Who Knew I Loved Kickboxing? A Tribute to Matt and His Class

I joined the YMCA on March 1, 2023.  I tried a number of different types of classes.  I liked indoor cycling, but yoga wasn't for me.  I enjoyed Zumba, and I hated Barre.  I was just trying as many things as I could to find what I might want to do regularly.  On March 8, I left school and said to my friends, "Well, tonight I try kickboxing.  That should be interesting."  

I approached Matt, the instructor, as I did in all new classes, and said, "I've never done this before.  What do I need to know?"  His response was, "Well, first of all, don't take yourself too seriously."  This was good advice for someone who was trying new things and likely to be pretty bad at most of them for a while.  What I found was not just a workout, but a source of joy.  It was the first class that I knew I would return to every single week.  When I called my mom that night, I said, "It turns out I love kickboxing.  Who knew?"  This class quickly became and has remained the highlight of my week for the past fourteen months.  When Matt was out of town, I took something else and enjoyed it, but I always felt that week was missing something.  Every Wednesday night, I looked forward to jabbing, crossing, uppercutting, kicking, and grinning from ear to ear while Matt bounced around the room, shining glitter down on every member of the class.  

There is something truly special about watching a person do what they love, and you can tell Matt loves teaching this class.  He feeds off of the energy in the room.  I also have Matt in a weightlifting class, and he is fantastic in that one too, but I have told him before that watching him teach kickboxing is like sitting in a window with sunlight coming through it.  There is just a warmth and joy in it that is exceptional. 

This week, we had the last kickboxing class we are likely to have for a while (although I'm still trying to write the perfect comment card to get it back), and I am so sad I don't really have words.  I plan to write next week about the neurological reasons your brain finds all change stressful, so I won't go into that here; but we all know that some changes are more painful than others.  I've been thinking a lot about why that is.  Here's the conclusion I've reached.  If your heart is broken by a loss, it indicates that the thing you had was irreplaceably special.  (I have the Coldplay song running through my head - "Tears stream down your face. When you lose something you cannot replace.")  This class was just that - an irreplaceably special source of joy, love, and confidence in my life. While I am not losing Matt because I will still have him in the weightlifting class, the joy of his kickboxing class is not something that can be replicated.  I am so grateful to have had it for the last fourteen months.  Multiply that joy by the 20 years he has been teaching it and the number of "mes" there have been, and there is a lot of joy in the world now that there would not have been if it had not been for Matt's faithful service to the Y.

Thank you, Matt, for the love you put into teaching.  Thank you for being an amazing educator.  Thank you for putting up with me when I am clingy and possessive and "a little much."  Thank you for being a reference for me.  Thank you for the twenty years you have taught such a beautiful class.  

Planned with Purpose

Two weeks ago, I was on a trip to Washington DC with my 8th grade students.  We leave very early on Monday morning, arriving in DC just after lunchtime, and keep our kids moving hard and fast until about 9:30 every night only to return late on Wednesday.  It is fun watching different kids respond to different things, like my little nerd party and the Air and Space Museum, the girls who were very excited to see the Hope Diamond, or the kids who really got into their roles at the International Spy Museum.  Each evening, around sundown, we meet our tour guides who walk the kids through the various monuments and memorials on the National Mall.  

This year, our tour guide kept repeating the same phrase over and over as we encountered each site.  That phrase was "planned with purpose."  As we approached the Vietnam War Memorial, we learned the purpose of the layout of the panels and the meaning behind the two statues.  As we stood by the WWII Memorial, we learned the purpose of the wreaths, the columns, and the relief sculptures.  Even the city itself is laid out with intentional design, for the purpose of eliciting certain feelings in the minds of visitors.  Our trip was designed and planned by our amazing Marcia with many purposes (fun, learning about history, learning about God, honoring sacrifice, bonding time with friends).  The act of taking their phones from them during the five-hour bus ride has a purpose, which was great for me to remember when half of the kids on the bus I was on broke out in a Disney song medley.  "Look at the fun they create for themselves when they don't have their phones," I thought, even though the singing was objectively terrible.  Our purpose had been accomplished.

Because I'm a nerd teacher, I can't help but think of how this should apply to my lesson plans.  I've been writing a fair amount recently about clarity and whether or not students understand the purpose of the activities you are asking them to do.  If not, is there a chance you don't know the purpose behind it?  Are you doing it because it's a fun activity that the kids like (a Grecian Urn)?  Is it a state standard you are required to teach without understanding why?  Or, is there a purpose to your plan?  Have you looked carefully at what you want students to learn and designed learning experiences to achieve that purpose?  Are you planning with purpose?  If not, rethink how you approach your plans.

We know from Scripture that God designed humans with a purpose, both as a species (to tend the earth and subdue it, to glorify God and enjoy Him forever, to make disciples, etc.) and as individuals (Paul going from place to place throughout Greece, Joseph being faithful in prison and used to save Egypt from famine).  As Western Christians who pride ourselves in our individualism, we like to think of our specific call, and we tend to focus only on the big things (college, marriage, career aspirations).  Of course, all of those things are part of our plan and purpose, but each day God gives us also includes a plan and a purpose.  God may have put laundry in front of you today.  He may have put lesson planning or test grading in front of you.  He may have put a conversation with a stranger in WalMart in front of you.  He planned your day with a purpose, and the way you carry out laundry or grading or the conversation is an act of worship as you carry out that plan.  You, as CS Lewis said, "are not a mere mortal."  You are a carrier of the Imago Dei and planned with a purpose every second of your life.  Live in that.  Grow in that.

It's Just What We Call It

Did you know that there is a definition for a properly maintained yard?  According to the American Garden Club, an appropriate type of lawn was "a plot with a single type of grass with

no intruding weeds, kept mown at a height of an inch and a half, uniformly green, and neatly edged."  If you live in Tuscon, Arizona or some other arid place, this would be difficult to achieve, requiring an amount of water you may not have.  For you, a properly maintained yard might be filled with succulents and stones that allow for proper drainage.  

In some places, there are movements to have native lawns or natural lawns, which are more eco-friendly in that they require little watering or mowing, give home to local fauna, attract pollinators, and work with the natural landscape rather than against it. 

For those of you wondering if this blog has changed from education to lawn maintenance, hang with me for a minute.  The Gardening Club's definition is what most American accept, but that's only because we have been taught those standards by suburban cultural norms.  A weed is only a weed because we choose to call it that.  We could just as easily live in a world where a lawn would be considered more beautiful if it had a variety of color rather than a uniformity of green.  While there are objective standards for many things, there are also a variety of contexts in which success is only defined by what we call it.

