Untangling the Knots (or Better Yet, Preventing Them)

My nephew and his wife are expecting, so I am in the midst of a crochet project for the baby. As any needleworker knows, there is a point in each skein of yarn where there is a tangle. It's not the fault of the crafter; it's a design flaw in the way yarn is produced, which is why it happens every time. Caught early enough, it's an amusing few moments of trying to figure out which direction the yarn is facing, but more often that not, it isn't found that early; and it tightens into a stubborn knot. 

I had one of those this week, and it was particularly gnarly, containing multiple catch points. As I pulled from one direction and pushed in another, I kept saying to the yarn, "I know there is an origin to this knot somewhere, but I just can't see where it is."

There were points where I could loosen it just enough to make a little progress on the project, but I knew I would eventually pay for that.  Loosening it in one spot tightens the knot further down the line, but that's a problem for later me to deal with as I want to feel like I can move forward now.

Eventually, though, the piper must be paid. I got to a point where I had to fight with the yarn. Cutting it is an option, but I am determined to out-stubborn the yarn. I'm a little sister, so I don't give up easily. After half an hour of fighting with it and a few under-my-breath curses at the manufacturer, I did eventually free the yarn.

This happens in our classrooms too. The knot, in this metaphor, is a misconception. Caught early, misconceptions are easily corrected, but we don't often know they are there until further down the line. At some point, a student surprisingly stops making progress. We try to keep going, but the confusion only seems to tighten. The invisible misconception is preventing the student from going any deeper into the content because they keep running into wrong thinking. 

When this happens, it is important to track down the center of the knot. Back up to the beginning of the explanation. Re-explain step one and ask some questions. If they are good there, move on to step 2. At some point, you find the tangle and can fix it. After that point, the student says, "Oh, I get it now.  This is much easier now." 

But of course, this only works if we take the time to find and out-stubborn the confusion. Depending on how far down the line you have gotten from the initial hiccup, this could take serious time.

Some knitters are proactive.  They begin their project by unspooling the skein of yarn and winding it into a ball. It takes time and doesn't look like progress, but it ensures they find the tangles early when they easy to unravel and allows the project to proceed smoothly. 

In your classroom, you can't untangle the knots ahead of time. Some of them came to you from a previous class (much like the yarn comes with an inbuilt problem), but you don't know what they are.  Some arise during your teaching because you know what you said, but you don't necessarily know what they heard.  So you can't necessarily prevent the tangles entirely, but you can take steps to prevent them from tightening by using formative assessment. Pausing your lesson to check for understanding can feel like it is taking time from your lesson, but it saves you time in the long run.

There are a lot of ways to check for understanding, but the way we commonly do it, asking a question and then calling on a student with his or her hand up, is probably the least effective. You probably aren't finding the knots because students who raise their hands are usually confident they will be right. The misconceptions of the quiet go unnoticed, and the knots tighten as you move forward. 

In my class, the use of a mini-whiteboard by every student simultaneously was the game changer. I could get an answer from every student in the amount of time it took me to scan the room. When six out of twenty four kids had the same wrong answer, I knew I had found a tangle. It was a simple fix as I asked, "Did you put that because you thought . . . ?" When they answered yes, I said, "Okay, I can see why you thought that, but it is is actually . . ." It's not the only way, but I do recommend finding a method that allows you to get an answer from ALL students.

The thing you DON'T want to do is to keep going in the hopes that the knot will untangle itself.  This almost never happens. Deal with it now or deal with it later, but you will have to deal with it.

Lessons We Should Have Learned From Lockdown - But I'm Not Sure We Did

Six years ago today, I was at school, but my students weren't. 

Two days prior, we had learned that we would be transitioning to a virtual learning environment as part of the "slow the spread" phase of the Covid-19 pandemic. The IT team was entering every class into the student Google calendars to create as little friction as possible for them to join.  Teachers were learning to share our screens and brainstorming how we might still "see" students while we were doing that (turns out you can can use your projector as a second monitor). Students were at home, half nervous and half excited by the newness of all this.  

We then taught 40 days fully virtual and two years in a hybrid situation (only the first one was officially that, but let's not kid ourselves).

We learned so many things - much of which I blogged about at the time and on last year's anniversary.

