take 90 to 120 minutes for students to complete it. The next day, she fed the exact same test into the same program and asked it the same question, and it said it would take an hour. 

Is this a hallucination (the cutsie name we give for when AI lies by making up crap that doesn't exist)?  No, it just doesn't know. And that would be fine if it just said so, but it won't. 

I'm not saying you should never seek out the wisdom of another mind, but it should be a mind that is at least as wise as yours. 

Students don't qualify; they simply don't know what they don't know.  A student once told me that the biology teacher next door to me was "asking questions that didn't need to be asked." I said, "I'm sorry, but your are a high school freshman; you aren't qualified to make that judgment. You don't know what needs to be asked." AI doesn't qualify either.  It is the digital equivalent of your worst friend - the one who thinks they know everything, never admits when they don't, and just guesses.  Think about that friend; do you go to them for advice?  Of course you don't; you know you have better judgment than that friend.

Teachers, trust yourself.  Seek advice from those whose judgment you trust. Incorporate their input into your thinking.  But don't trade in your professional judgment to anyone or anything with less wisdom than you.

What's Your Plan?

Welcome back from Thanksgiving!

If you a secondary teacher in most American schools, you are probably shifting your attention to wrapping up the semester and exam preparation. For some of you, exams will take place before Christmas, and for others, it will be one of the first things you do after returning from break.

Either way, it is time to start preparing students. They need to training in the art of preparing for something a few weeks away while simultaneously accomplishing the things they need to do today. And if your students are anything like mine were, they resist it pretty hard. A student once complained to me that "no adult has to plan for long term and short term at the same time."  I asked her if her parents went grocery shopping every day. She looked at me like I was crazy and said, "Of course not." I told her that meant her parents were having to think about both dinner tonight and what they might need for the rest of the month while they were shopping. I was also the yearbook advisor at the time, so I asked her if she thought I only took photographs the week before a page deadline.  Again, that would be crazy. I had to plan my days (what games I would attend, who I needed to track down to get another shot of) each day and week because there would be a deadline in December where those pages needed to be finished. 

In short, independent planning for both the short term and the long term is a life skill that will serve you from now until you die, so it's a little bit important, student resistance not withstanding. Their resistance doesn't make for a losing battle, just one you need to start early and keep emphasizing throughout the year. 

So, how do you build independence in students? In my study skills class, I handed out a paper calendar and had them fill out the big dates (exams, known test dates, etc.) as well as the things that were specific to them (athletic practice, play rehearsal, choir performance). I wanted them to get a realistic view of the limitations of their time.  Then, I asked them to realistically plan for where they could fit study time in for the exam. "But that's still 2 weeks away," one of them said. "I have this test to study for before then."  I reminded them that the entire reason we were doing this was to allow them to plan for both. Obviously, the days before that test should have their study time focused on those chapters, but they should also fit in about 20 minutes making flashcards or working on their study guide for the exam in that same class.

Recently, I was listening to the Good Faith podcast, and there were two guests who talked about anxiety prevention and building independence in young people.  They were  Kara Powell of the Fuller Youth Institute and Sara Billups - Author of Nervous Systems. They both referenced Lisa Damour, so I may be misattributing what any of them said to one of the others.

Sara Billups, I believe, discussed empowering kids while also guiding them, starting with three words - "What's Your Plan?" She said starting this way communicates to them that they have the ability to make a plan and is motivating. It doesn't mean you won't have to help them adjust an unwise plan, but if you start with the plan they made themselves, they will resist less. It also gives you a place to start from in guiding them to build independence. After they have told you the plan, you can say, "Why do you think that is the best thing to start with?" or "Do you remember that you have a volleyball tryout that afternoon? Are you sure you will have the energy for what you have planned after that?" Kara Powell recommended asking more questions than making statements. Statements feel like being dictated to, which we all naturally resist. Questions feel like we are choosing something. Even if the end result is the same, the second builds independence while the first reinforces dependence.