Let's say a person is in line to ride a roller coaster.  As she nears the front of the line, her heart rate increases as adrenaline and cortisol rev up her muscles. Her pupils dilate, the moisture level on her skin increases, and she feels a tightening in her stomach.  From the symptoms I have described, you may think she is terrified of the upcoming ride.  Perhaps she is.  Or perhaps, she is very excited about the ride.  After all, the physiological symptoms are the same.  An outside observer, when looking only at the biometric data with no context, is unable to differentiate nervousness and excitement.  The difference, it seems, is what we call it.  We make that choice based on our appraisal of the likely outcome.  If we foresee a negative outcome, we call that array of symptoms nervousness.  If, however, we imagine a positive end, we call it excitement.  Helping our students with normal anxieties may be as simple as helping them reframe their predictions.  When a student is anxious about a test, a game, a play audition, or other similar scenarios, they naturally imagine the worst-case scenario.  This is normal and appropriate for our survival as a species because if we do not prepare for danger, we could actually be harmed.  But, it may be helpful to ask our students the next questions.  "Okay, what if the worst happens and you fail this test?  What's the result?  Will your parents stop loving you?  Will I?"  When they realize the answer to those questions is no, it may help them to stop catastrophizing the situation.  Or, you can ask them to imagine the full spectrum instead of just the worst side of it.  Ask them "What if you ace it?"  That may have the effect of helping them reappraise their feelings.  (Please note that I am not talking about anxiety disorders which obviously require medical attention.  I'm talking about the normal day-to-day things that make us nervous like giving a presentation in class.)

The same is true of other things we call stress.  During those especially busy weeks of the semester when it seems like every class is giving a test, students often believe we should take steps to minimize their stress.  I prefer to encourage them to hang in there, recognize it is temporary, and power through it.  When that week is over, I like to remind them that they aren't dead.  "Look what you didn't know you were capable of.  Next time, you'll know you can do it."  This is another one of those things we seem to recognize and find acceptable in sports but not in other places.  When an athlete has a particularly hard workout, we call it conditioning and respect it.  We use phrases like, "No pain. No gain."  When I leave my weightlifting class at the Y with jello arms and wobbly legs after Matt has challenged me, I don't blame him for the pain in my muscles and ask him to make it easier.  I thank him for the growth that he is causing in my muscles and mind.  The same should hold true in academic situations (and all other situations); we should recognize that growth only happens through stress and call it that.  Instead of saying, "This is a really stressful week," we can reappraise that feeling and recognize it is a week that will spur a lot of growth.

We don't have to ignore our feelings, but we also don't have to let them rule us.  We have come to view them as though they are the most real part of us, but they are chemical reactions causing electrical impulses.  As such, we can have some level of control over them.  Importantly, we can teach our students to recognize and manage them as well.

Kids Are Listening (When You Think They Aren't)

One of our alumni came by this week, and we were sharing stories of crazy college professors.  This was after school, and there were only adults around, so we were giggling at these stories as adults, looking back on our common experiences with unusual people.  But, it made me remember being a little afraid of my college years in the years before I got there because I had overheard similar conversations by adults.  My dad had told me about professors who would do things like write with one hand while erasing with their left.  I remember thinking, "I'm a good student, but I'm not that good.  How am I going to do this?"  Of course, when I arrived at college, I found that most professors are mostly normal and teach in mostly normal ways.  But those are boring stories, so you only share things about the strange ones.

On a similar note, when I was a kid, I was a little afraid of growing up.  It seemed like every adult I knew hated their job.  At least, they talked about it like they did.  When I was a teenager, I did a little survey as my fellow choir members arrived at church.  I asked each of them about their job.  I got a wide range of sighs and groans until Ron Butler came in.  When I asked him about his job, he grinned and talked about living with "spizerinctum," a word he made up for how energized he felt by his work.  It was greatly encouraging to hear an adult talk with such joy about the work he was doing, and it was clear that he loved it because he believed it mattered.  

It can be easy to think that kids are not paying attention when adults talk to each other.  After all, they give every impression that they are not listening, and it is frustrating when they seem not to have heard something we explicitly told them.  But they are picking up more than you think they are.  When you call a politician evil (not just wrong, but demonic) while watching the news, they absorb that; and since they don't have the experience to judge whether something is sarcasm or hyperbole, they come to school and share your speculations as gospel truth.  When you skewer the pastor during Sunday lunch, they hear you and learn to disrespect all spiritual authority (and you want to be careful because you are one of the spiritual authorities they are learning to disrespect).  Divorced parents often talk negatively about their ex to other adults while their children are in the room.  You think they aren't listening, but they come to my classroom the next day talking about it.  When I worked in daycare, there was a three-year-old in the building who had a colorful vocabulary, using words his parents had used at home.  His parents were a bit embarrassed by the fact their toddler told us something was BS (except he used the whole word) in his high-pitched baby voice.  He had heard them and didn't know that there were words many choose not to use in public.  It is not possible to tell when they are listening and when they are not.

Not all of the examples of this happening are bad.  I am currently on track to pay my house off ten years early because of a conversation I overheard between two other adults.  One man advised another to always pay whatever extra amount he could afford on his house in order to pay down the principal and save on interest.  I wasn't part of the conversation, but I happened to be in the room and thought that sounded like a wise practice.  As far as I know, the man in that conversation does not know that I have benefitted from his advice to someone else.  I have had casual conversations with juniors about their AP class choices that younger students nearby take as advice three years later.  I only know this because their parents say to me, "She remembered your advice about . . . "  When I say, "I don't remember talking to her about that," they tell me about a conversation I don't remember that I had with someone else (My Lord, the power we wield as teachers should be taken seriously).

I've rambled a bit, but here's my point.  Be aware and be careful.  They hear most of what you say, you don't know what context they are putting around your words in their minds.  They take more in than you think, and they repeat it to others.  It can affect their decisions and may mean they carry worries you aren't aware of.  Don't assume that kids can't hear you, even when they have earbuds in their ears.  Don't say, "Oh, he's never paying attention" because he often is.  If you don't want it to be part of his brain, don't say it.

Traditions Communicate Values

I am writing this on Easter Sunday, and this year, I am in a liturgical church for the first time.  Tradition and ceremony are the bread and butter of the liturgical church all year, but during Holy Week, from Palm Sunday to Maudy Thursday to Good Friday to Easter, Anglicans are at steroid levels of tradition in which every moment, color, and piece of fabric are symbolic and meaningful.  I have loved every minute of it, and it reminds me that traditions communicate values.

Some families have holiday traditions, like reading from Luke or attending church services on Christmas Eve, communicating that they care deeply about keeping the birth of Jesus at the center of Christmas.  Non-religious families may read "Twas the Night Before Christmas," showing that they value time with family sharing a story they have loved.

Even on this blog, I have a tradition.  Every Thanksgiving, I post about educators who have formed my life as an educator, from my own middle and high school teachers to my current administrators to my group fitness instructors at the Y.  This yearly practice reflects my penchant for reflection and gratitude.  