There are also things that we should have learned, and based on what I am hearing and seeing in the world, I'm not sure we did.

Screens are not replacements for teachers - It's harder to learn from a screen than it is from a live person. I'm not saying there aren't some high quality videos and online courses out there. But a video can't make eye contact with you. It can't see a confused expression on your face or sense the squirminess in a room. It can't tell when your working memory is overloaded or know that you aren't absorbing well because you missed breakfast this morning. More importantly, it can't adapt to any of those things.

For all the years I have taught, administrators have told us to get away from "lecturing" and make lessons more interactive. Whether they were talking about high quality direct instruction or discovery learning, they directive was that it shouldn't just be the teacher delivering information in one direction. Video is the ultimate in one way delivery. I'm not suggesting we never use them, but they are supplements, not replacements.

Why do I say we haven't learned that lesson?  Because in spite of all of the negative consequences, I still see "implement virtual instruction" in school improvement plans. It was one thing to have that on your website before Covid, but if I were a parent, it would make me choose a different school. I have sat in meetings with people who think the solution to limited instructional time is for teachers to make video and assign them for asynchronous learning. And, of course, there are those who think AI is the solution to everything; we get naive with every new piece of tech. While I grant that AI may be able to adapt based on performance, it will not be able to diagnose the reason and address that. 

External motivators matter - For years prior to the pandemic, one of the raging debates on EduTwitter was about whether grades motivated students. As with most things, we were having a binary argument on something that doesn't have a binary answer. There are some students who are highly motivated by grades. Those of you who have seen my font like handwriting may know that my first "bad grade" was in penmanship, and I made sure that would never happen again. Others couldn't care less about their grades, but they do care about what the grades get them (getting into college, eligibility to play a sport). There's not a yes or no answer on something with a spectrum of attitudes.

However, a comparison of schools during lockdown showed one thing - not having grades was definitely demotivating. My school continued to take attendance, give assignments, give tests in whatever way we could. And we graded those assignments and tests. (We were likely a bit more lenient in the grading than we had previously been, but we were still grading.) Public schools in my county did not grade - that is to say, the grade couldn't go down. So, if a teacher graded something and it kept the student's grade the same or increased it, they put it in the gradebook.  Otherwise, they didn't count it. They told kids they should still attend class for the sake of learning, but . . . class attendance in those schools plummeted to nearly zero, and very little was turned in. One boy I know attended two of his classes because he needed to get his grade up and knew they would give easy work so he could, but he did not attend his other four because he "already had an A and it couldn't drop." (NOTE: This is NOT a criticism of those schools. It is my personal policy not to judge the decisions made by any school during the spring of 2020 since exactly no one knew what the right the thing to do was.)

Why do I say we didn't learn this lesson? People are pushing "no zeros" policies again. A kid doesn't turn something in; he gets a 50%. I objected to this the first time around, writing a letter to the editor of my local newspaper, if that tells you how long ago it was.  Their logic is that a zero is too hard to recover from; mine is that something hard to recover from should motivate you to turn something in. I don't want a generation of workers believing that doing NOTHING is the same as doing half of their job. We have people pushing feedback only assessment without grades attached. I'm not saying it can't work, but our culture would have to change dramatically for that to succeed.

I'm not saying it has to be the exact grading system we use now, but without some kind of external motivator, many, if not most, students will not work. Let's be honest; how many adults would go to work without a paycheck, no matter how much we love our jobs? External forces motivate much of what we do for most of our lives. Why would we believe students would be any different?

Attendance is critical - You can't learn things you don't attend to.  Teaching yourself is nearly impossible, even with high quality resources. You can probably get some surface stuff, but you can't see nuances if you don't have the background knowledge to notice them. There are certainly isolated examples to the contrary, but for the vast majority of students, they need to be taught. That means school attendance matters. Students who had sporadic attendance during the pandemic could make up their assignments, but they didn't learn the material; they checked the box on doing something.