I recently interviewed the mom of three of my former students for a book I am writing about study habits. She said, "Looking back on it, I wish I had sometimes let them follow through on a less than wise plan so they could tie the consequence to the choice." It's natural for adults to want to prevent a negative consequence they can see coming. And, of course, if it is something major, we should - you don't let your child learned not to play in traffic using the method of natural consequences. But if the result is one failed quiz or one day of miserable exhaustion from staying up too late, it might be worth the investment. (This, by the way, is another example of adults balancing the short term and the long term together.) 

Growing up isn't easy. And, let's face it - not all adults have mastered it either. Helping kids navigate the process of becoming independent learners and functioning adults takes time, effort, care, and patience. It also takes teamwork. 

The Best Way to Learn?

During the first two years of my career, I frequently had the experience of stopping mid-lesson and saying, "Oh, I get it now." My students were a little shocked to find out I might not have gotten it before.  "No, no," I said, "I've been teaching you HOW to do it correctly, but I just put together WHY it works that way." I'm not sure if this made my students feel any better about my competence.

Anytime I share this story, people adopt a truism, assuming it to be a given. "Well, the best way to learn something is to teach it," they say. Education is full of these statements that people assume to be self-evident. But when I started learning about research into the science of learning, I had to investigate, not only what things work, but why. When you learn some principles of how the human brain works, you come to realize that everything is more complex and filled with nuance than you ever imagined.

Consider, for example, this tweet using this idea for a sports related skill. If a coach wanted a college athlete to learn a new skill, would he send that student to a middle or high school and have them teach that skill.  Of course not. He would show them how to do it (either demonstrating it himself or showing them film). He would then have them perform the skill while providing feedback until it became automated.  

Apply the same notion to a person learning a musical instrument for the first time. Would any piano teacher say to a student, "Now that you have had one lesson, it's time for you to teach one of my younger students"? It is easy to recognize the absurdity of this idea when we apply it to this type of skill, right. 

Still, this is the kind of malarkey being fed to classroom teachers throughout their degree and in professional development sessions. Get off the stage; have the students lead; have them teach each other. Then people post graphics that look "science-y" because they arrange them into a pyramid shape and attach numbers to them. You see it with Maslow's hierarchy of needs and Bloom's taxonomy, which I have addressed on this blog before. I've seen it in non-academic contexts, which I addressed here.

Yesterday, Bradley Busch, who I adore and whose books I have shared broadly, quote tweeted this learning pyramid (whose numbers are too tidy to represent any real science). As you can see, it claims teaching others will give you a retention rate of 90%! That would be amazing if it were true. But I love Bradley's comment, "As a rough rule of thumb, don't rrust any pyramid when it comes to learning or psychology."

"But, but . . ." I can hear you saying, "You started this blog with a story of learning something by teaching it." Thanks for remembering that, but if you go back and read it again, you might find it is a bit less straightforward than that.  You will see that I was teaching something I already knew how to do.  In fact, I was teaching something I had learned in high school and had been doing throughout college, writing chemical formulae.  Teaching it solidified my understanding of the deeper reasons for the techniques, but it would have been an absolute mess if I had tried to teach it to them while I was a high school chemistry student learning it for the first time.

There are some in the evidence informed world who think we have to throw out all techniques that are not explicit teaching. As a science teacher, I do know that other techniques have value when implemented well as part of an environment based on explicit teaching. I advocate for using other techniques sparingly and judiciously, with an understanding of the cognitive science principles behind the techniques.  When it comes to students teaching others, I think there are three things that are important to consider - retrieval, summarizing, and thinking about meaning.