If there is any industry in the world that participates in tradition, it is education.  Schools have dozens of traditions.  There are the obvious, holiday concerts, spring musicals, and graduations.  There are traditions for the first day of school and the last day of school.  Some go back for generations.  

At my school, we have some special ones.  For example, the night before the first day of school, parents of seniors come and decorate their parking space with chalk.  We have a Grandparents' Day celebration, which, even though it has changed somewhat over the years, has been consistently happening for over 30 years.  These communicate that we value the families our students come from and their participation in our community.  We have a high school spiritual retreat, called Ignite, every year and weekly chapel services, communicating to our students that we care about their spiritual formation.  We have an annual basketball game in support of the Kay Yow Fund and a number of yearly service projects, communicating our value of service outside the walls of our school.  And my favorite meeting of the entire year is the last one teachers have before we check out for the summer.  It's called "The Shout Out Meeting," and I consider it sacrosanct.  There is nothing like that meeting to communicate our care for each other as human beings, and it is a lovely way to end the year.

We are heading into the part of the year with more traditions than any other.  What traditions does your school have?  Why do you do them, and what values do they communicate?  Are they values you want to communicate?  If not, is it worth doing or should you replace this tradition with something new?  It matters and should be thought about carefully because, as writer Will Durant said, "We are what we repeatedly do."

Faithful Leadership - A Tribute to Julie Bradshaw

While this post isn't about education (well, actually, it is - just a different kind of education), I wanted to publically thank a woman who has been instrumental in my life this past year because she is moving to a different job next week.  Julie is the Group Fitness Director at the Alexander YMCA, but next week she will be at a different branch.  I won't see her often, so I want to take a moment to thank her for her faithfulness, friendship, and leadership.

The first time I met Julie was in June.  I had been at the Y for a couple of months and I had heard her name from instructors and other members. In June, she came up with an idea for a cycle challenge called the Tour de Alexandre.  Those of us who registered for it recorded our classes and mileage on a large chart with the goal of collectively reaching the same mileage as the Tour de France.  She sent a weekly email, updating us on our progress and including who the leaders were both in the number of classes and individual mileage.  The result was a really fun and motivating challenge.  The two men who were in the lead on miles teased each other and pushed hard against each other.  I knew I wouldn't be able to achieve a high number of miles, but I took more cycle classes in those few weeks than ever before and loved watching that chart fill up.  At the end of the challenge, I replied to one of Julie's emails to thank her for coming up with the idea and keeping us updated because it was super motivating to know that my progress was part of a collective goal (which we crushed, by the way - we ended up at double the mileage of those guys in France).

I didn't see Julie every time I came to work out, but she occasionally subbed for Matt's Group Power class.  In fact, I think the first time I saw her teach was when she and Matt taught Group Power Express together for the summer Group Fit Fest.  I realized then that she wasn't just a creative challenge designer.  She is an exceptional fitness educator.  She cares about the members of her class and is observant of how they are doing.  She is clear in her explanations and models skills well.  She tells Dad jokes both to motivate and to distract you from how hard what you are doing is.  Mostly, she is just super encouraging.  Whatever you are able to do is great, but she encourages you to do just a bit more.

Just as school was starting back, I wanted to tell my Y story to someone, and she seemed like the right person to share it with.  I sent her a very long email, telling her my story from the beginning and praising the educational techniques of many instructors.  She made the mistake of asking me about cognitive science, so she got a few more very long emails as a result.  Every time I see her, she asks lots of questions because she is great about learning everything she can about her members.

In September, Julie asked me if I would be willing to participate in fundraising for the annual campaign.  I was both honored to be asked and thrilled to have the opportunity to give back to the Y.  She kept me encouraged throughout the campaign, even when responses were slow.  When I first began feeling God's pull out of the classroom and towards the Y, she was the first person I talked to there.  I just wanted to feel out if it was a crazy idea, so I asked her if we could talk after a Group Power class one Saturday morning.  I'm sure she would have rather gone home after class, but she agreed to talk with me.  She was so helpful and encouraging and helped me explore the job posting website.  She set up introductions with important people so I could explore options, even introducing me to the president after class one morning.  When I decided to certify in cycle instruction, she was helpful and encouraging.  One of the final things Julie has done in her role at Alexander is to hire me as a substitute cycle instructor, and I couldn't be more grateful.  She gave great feedback on my demo class and asked great questions during our interview.   She has been walking me through every step of the process.  Mostly, she is providing me with an opportunity to be part of the Y's mission.  

In Drew Dyck's book Just Show Up, he discusses the value of faithfulness as both a character trait and a form of leadership.  He describes three questions you can ask yourself to identify faithfulness.

1.  Can people depend on me to do what I say I will do?

2.  Do I look for ways to help others?

3.  Am I a person who can be present even when I don't know what to say or do?

Julie exhibits all of these in her leadership at the Y.  She took the time to meet with me when she didn't have to and followed up on everything we talked about that day and at other times.  She took advantage of every opportunity to be there, not only for me, but for all of the instructors she is in charge of, and gave many members opportunities to be part of fundraising.  During more than one of our conversations about my future, I have begun to cry.  During each of those times, she has been patient to let me express whatever I needed to, comforted me with a hug, and given encouraging words when possible.  Her faithfulness has influenced more lives than she will ever know, and I am proud and grateful to call her my friend. 

This Becoming is Harder Than it Seems

I decided a couple of weeks ago that I wanted to see what music I would hear if I let randomness decide.  I put my iPod on shuffle and left it there.  As a result, I've heard some Christmas songs and skipped through a few things I don't remember purchasing.  But I've also heard some songs that I love and had forgotten about.  

One of them is a Michael W. Smith song called "Place in This World."  If you are younger than I am, you may not even know this song as it came out in 1990.  I had it on cassette tape back then and listened to it until I wore that part of the tape out.  It had become clear that I was not going to be an astronaut as I was already taller than their height limit with no sign of slowing down.  I had not yet found my love of physics, so I didn't know what the future looked like.  The line in this song that most resonated with me was "A heart that's hopeful, a head that's full of dreams, but this becoming is harder than it seems."

As I listened to it in my car this morning, I had many of the same thoughts I had back in the early 90s.  I don't know what happens next at 47 any more than I did at 17.  (And it is all the more jarring after 21 years of knowing exactly what I would be doing from day to day and year to year.)  I have to trust God for that every bit as much now as I did then.  And, I also thought of my students.  They are in the same position I was at that age.  Modern life doesn't make it easier; in fact, in many ways, it makes it harder.  They have more access to information, which seems like it would be helpful; but it can bring about a form of cognitive overload called choice fatigue.  Previous generations may have had to choose between college and a job or the military.  If they went to college, they likely had only one or two options.  Now, students apply to many colleges, and if the one they most want defers them, they are left with many choices they consider disappointments.  They are told all of their eggs rest in this basket even though we know God's plan for them will not be thwarted by one decision.  It's a lot of pressure, and it is worse than it was when we were kids.  Some of them become practically paralyzed with indecision.