Why do I say we didn't learn this lesson? We are in an attendance crisis in America. Based on some of the educators I'm connected with on Twitter, they are in the same crisis. This thing that was always a given - kids go to school on school days - became optional. SOME parents now plan trips without regard to the school calendar and leave it to the teacher to figure out how to teach their child upon his return. Kids stay home when they have a minor headache (I'm not talking about migraines, just run of the mill, pop-an-Advil headaches). They are then surprised when the student doesn't do well on their tests because "she made up her work." This isn't just a school problem. People are calling out of their jobs more now than they did in the past too.

I don't want this post to sound entirely negative. There are definitely some tools and techniques we took out of the pandemic that remained helpful. Go back to the beginning and use those links to see some of the positives. But there are things we should have learned that we just didn't. And we need to consider that so that we don't just keep sleepwalking through low attendance, meaningless grading, and people who want to replace teachers with screens.

Growing Requires the Right Conditions

I had an azalea that died in my front yard.  I don't just mean it didn't thrive.  I mean it died - doornail kind of dead.  All that was left was a stick. When I dug it up to replace it, it had some roots still attached.  For some reason, I decided that meant I should let it have a go in the back yard.  I dug a whole and plopped this dead stick into it.  That was 7 years ago, and this year, has bloomed twice - profusely, so many blooms that you almost couldn't see the green leaves anymore. 

I took this picture 3 years ago, but it doesn't do it justice. 

It turned out the front yard was not the right place for that plant, but the spot in the back yard was. I started calling that spot "the Lazarus spot" because the plant had been raised from the dead. Two years ago, I was given the most beautiful hydrangea plant I have ever seen.  It was the deepest blue and fullest potted plant I've ever had the pleasure to have in my house.  It started wilting after a few months because they aren't really meant to stay potted, and I thought, "No problem. We'll plant it right next to the azalea in the Lazarus spot." To my horror, the beautiful hydrangea did not revive there; it died and has not returned.

This photo was taken just after I put it in the ground, when it seemed it could be saved. It couldn't be.

What's the lesson here?  The spot wasn't perfect. It was just perfect for that azalea. It didn't work at all for the hydrangea.

Schools are built for the majority of children. Just as most plants have similar needs for the range of water, drainage, and sun exposure, most kids have similar needs that can be met by the regular school system.

And, just like some plants need more water or less direct sunlight to thrive, some kids need fewer choices or more individual attention to thrive. They might benefit from a different placement - an alternative school, a small Christian school, a military academy, or homeschool might be the right choice FOR THEM.

Because humans love to oversimplify, when a student finds success in an alternative placement, we credit the placement.  We decide that model must be the best one since it reached "even that kid." We assume that model would be good for everyone. Let's build all schools with that model.

But life is just more interesting than that.

If all kids went to a military academy, some of them would come out traumatized. It worked great for the kid who needed that much structure to thrive, but the average kids would collapse under the weight.  Send some kids to an alternative school with a lot of choices about what they do, and they will fall apart. They need more structure to function and freeze up with indecision when given too much choice. Some families homeschool beautifully, and their kids move through curriculum both quickly and deeply; other kids are placed in front of a math video and learn little (I know because I have taught those kids when they returned to school, and they couldn't do basic algebra as high school juniors). 

Education is not a one-size-fits-all situation.  Even within a household, you might have a son who functions well in your local public school while your daughter needs the individual attention that can only come from homeschooling. 

The mistake we make in the school system is to either try to alter the kid to fit the typical environment or alter the environment to fit the kid. That is not sustainable in a system as large as schooling.  What we need to do instead is match the kid and the environment so that azaleas can thrive in one place while hydrangeas thrive in another.

That Mr. Beast Video - I Have Thoughts

YouTube celebrity Mr. Beast dropped a video this week that has EduTwitter all . . . well atwitter. He isn't the first one to do this. I remember being required to watch and respond to a video posted by a punk in a hoodie telling us that knowledge didn't matter in the age of Google about 15 years ago.  That one fizzled quickly, but this one is different for a number of reasons. I have thoughts - lots of them, so get some tea and settle in.

First, let's address who Mr. Beast is. When I called him a YouTube celebrity, I was understating it.  At 468 million, he has the most subscribers of any channel on the site, and he has the third most followed TikTok account. He is especially popular with high school boys because much of his content consists of the stunts and challenges they enjoy; many of his challenges are philanthropic, so their parents don't mind that they watch him. He's been posting for over 20 years, which is longevity in any field, but is insanely long for the internet world. All of that only matters in this discussion because his reach is wide, and his influence is high. When he speaks, his followers listen. 