• Retrieval is one of the most powerful activities our brain has. I love learning interesting facts, and I really enjoy telling people about facts that I have learned. When I share, people frequently ask how I remember all these random things. Until a few years ago, I didn't know.  I thought I just remembered things because I liked knowing them. After I started learning about the science of learning, I realized why remember all of this trivia. The penny dropped the day after I learned why we say uppercase and lowercase when referring to capital and non-capital letters. (If you are interested, it is because, during the time of type setting, the blocks with capital letters were kept in the top drawer - literally the upper case). I heard it on the radio one evening, and I thought it was amazing; so the next day, I told all six of my classes about it. I told other teachers about it.  I told anyone who would stand still and listen to me tell it. Over the course of several days, I must have retrieved that piece of information seventeen times. I remember things because I tell people things. In spite of the recent disdain for drilling, coaches, theater directors, and music teachers will tell tell you they work. Cognitive scientists will explain why - retrieval myelinates the nerves required to remember information or perform a task. When we teach, we retrieve previously learned knowledge. It's not the act of teaching that is helping you learn; it's the retrieval (at least in part) that is helping you remember.
• Summarizing is a skill that you likely learned in late elementary or early middle school. It's the basis for a good book review, decent story telling, and critical to note taking. It's also something your brain does while you are learning. As a teacher speaks, the student brain unconsciously sums up the gist in order to figure out where to store the new information by figuring out how it relates to what they already know - their schema. Because it is an unconscious process, we often don't know if the brain is doing it well. I can't tell you how many times a student has said, "So, you are saying . . ." followed by something I was definitely not saying. But I've also had some students finish that sentence with a brilliant rephrasing that made it more clear for everyone. My favorite one was "So you are telling me that everything is mostly made of nothing" after a detailed explanation of the distance between the nucleus and the electrons in an atom. Teaching others forces us to take this often unconscious process and engage with it on purpose. It's not the act of teaching that is helping you learn; it's the summarizing that is helping you work what you have learned into your existing schema.
• Focusing on meaning is, according to Daniel Willingham, the best way to aid your memory. After reading his book Outsmart Your Brain, I started telling my students to slow down with their flashcards and ask, "Why is this the answer?" and "Why isn't it a different answer" and "How does it connect to other things in this chapter?" while retrieving. Focusing on meaning gives the brain something to hold onto.  When I was learning to write chemical formulae in high school, I could get it right by following the process. When I was teaching students to do it, I had to focus on the underlying chemistry behind the process in order to explain the rules, which led to my moment of clarity while I was explaining. If a student asked a question, knowing the underlying chemistry was essential to giving them a quality answer.  It's not the act of  teaching that is helping you understand; it is the focus on meaning of what you know that is required to teach it.

What can you, as a teacher, take away from these three principles if you want to use the technique of students teaching for learning in your classroom.

1. Timing is key - If you are going to have students teach other students, it is important that they not do it too early in the learning process. It should be after they have mastered the fundamental concept themselves. I had a project in which students taught, but they had almost three months of research and practice on their topic before they got up to present (and I promise you that we could all tell if they had not).
2. Heavy guidance - Students will not summarize and focus on meaning naturally, so you have to require it from them if you want them to learn from the activity. Make them summarize their lesson either verbally or in writing. Give them feedback on whether their summary indicates a proper understanding.  During the preparation process, ask them questions that force them to think about meaning. Have them rehearse their speech with a volunteer and instruct the volunteers to ask the types of questions students ask.
3. Reflection - Reflecting on our learning is the most neglected part of the learning process. After students have presented, ask them questions about the content and the process to help them consolidate their understanding.

Doing this well is time consuming. If you decide to engage this technique, make sure it is worth the investment. What's the opportunity cost - i.e. what else could your students be doing with that time? If you decide it is worth doing, make sure you are ready to provide the guidance, feedback, and reflection involved in doing it well.

Thanksgiving 2025 - Holy Trinity Anglican Church

Each year at Thanksgiving, I write a post about an educator who inspires me. I've written about the teachers of my childhood, my colleagues, the GRACE administration and parents, my group fitness instructors at the Y, and Learning and the Brain. 

This year, I am particularly grateful for my church, Holy Trinity Anglican Church in Raleigh, and most especially for its rector. His fancy name is Rev. Dr. John W. Yates III, but he's my pastor, John, and I could not adore him more.

Fair Warning:  This post is going to be longer than normal. There is some background information, and I want to tell the story in detail. Get some coffee and settle in.