If you know a teenager, pray for them.  "This becoming is harder than it seems" is just as true now as it was when Michael W Smith wrote it.  And they likely still feel this:

"If there are millions down on their knees

Among the many, can You still hear me?
Hear me asking, "Where do I belong?"
Is there a vision that I can call my own?
Show me, I'm

Looking for a reason

Roaming through the night to find
My place in this world
My place in this world
Not a lot to lean on
I need Your light to help me find
My place in this world."

Pray for them to know God can still hear them.  Pray for to find that reason.  Pray for God to give them the light they need.  Pray for them to learn to trust Him in the process.

The Last Time I Will . . .

For those who may not know, I am in the last semester of teaching.  After 25 years in the classroom, God is moving me in other directions.  Because it is mid-March, that means I am experiencing many things for the last time.  Some of those are fine.  I'll be happy not to conduct department chair observations or grade NASA essays in the future.  They aren't bad things, but I can't say I'm going to miss them.  

But there are other things that I'm sad to be doing for the last time.  God gave me training wheels for this last year when I was advising my last yearbook, so I am familiar with the feeling of being nostalgic for something while it is happening, but this week has been that experience on steroids.  I think it is because we are in my favorite chapter in 8th grade science (sound waves).  In physics, I am teaching many of the same students that I had as 8th graders during lockdown, and we have reached the material that I taught them from home.

Thursday, for example, I taught 8th graders about how our ears process sound.  I LOVE teaching that. Even though you will not find it in any physical science textbook, I set aside a day for it because I think if you are going to talk about sound waves, you should talk about how you interact with them.  (The same will be true in the light chapter after spring break - we will spend two days talking about the eye and dysfunction of the eye.)  I have honed this lesson into a perfect act, and I love doing it.  I love the questions they ask.  I love the weird answers they give to my questions.  So Thursday was a great day, but I was also sad because it is unlikely I'll ever have a reason to put on this particular show again.

I am excited about the new things that are coming in my life, but there are few things I'll really miss.  For 25 years, I have shown three of the episodes of From the Earth to the Moon to students.  I may have to watch them by myself at home next January because it just won't be January if I don't see them (I'll refrain from watching the same episode 4 times in one day).  When I teach the Doppler effect, I love getting in my car and driving past the kids at 40 mi/hr while holding down my horn.  If I do that after this year, someone will have me evaluated for mental issues.  A lot of what I do are things non-science teachers don't have an excuse to do.  

What is nice is that I know this is the last year.  I can savor these last moments of "This is the last time I will . . ."  The other nice thing is that I can now share this feeling with my kids.  Prior to making the announcement in February, I was having this experience, and they didn't understand the weird vibe I was giving off.  Now, I can actually say to them, "Well, that's the last time I'll ever get to do that" and share a nice moment with them as the people I got to do it for the final time with.

Questions Reveal Values

I've been thinking a lot about questions this week.  The questions students ask.  The questions I ask.  Questions related to jobs and those we are just curious about.  One of the reasons I have spent so much time thinking about these things is that I've been to two job interviews this week.  They were both jobs with the YMCA, but the positions were different; so the questions I was asked about myself were quite different.  As a department chair, I've also been a part of conducting job interviews.  It occurs to me that the questions we ask reveal something about us as askers.

The questions we ask in job interviews reveal what we value in a colleague and the way they will do their job.  In the interview I had this week for a substitute cycle instructor position, I got a lot of questions about how to anticipate and meet diverse needs or what I would do if something didn't go according to plan (does this sound like teaching or what?).  She asked these questions because when there are 25 people in a cycle class, some of them will be having their first ride and others will be athletes.  Some will have physical considerations, like injury or disability that affect range of motion.  It is likely that technology will fail, and I will need to adapt my instruction to accomplish the same goal in a different way.  Since I am likely to encounter these things, the interviewer wants to know that I won't fall apart when they happen.  The second interview was for a welcome desk position, so the questions were about welcoming people warmly, holding the line on rules, and comfort level with computers.  Since the person at the desk sets the tone for a person's experience, she wants to make sure I'm not going to be a grouch or a person who's afraid of technology.  Her questions reveal that she values people who can enforce rules while being respectful and empathetic to the person in front of her.

When we ask questions in a job interview, we may have an ideal answer in mind, or we may be observing how the prospect reacts to the question.  One of the questions I ask, for example, is "Can you tell us about a time when a lesson went wrong and how you reacted to that?"  While I am interested in the answer, what I really want to find out is whether this person tries new things, takes risks, admits when things don't work, and what they do to clean it up.  Because a person who does that is the kind of person I want in my department.

One thing I have noticed since the pandemic is that students ask fewer questions than they used to.  They have an ever-growing view of their education as a box to check off as they progress toward a college or a career, but they are less curious than they were before.  This makes me sad because I value curiosity so much and know that it can be the most joyful part of school, but it makes me really respond to the questions that are asked.  It now takes more courage to ask a question during a lesson because fewer of their classmates are doing it, so when they do, you know it is something they really care about.  Much like job interview questions, student questions reveal what they value.  If they ask a lot of medical-related questions, it may be because they have a loved one who is ill.  If they ask a lot of questions about how things work, they may be future engineers or tinkerers.  Don't just answer the question and jump back to your planned lesson.  Take a moment to recognize that the student has just told you something about themselves and what they value.  Keep it in mind as you develop relationships with them.

Great Teachers Aren't Born

"I'm going to tell you everything you need to know about being a great teacher - steal. STEAL.  STEAL!"  Then, he left the stage.  That's how the great Harry Wong opened the day of professional development for this first-year teacher.  When he returned to the stage, he said, "Well, I told you I was going to tell you everything you needed to know.  I figured you could go home after that."  We spent the day laughing and learning from this tiny man who, at nearly 70 years of age, had more energy than anyone in the room.

Before there were Edu-celebrities, Harry Wong was one.  He didn't try to be. It didn't come from a fine-tuned marketing machine with social media support.  It came from being the real deal rather than a crafted persona, a truly influential person rather than "an influencer."  I know very few teachers who haven't had his seminal work The First Days of School somewhere in their education, whether in a college course on classroom management or required reading for their first-year training in a school or a gift from an administrator.  It is a practical book of techniques that have been tested "in the wild" and it has influenced me from year one.  From procedures for entering and exiting the classroom to attention-getting hand signals, Harry and Rosemary Wong have helped teachers create efficient classrooms and reduced stress for both teachers and students more than just about anyone in the last four decades.  But what makes that book so effective is that much of the writing was not done by the Wongs.  They collected and collated techniques teachers were already using to give younger teachers the wisdom of their experience.

Which brings me back to the day of professional development.  What he meant when he said, "Steal. Steal. Steal." was that teaching is improved by experience, but it doesn't always have to be your experience.  You can learn from the wisdom of others.  While I cannot find it attributed to him, I am 99% certain that I heard Harry Wong say that day, "Great teachers aren't born; they are made by the teacher next door."  (If I am wrong and someone else said it, please don't hold it against me.  It was 1998, and he may have attributed it to someone else that I just don't remember 26 years later.)  

It is true.  Teaching involves a thousand big and small activities every day.  They have to manage their classroom, plan lessons, do lunch duty, deliver lessons, grade homework, give feedback, write tests, create project rubrics, deal with emotional students (or parents), choose curriculum, etc.  Anyone who tries to do that alone with only the knowledge they acquired in college courses will quickly burn out.  Befriending the teacher next door and finding a co-conspirator is as important as preparing your learning activities.  Despite being with 30 to 130 people all day long, teaching can be a lonely job, and the only remedy for that is to spend time with other teachers.  No matter how good you are at this job, you need a mentor.  If the school assigns you one, that's great; but they may not be the person you naturally gravitate toward.  Find that person.  Go in their room, sit down, and start developing a relationship.  You need them. They need you.

Harry Wong passed last week, but his legacy did not.  His book will still be valuable to young teachers everywhere.  His videoed speeches will still engage and entertain while educating educators.  But if anything, his lesson to learn from the experienced teachers around you will continue to do good far beyond the 92 years of his life.  Rest in peace, Harry Wong.  We'll miss you.  

The Best Tool I Was Not Using

Lesson design involves dozens of considerations.  Do I start with bellwork?  If so, is it better to use it for pre-questioning or retrieval?  Do I hook students with a demonstration or story, or will that be a seductive detail?  What are the best ways to encode information and engage students in deep thinking?  Does my school expect me to use digital tools?  If so, which ones are best?  How do get and give feedback in efficient ways?

There’s a lot to think about, so when I find a way to involve students, engage in formative assessment, provide feedback, and serve as retrieval - all in one tool, I am interested. And, if that tool can be simple and inexpensive, consider me VERY interested.  

The tool in this case is the mini-whiteboard.  While I had used them occasionally in the past, I was mostly using them at the end of a unit to prepare for tests.  It took class time to pass them out and collect them, and I was only getting an idea of their thinking the day before the unit test.  

Near the end of last year, I observed a colleague who kept mini-whiteboards out on student desks at all times and used them daily.  He told me he had been using them as retrieval practice for the past two years, but until I observed him, I didn’t know how much more he was getting from them than that.  He began class by having them answer an introductory question as a hook for his introduction.  In the middle of a lesson on animal behavior, he said, “On your whiteboard, write what you think will happen next,” scanning the room for insightful answers and misconceptions.  At the end of class, he asked a few retrieval questions about the most important items he wanted them to have in long-term memory.  I was sold.   

This year, I began with whiteboards and markers on every table.  I explained what they would be used for, and that they should not just be drawing pictures on them (I’m not against doodling, but it was going to get expensive if they were using the markers for that every class period).  I start nearly every lesson with a question that either activates what I want to in their schema or assesses the prerequisite knowledge for the skill I’m about to teach.  When I feel their attention flagging, I ask a few “whiteboard questions” because just the act of getting the boards out makes them more alert.  That is also the point where I am able to identify if they’ve been tracking with me.  I recently identified a few misconceptions in my first period class when six students wrote the same wrong answer.  I was then able to avoid that misconception for the rest of the day, so it had been valuable feedback for me. 

The best part of using mini-whiteboards in my class is that I get a visible answer from every student rather than just the one student I would have called on in the past.  Misconceptions may have existed in past years without my knowledge because the students who held them might not have answered.  Hearing from everyone has increased my ability to be a responsive teacher.

Small Acts Add Up

Recently, I read Drew Dyck's book, Just Show Up, and I have found its message so important that I keep buying copies and giving them away to people who either need to take its message to heart or already embody it.  

In it, Drew talks about the fact that we, as American Christians, are given a very performative message for our entire lives.  We are told that we are meant to save the world.  In churches with a politically conservative bent, phrases like "take back our country" and "culture warrior" are used.  More progressive churches tend to use words like impact, save, and justice.  But the message is the same.  We are meant to change the world.  But scripture doesn't talk about that.  It talks about faithfulness.  It talks about self-control.  It talks about local activity and taking care of family.  While Peter and Paul traveled extensively, most ancient Christians did not.  The point Drew makes is that if each of us, every one, were faithful in our own context, that would, in fact, change the world because we would all be effecting our part of it.  

This week, at a funeral, I was reminded of an example of this in action.  A family friend from the church I grew up in died from a massive stroke last week.  At his funeral, a middle-aged woman got up to speak.  Through tears, she talked about how this couple came and picked her up for church every week - Sunday morning, Sunday evening, and Wednesday night for years (not to mention special events, choir practice, and talent competitions).  After she moved out of her childhood home, they continued to pick up her mother every time she wanted to come to church.  A ride is a small thing, but the consistency with which they did it was anything but.  This girl got Christian community and Biblical training she would not have had if they had not been faithful in this small, local act.  

There are people with big needs in our world, and it is right that we address them.  But, when we do, it is often a one-time (or perhaps annual) fundraiser or service event.  Meanwhile, all around us are small but constant needs.  Needs for rides, for a place to stay, for electric bills, for car repair, for study help - needs for encouraging words or someone to sit with at lunch.  Look around, and you will see them.  

When the woman with the issue of blood reached out to touch the hem of Jesus' garment, He was on his way to the home of Jairus, to heal his daughter (and ultimately raise her from death).  He allowed Himself to be "distracted" by the common and unclean woman right in front of Him.  You may be on your way to do something big while passing by many other needs.  Don't move so fast that you cannot see and pause to meet those "smaller" needs around you.  Chances are that you will have more impact on the life of one person than you could ever have doing "something big."  If we all took care of the small needs around us, there would be fewer of the big needs.  This was the call of the early church, who "devoted themselves to the apostles' teaching and to fellowship, to the breaking of bread and to prayer" and who "sold property and possessions to give to anyone who had need."  When they took care of each other consistently, they were "changing the world."  They were just doing it one family at a time.

Calm Dark Time - You Don't Know You Need It, But You Do

School is both a marathon and a sprint.  There are things that are happening in every class every moment of the day.  You are always preparing for a coming test or project, and there aren't enough days to spend time taking a moment to breathe.