A little background on me. I grew up in church.  I don't mean I went every now and then. I mean I grew up in the church building. My family was there, at minimum, 3 times per week - more if there were youth activities, drama practice, handbell or choir performances, etc. I also attended a Christian school from kindergarten through 9th grade and went to a Christian university. So, I've been hearing sermons since my ears were forming in utero. And, Roland Harrell, the pastor I had during the most formative of those years, was intelligent, thoughtful, organized, and prepared.  We used to joke that he could pull a sermon out of a comma in the middle of a sentence. He kind of ruined me for all other preachers. It took me a while in college to settle on a church for that reason. In Tulsa, a city FULL of churches, there was no preacher that lived up to Mr. Harrell.

Fast forward to my adult life. I had been attending a well known church downtown Raleigh for quite some time. I never really got plugged into it, though. I was briefly in a community group, but it didn't stick. It's a big church where it is easy to be pretty unknown. Maybe I needed that for a while, but in late 2022, I started feeling that it was time to move on. I don't have anything bad to say about that church; there's no dramatic story. I just had allowed myself to become stale. I was mostly anonymous, showing up on Sunday morning to listen to the sermon and that was about it. Because it was non-denominational, doctrine was very much de-emphasized. If asked about specific doctrines, they would say, "We hold some things in a closed hand because they are essentials. We hold everything else in an open hand because Christians can respectfully disagree on those."  I am on board with that philosophy. I grew up in a Pentecostal church and a Baptist school and went to college at ORU. I taught in a Christian school with a multi-denominational population. So, I am accustomed with respectful disagreement amongst faithful people, but at this church, we didn't get a chance to respectfully disagree; I couldn't tell you if I disagreed with them or not because they never talked about them. (I'm not even 100% sure I know which issues they might put in each hand.) So, I wasn't growing at church. I went to church for those last few years because I am a person who goes to church, not because I was contributing to or taking anything from it. I got my doctrinal development from podcasts. I knew this wasn't right, but inertia is powerful; so it took God moving in my heart to get me to think about looking elsewhere.

But in November 2022, I didn't feel like I could leave yet. I had committed to a two-year giving initiative, and we were only near the end of year one. I didn't want to break my commitment, and I still believed that what I was giving to was a good thing. I didn't want to make my home somewhere else only to say, "I'm sorry, I can't give here for a year because I'm still giving over there."  So, I decided to wait until after Christmas of 2023 and then start looking for a church home, where I could grow, serve, give up any sense of anonymity, and stay until I died. 

Okay, here's where God has a sense of humor because He knows what is coming and we don't. During the fall of 2023, He started nudging me out of the classroom, something I had never remotely considered.  You can read that story here. Everything in my life was about to change as I went from very stable income and a predictable school calendar to the unknown of hourly work, writing a book, and the attempt to build a consulting business. When I made my last payment to the giving initiative, I thought, "Really, God? I know I said this was when I would leave, but . . . NOW?  Do I just not have enough change coming in my life?" But I knew there was a reason this needed to happen, so I made a list of local churches and began visiting.

The first church I visited was definitely not it. I posted about it on Facebook, prompting one of my friends to send me a "What were you thinking?" message. I was thinking I needed to go to church this week, and there was one on this corner; but don't worry because I'm not going back. On a walk to a kickboxing class with my friend Meagan, I said, "I will visit however many it takes; I want to find the place I can stay forever, and it may take time to find that place." She suggested that I visit Holy Trinity Anglican Church, saying, "I think they have the things you are looking for."  This was, word for word, the same thing she said when she suggested I take a tour at the Y, so she's wise about knowing what I am looking for.  

My first visit was interesting. I sat about halfway back in an aisle seat. After a song and prayer, when I sat back down, I was blinded by sunlight coming in through a very large window. I got up and moved, feeling very conspicuous (although, that's just the Spotlight Effect - no one actually noticed). Having attended very few liturgical services in my life, I felt a little awkward about kneeling and responsive readings, but I also  liked the sense of ceremony and connection to everyone else in the room that came from it.