Unless, that is, you teach a class where it is possible.  When I was the yearbook advisor, the work of completing the book wrapped up in mid-March.  After that, we had work to do for marketing and sales and some planning to do for the following year, but we certainly had a less hectic pace during the fourth quarter of the year, so once a week, we had something called "Calm Dark Time."  There is one set of lights on in the back of the room for those who might have something they want to read or work on, but they are also allowed to nap, play quietly on their computer, draw pictures, etc.  Basically, if it is calm, they can do it.

This actually started by accident.  There was a day I had a migraine headache and had turned half the lights in the room off during the previous class period.  When the staff came in, they said, "This is great.  Can we leave it this way?"  I was happy to keep the light stimulation on my still-hurting head low, so I agreed.  It was amazing how the low light in the room lowered everyone's volume and everyone's sense of pressure.  On the way out, I overheard students saying, "That was great.  I wish we could do that sometimes."  And so we did.

When I gave up the yearbook last year, I thought I might not ever again experience the glory of Calm Dark Time.  There aren't enough days in the year to take off a day in physics or middle school science.  But in giving up the yearbook, I took on another elective course - Middle School Study Skills.  It meets for a block on Tuesdays and a 44-minute class period every other Friday.  One week, our lesson was on the importance of rest for your brain, so I explained Calm Dark Time to them, and we did it.  I wasn't sure how this would go with 7th and 8th-grade students, but it was amazing.  There were moments when I almost forgot they were in the room.  Once again, they recognized its benefit.  On the way out the door, one of them said, "Wow, I really do feel better now" and one boy thanked me as he left.  I decided then that we would do it during each of the Friday periods, when they might need to unwind a bit from the events of the week and take a moment to just breathe.  I have also included it a little bit in my community-building period (35 minutes on Wednesdays) if I felt that they would benefit from some down time.  

A little rest time is supported by cognitive science, psychology, and biology.  It is also Biblical.  God modeled a day of rest.  Is it because He needed it?  No, of course not.  It is because he knew we needed it.  He wanted us to trust Him by putting our time of productivity on pause and allowing him to provide.  We live in a world that is very focused on information input and product output, but it has robbed us of time to reflect, integrate, and rest.  You may not be in a position to have a quiet class period of Calm Dark Time.  As I already said, I don't do this in my academically focused classes.  But, you might be able to pause for one minute and say, "Hey everybody, close your eyes.  Take a deep breath in.  Hold it.  Let it out.  Okay, let's get back to work."  That small moment could be exactly what the hippocampus in your students' brains needs.

Study Skills - MS

Teaching Awe - Why Do You Love It?

Last week, I talked about joyful learning.  This week, I would like to address something our curriculum-driven, standards-obsessed educational culture has forgotten.  We learn best those things about which we are curious.  I'm not advocating for student-driven, personalized learning.  I'm suggesting that part of our pedagogy needs to be stoking curiosity by revealing those parts of our disciplines that are awe-inspiring.

When I took physics, I spent every day in awe.  Was it because my physics teacher did something dramatic?  Sometimes.  But often, it was the physics itself.  Knowing how the world worked made me happy in ways I didn't yet understand.  It was the first time math had made sense to me as expressions of relationships between real things.  I didn't love history, but the best history teachers I have told amazing stories of people from the past and then showed the themes that keep repeating about how we treat each other and those we consider unlike ourselves.  Trigonometry was the first math class I took that I actually looked forward to.  There was something about the relationships shown in the unit circle that thrilled me.  I'm sure there were people who enjoyed different parts of different classes; the same things don't appeal to all of us.

I want my students to understand that physics is a way of knowing something real about the world and that we have used it, not just to advance society by inventing new things, but also to understand without need to turn that knowledge into a commodity.  

My advice to teachers is this.  When lesson planning, of course, you have to think about curriculum and standards, but take a moment to look at what you are teaching and remember what made you love it.  You chose to teach math or literature or band or computer science for a reason.  Give students a glimpse of that by telling a story or showing your own amazement.  My physics classes are currently in a chapter on sound waves.  While talking about wavelength and frequency and amplitude, I find it important to take a day and talk about how our ears process it.  This is not in the curriculum.  No physics standards says, "students will understand how the human ear processes sound waves," but I think it is amazing that we have structures in our ears that turn patterns of pressure differences into electrical signals.  Even more amazing is the fact that we do not yet have a full understanding of how these structures function.  Perhaps one of my students will be the person who figures that out, but even if that doesn't happen, I want them all to want to know.  I want them all to be curious about things we have not figured out.  

It's easy in science because it is almost all revealing of some underlying principle that is neat to know.  But perhaps there is something about how poetry is structured that you find amazing.  Perhaps there is a historical figure who inspires you.  Perhaps the way colors blend in a painting takes you to your happy place.  Show students that.

If you want students to score well on standardized tests, stick to the book standards.  If you want kids to be lifelong learners, show them the awe of your discipline.  By the way, they'll do better on tests too because they'll be more likely to follow you down a rabbit hole and learn things they hadn't planned to.

Learning Should Be Joyful

I have been teaching for 25 years, long enough to see pendulum swings in a thousand ways.  From a focus on science to a resurgence of the arts back to STEM obsession.  From all phonics to whole language and back to phonics.  

Right now, we are in an upsetting trend of people who only value education as career training.  I am not against the idea that we can use what we learn in school for our jobs, but I am against the notion that everything learned in school should be focused on how you plan to use it after school, leading to people who complain that we don't teach kids to file their taxes or sew on buttons (yes, there is a weird contingent of internet people who won't let this go) or that students should only learn those things that they will use in a job 

This notion is disturbingly utilitarian.  If something is only valuable if it is useful, we will stop being learners and become consumers, judges, and grouches.  Education will become a commodity, so we will learn less as we cull the curriculum.  Content will be prejudged for usefulness, leading us to look at everything through a utilitarian lens.  All of this is bad, but the worst part is that there will no longer be joy in learning anything we don't immediately judge to be useful.  If we allow curiosity to be a defining feature of our lives, we will find joy in learning new things without insisting that it be something we will use later.

I have written on this blog before about my chemistry teacher insisting that I take honors physics.  Had I possessed the view that I should only learn those things that would be part of my future job, I would not have taken honors physics, would not have had Mr. Barbara, and would not have found that I adored physics.  I mean, I loved it so much that I came home every day and did my homework immediately just so I could do more physics.  While I ultimately did make my love of physics into a career, it was because I found so much joy in it that I wanted to give that to others.  When my students leave me, I don't try to turn them all into engineers, but I do try to make it so they see physics in their everyday lives and feel joy in knowing how things work.

I want students to be lifelong learners because there is joy in learning.  That won't happen if we view it merely as job training.  It has been 11 months since I joined the YMCA, and I have spent the last year learning new things.  I've learned about weights and kickboxing and Zumba.  I've learned about indoor cycling, and yesterday I took a certification course to learn how to teach indoor cycling.  At the age of 47, I have found new sources of joy in my life because I was open to learning new things.  My granny had a sister named Grace, who took Greek at her local university when she was in her late 70s.  Her career was long behind her.  She took it because she wanted to.  She took it because learning gave her joy.  I want to be like Grace when I grow up.  I'm not talking about making things easy to make them joyful; Grace was learning Greek, for heaven's sake.  In fact, it is sometimes more joyful to learn something hard because it is more of an accomplishment.

Keep learning.  Teach your kids to keep learning.  Model a love of learning for your students.  Show them that there is joy in learning, no matter how old you are.  

They Neither Protected Nor Served - The Uvalde Report

I had not planned to write about school shootings today.  In general, I try to stay away from the topic, except for the one post following the Parkland shooting.  I would have rather written about anything else.  I would have loved to have written about something nerdy, like working memory, or something lovely, like GRACE's 16th annual Play 4 Kay event.  But earlier this week, the DOJ issued its report on the response to Uvalde, and it was worse than we already knew it was.  

I have been a teacher for 25 years, beginning with the fall after Columbine.  I have been heartbroken by the deaths of children, confused by the complicated motivations, in charge of classrooms during code red drills and code yellow events, and bothered by the lack of response from our public servants.  But no single event has outraged me more than the massacre at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, Texas.  After the report came out this week, I expressed this on Twitter, referencing the horrifying story of the girl who put her friend's blood on her own face so the gunman would believe she had already been shot.

At the time of this writing, this tweet has been "liked" over 1300 times.  I'm not telling you this because I care about online attention, but because my tweets generally don't result in more than 20 or so likes.  This story obviously strikes a nerve with a lot of people.  Considering how many school violence events there have been, why this one?  Why does this one feel different?  I won't try to speak for everyone, but for me, it is because the people we rely on to make these situations less awful made it more horrifying instead.

In Parkland, there was only one security officer who failed to do his duty.  He went out of the building instead of into it, but you could make the case that it was one man who didn't deserve to have the job and that someone else might have made the difference.  After all, Second Amendment zealots always assert that "the best way to stop a bad guy with a gun is to have a good guy with a gun on site."  The armed officer at Parkland didn't stop the incident, so maybe he wasn't a "good guy with a gun" but rather a cowardly guy with a gun.  

Uvalde is different.  There were 376 members of law enforcement in the halls of the school, about a dozen of them in less than 3 minutes from the gunman's entry.  But instead of responding to it as an active shooter scenario and entering the room to stop the shooter, they treated it as a "barricaded subject."  Although they could hear gunshots (active shooter), they approached the situation like a bank robber holding hostages.  They ignored the gunshots, the screaming of children, and the pleas of desperate parents for 77 minutes.  For forty of those minutes, they looked for a key to the adjacent classroom.  I've been in schools long enough to tell you that the classroom was almost certainly not locked and that multiple adults in the building had keys, so there was no reason for that kind of delay.  Unable to decide who was in charge, they stood in the hallway talking for over an hour.  

For the first day or two after the incident at Robb Elementary, there was a story going around that a teacher had propped open a door to the school and that this was the way the gunman gained entry to the school.  Then, they said it wasn't propped open when he entered but that it had been earlier.  Then they said it was closed but unlocked.  The report isn't clear on why these stories all conflicted.  But for me, and I speak only for me, when the bodycam footage was released, it was clear that this was an early attempt to divert attention from the inaction of the police and to blame the school for lax security measures.  Make the school look bad first, get that story on FOX News, and let those who already disrespect teachers blame them.  It may have worked for some, but the report makes it clear that this tragedy was made far worse by the inaction of the police and not the educators.

I respect those who choose careers in law enforcement precisely because they choose jobs that put their lives at risk.  They go to work every day, knowing they are armed for a reason and that there is a chance they won't come home.  When fourth graders are in danger, it is not their job to figure out how to protect themselves.  That's the job of those who chose to "protect and serve" the community.  The police in Uvalde were from all levels of enforcement, and they chose to protect themselves, not the children.  I think often of what it must have been like for the children huddled in those classrooms, hearing the police in the hall, believing they would soon come in to help.  What kind of therapy is it going to take for survivors to recognize that those who were charged with helping didn't help, for over an hour?  What was it like to know that the NRA held a convention the next week in nearby Houston?  Did they hear people say their rights are more important than the lives of kids, including their own governor and senator?

I think a lot about the girl who put her friend's blood on her face.  First of all, I respect that a fourth grader had that level of insight.  Surely, no one had told her to do this, so it was a pretty genius thought to have during such a high-stress moment.  Second, as I said in the tweet, I think about how she protected herself because the police weren't protecting her.  But mostly, I wonder about the lifelong PTSD she will certainly have and hope she is getting the help she needs.  

And that leads me to wonder whether we will have a generation of kids with PTSD.  At this point, there are very few kids in America who haven't experienced some level of threat.  Some were at a shopping center when shots rang out or sat through a lockdown of their classroom.  Others have friends or family members who experienced violence in their homes or schools.  After these incidents, we talk a lot about the dead and injured (as we should), but it may be time to expand our definition of injured beyond those whose bodies were invaded by bullets.  The long-term damage will be to mental health.  There is not one member of the Uvalde community who isn't in need of care.  (Add Parkland, Nashville, Sandy Hook, Columbine, the Aurora movie theater, the Charleston church, the Pulse nightclub, the Buffalo grocery store, and the rest of the survivors of what is rapidly becoming countless events.)  While I would rather prevent these events from occurring, we may have to face the fact that it won't happen because there isn't the political will to do so.  While I would prefer a proper response from the police when these incidents occur, Parkland and Uvalde show us there is no guarantee that will happen.  

So, at the bare minimum, can we invest in mental health responses for those who survive?  If they can't protect them, can they at least be served?

  

Curriculum Isn't Everything

For the past two weeks, I have been teaching my middle students about the Apollo era, the causes of NASA's fatal missions, and discussing what it would take to put people on Mars.  It is my favorite thing to teach, and I have been doing so for 25 years.  However, if you open any published physical science textbook, you will not find this chapter.  It is not part of any physical science curriculum.  I added it during my first year because I had students who didn't know anything about the space program, and I wanted them to.  I asked the history teachers if they covered the space race, and they said that, because the '60s were covered so late in the school year, they were doing well to cover the Civil Rights Movement and the Vietnam War.  Knowing I wouldn't be stepping on anyone's toes, I developed a short unit so I could share my passion for space exploration with physical science students.  It has become everyone's favorite unit, including mine.