Then, John got up and preached the sermon (start at 22:00). It wasn't long, but it didn't need to be. It was powerful. It was about loving your enemies and blessing those who curse you, which feels countercultural in our current climate. After putting it in the historical context of Jesus' audience, John shared a story about a time his dad, who he clearly loves, was betrayed by a friend and told how he responded. I was impressed by the vulnerability it took to share this obviously painful story, so later that week, I found his email address on line and thanked him. I ended the email with, "I don't know much about Anglican practices. Is there a resource you could point me to?" I thought that, if he answered at all, he would send a link to a website. He wrote back a lovely response and said if I would send my mailing address, he would mail me a book called Anglican Essentials (for which he had been a contributor). There's so much about this gesture that appealed to me:

1. If it is possible for books to be a love language, they are mine. This, friends, is the way to my heart.
2. It is unusually kind. Copying and pasting a link would have gotten the job done. It took time and care to put the book in an envelope, put the appropriate postage on it, and mail it to me.
3. It shows that he cares about scholarship - both his and mine. I didn't know it yet, but he is a Brainy Smurf. I've since heard him talk about pursuing his degree as "thinking I could scratch an itch only to find out it was poison ivy; everything I learned just made me want to learn more." This is basically my life as well (minus the advanced degree). 

The next week, as I approached him, he said, "You're Beth?" I wondered if I just looked like someone with questions, but he had gone to the school website in my email signature, so he would recognize me. Again, a kind act that took some time. He suggested another author that morning. I was talking to my friend Elizabeth, who had been on a similar journey with moving from a large non-denominational church to small, Methodist church recently. As I told her the story, she said "Wow, you found your people."  This was made more evident a few weeks later when he expressed, in passing, an interest in theoretical physics and specifically string theory. It was my turn to give him a book. When I gave it to him, I told him it was my favorite book about string theory, and he told me that made me a special kind of nerd. 

Done. Sold. This is my church. If, after only 5 weeks of knowing me, you knew that I would consider it a compliment to be called a nerd (and a special kind of nerd at that), you get me.

Every other member of staff has been wonderful. Claudia sought me out after seeing me for a couple of weeks in a row and told me she could help if I had any questions. I've learned well from the sermons of Tripp, Caleb, and Jason. The vestry is full of friendly people who are intentional about connecting. I am not anonymous as I sit around the same people each week and chat with them before the service. There are opportunities to serve, so I am now on the altar guild and have recently been added to the reader list.

What God knew when he started prompting me to move churches was something I didn't know.  I was about to lose something I had taken for granted, the intense Christian community I had experienced at my job in a Christian school for 21 years. Even though it wasn't right, I had "gotten away with" treating church the way I did because I attended chapel, teacher devotions, and a prayer meeting weekly at school.  That's not happening in my current role, and God knew I was going to need a pastor who I wanted to listen to, often going onto YouTube later in the week to listen again. He knew I was going to need a pastor who was patient with my constant communication. (Because he became so important to me so quickly, I send him way more emails than a reasonable person should, and he is gracious in answering them.) God knew that I would come to love liturgy, finding the repetition of the creed and certain prayers each week more meaningful than I imagined. He knew I was going to need sermons that sometimes feel like they are just for me.  God knew I was going to need Holy Trinity Anglican Church in Raleigh.

This may not seem like the most "education-y" of posts, but John is a gifted teacher. I have learned more in the past 22 months than I had in most of my adult church life. Teaching matters here, and I could not be more thankful for that because that teaching has been a gift to me - and one that I really needed more than I even knew. In a meeting with Claudia, I mentioned something about one of John's responses to me, and she said, "Yes, we really like to think here, and he leads that."

So this year, I'm giving thanks to God for Holy Trinity Anglican Church, generally, and the gift of John Yates, specifically. I sometimes wish I had found you sooner, but God blessed me with you at exactly the time I needed you. Thank you for everything.

And thank you to Meagan for being the kind of friend who knows what I need.