This takes me back to my own middle school years and a history teacher I have written about before on this blog, Mr. Danny Watkins.  History was not my subject.  I didn't perform badly in it; I just didn't care that much about what I was learning.  There are excellent history teachers out there, but I had precious few of them.  My experience with history was mostly men with the first name "coach" assigning reading and questions and then sitting down at their desk to create plays for their teams.  Mr. Watkins was the opposite of that.  He absolutely loved sharing the stories of history and the people who made it.  There were specific people he was particularly inspired by, like Winston Churchill, Booker T. Washington, George Washington Carver, and Frank Boyden.  One story he particularly loved sharing was that of Tsar Nicholas I and his family.  I read the book Nicholas and Alexandra during my 8th-grade year, a book far above my level, for no other reason than Mr. Watkins loves it so much.  Nine years later, I was in an art museum in Tulsa, where a traveling exhibit of imperial art was being shown.  I had seen portraits of Catherine the Great, Faberge eggs, and cloisonne pieces.  It was all beautiful, but I hadn't really responded to much until we reached the last room of the exhibit.  There was a desk that had belonged to Tsar Nicholas on one wall.  On the other, was a large painting of the coronation of Alexandra and her crown.  I stood in that room, thinking about the letters Nicholas wrote from that desk and the grief Alexandra felt because of her only son's hemophilia and how desperate she had to be to allow Rasputin into her home.  Before long, I found that I had tears running down my face.  This was not a response to a piece of furniture and a jeweled hat; it was a response to the story that Mr. Watkins had shared and the depth with which it had stuck in my heart.  By the way, the name of the class I had Mr. Watkins for was North Carolina History.  Other than the reason we are called Tarheels and the fact that the governor's mansion used to be in New Bern, I really cannot tell you much about the history of NC.  The tests I took in Mr. Watkins' class were about NC History, but I studied the book for those and quickly forgot them.  The stories that stuck with me were those that Mr.Watkins told in class, and he didn't much care if they were part of the curriculum or not.

I'm not sure a teacher these days can be a Mr. Watkins.  If an administrator observed his class, I'm sure he would be dinged for not having an objective posted and not remaining focused on the standard for the day, ignoring the enraptured faces of students like me.  We have become so committed to covering curriculum and meeting standards that we have forgotten that one of our most important jobs as teachers is to inspire.  

Listen, curriculum matters.  Of course, it does, but it is not the only thing that matters.  It is entirely possible my students could solve Doppler Effect problems but not recognize it when an ambulance passes them on a street.  It is possible for them to state the definition of refraction but not notice its effects on a straw in glass.  I want my students to meet the standards and objectives I have for the course, or I wouldn't have chosen them.  But more than that, I want my students to see science in the world.  I want them to ride a roller coaster and know why they feel lifted from their seat at the top of the hill.  I want them to watch curling during the Winter Olympics and remember things like momentum and friction.  Even more importantly, I want them to ask questions for their entire lives.  Why can we see through glass windows and not wooden doors?  Why is it so hard for a gymnast to stick the landing?  How do we feel so light in a swimming pool?  That won't happen if I focus ONLY on curriculum.  

While you are making lesson plans, think about standards and curriculum, but also think about how you are going to make something matter.  Think about what made you love the thing you teach and how you might show them that.  It's easy in science because we can blow things up, but most of the inspirational teacher movies are about English, History, and Music teachers.  Stand and Deliver is about an AP Calculus teacher and the difference that was made in the lives of students because of a passionate teacher.  No matter what you teach, you can bring the awe and wonder of your subject to your students.  I hope my students will be excited by a rocket launch or marvel at the oxidation of pottery glaze in a kiln.  To do that, they have to see my excitement in those things too.

A Detailed Creation

I teach in a Christian school in which a view of God is woven into everything we teach.  Since I teach science, where we study creation, it only makes sense that this points students to more knowledge of the Creator.  To that end, on my midterm exam, I have a question in which I ask students to tell me something they have learned about God through their study of science.  Since their first semester was basic chemistry, the theme of their answers often focuses on atoms, elements, and the periodic table.

This year, like many others, there was a theme to their answers: how detailed creation is.  Now that they know that what we see externally is a result of what is happening internally, they understand that the tiniest of particles is important, which leads them to an understanding that God is involved in the small details.

While this has been a theme of the answers to this question for many years, it hit me differently this year.  I think it is because my art teacher friend and I have spent a lot of time this year talking about stone sculpture.  I love a lot of genres of art, but there is none that impresses me more than stone sculpture because there is no margin for error.  If an artist paints something that they don't like, they can paint over it.  A pencil drawing can be edited by blending and erasure.  If a sculpture makes a mistake, there is no fixing it; that sculpture just doesn't have a nose now.  My favorite artwork on planet Earth is Michaelangelo's The Pieta, a marble sculpture at the Vatican in which Mary is grieving her crucified Son.  There is much to love about it as an artwork. For one thing, it is overwhelming in size, almost seven feet tall and weighing over six thousand pounds.  

But when I talk to students about this work, I talk about the small parts of it.  Zoom in on the right knee of Jesus, and you find some astounding detail.  The little indentation just behind his knee is on your leg as well, it is the tendon, where the thigh muscle connects to the femur.  The same thing happens when you look at the ankle.  Not only can you see the Lateral Malleolus, the bone that protrudes from the side of the ankle, but you also see the veins on the top of the foot.  Others may feel differently than I do, but I find this much more impressive than a basic sculpture that is a crude outline of the human form without much attention to the details.

You may be thinking, "Okay, we get it, Beth, you are a nerd.  But what does this have to do with your students' answer to the question on their exam?"  Well, I am so glad you asked.  When I marvel at the details of The Pieta, I learn something about Michaelangelo.  That tendon isn't there by coincidence, and it is too specific to have been based only on observation.  This level of detail means Michaelangelo had an intimate knowledge of human anatomy.  According to the Getty website, he participated in dissections of human corpses and made extensive sketches of bones and muscles.  He studied how the underlying structure is affected by the movement of a limb (a tendon may be more visible when the hand is moved in a certain way), which give his sculptures authenticity.  Looking at the detail in the sculpture tells us what the sculptor cares about.  

In the same way, looking at the details of God's creation tells us what He cares about.  Electrons are so small that we don't even count their mass.  Yet, the itty bitty electron determines the behavior of the atom more than any other particle.  The outer electrons determine what type of bond an atom can make, which determines things like intermolecular force which influences things like boiling point.  Everything about water that makes it life-sustaining arises from the electron structure of hydrogen and oxygen.  So this tiny detail is critical to the world in which we live.  

What does this mean for education?  It means the details matter.  In our push to cover so much curriculum, it is tempting to remain at the surface level (and, don't get me wrong, sometimes that is appropriate).  But, at certain points, we should show our students the really important details of what we teach them.  That will reveal what matters, what we value, and be more inspiring to students to study our discipline further.  If we want to create lifelong learners, we need to show them the inspirational details.