So last week, he decided to use his immense platform to criticize educators. I'm not saying there is nothing to criticize - far from it. Ask any teacher what could be better in education, and they could give you a TED talk without preparation. 

But Mr. Beast is an outsider. He graduated from a small Christian school in NC and then dropped out of college in 2018 to study virality - what makes a video spread like wildfire - on his own.  He is public about his lack of desire to have children. So, when he speaks about education, he speaks as someone who has not been inside of a classroom in almost a decade. Someone pointed out that he has built ten schools, and, to his credit that is true. But it's not the same as knowing something about education. A person who builds a church doesn't know how to be its pastor.

His basic premise is that teaching hasn't changed in over a hundred years.  "Why," he asks, "are we still being taught the way our parents were taught when everything else has moved on?" He claims that when he was in school, a teacher just read out of a textbook. He then goes on to suggest that kid would be better taught by videos because a lot of complex information can be delivered in a short period of time. 

I want to be as kind as I can to Mr. Beast because I think he was probably well intentioned, but he was wrong about so many things in such a short video. Let me unpack a few things here:

1. Your kids are not being taught the same way your parents were. They just aren't. I taught for 25 years (including ALL of the ones when Mr. Beast was in school) in three different schools, both public and private, and education changed dramatically during that time - some changes were for good and some were not. As Tom Bennett said, "Any parent who has helped their kids with their math homework recently knows that kids are not being taught the same way they were." 

Tech access alone has changed things; when I began my career, I made an appointment to take my kids to the computer lab to use Google for research. By the end of my career, AI was making its push. And, I promise you Mr. Beast's parents weren't using either of those things when they were in school. There were also multiple swings in education philosophy during the 25 years I taught. The pendulum swung from STEM focused to arts integration in every class, from explicit rubrics to free form exploration, from phonics to whole language and back to phonics again.  

Mr. Beast MAY have a had a teacher who read aloud from a textbook. He was in a tiny school in NC, which currently has an enrollment of 287 in K-12; so ten years ago, they may not have had the resources to do any more than that. Since he is using a sample size of ONE, it would be hard to say that applies to the whole field. 

2. Tech has changed. Brains have not. One of my favorite responses to the Mr. Beast video addressed a basic fact he clearly doesn't know (maybe he would if he hadn't dropped out of college). The way brains learn doesn't change with the technology of the world. 

"There is no neurological reason we should be taught differently. Our brains work exactly the same way our grandparents' brains did." While neuroplasticity is real, it creates only minor differences in our brains - strengthening some connections while weakening others. It does not change the basic architecture of our brains. We all learn basically the same way - encoding through our senses, spaced retrieval coupled with feedback, rinse and repeat as needed. The encoding may come from a variety of sources, from live teacher to video to book to podcast, none of it sticks without the retrieval and feedback process (more on that in the next point). 

Change is often good, but not ALL change is good. A change that makes the picture on your TV better is good; but it is still basically TV - we aren't going to say we need television reform and dramatically change the way we film just to say we have changed with the times. 

The truth is that we would likely be better off if we were learning more like our parents learned. The push for discovery learning turned out to work against the brain rather than with it. Some were successful, but the most disadvantaged kids just became more disadvantaged because we overwhelmed their working memories. Projects and labs are great, but they are reinforcements for explicit teaching, not replacements.  

3. No, you cannot absorb and retain the information from a video in 20 minutes.  One of the points made by Mr. Beast is that there are a lot of high quality videos that we can use for learning. He's not wrong about that part. He references Mark Rober, but there are many good sources - Kahn Academy, Veritasium, Crash Course. I have used and loved them all.

But here's where Mr. Beast got it wrong.  He said, "You can learn complex topics in 20 minutes in a way that's engaging, fun, and you retain it." Complex information can be PRESENTED in 20 minutes, and you can CONSUME information in 20 minutes, but you cannot LEARN it in 20 minutes. As I said earlier, there is a cycle of retrieval and feedback that are needed to retain information.  I consume a great deal of content.  I listen to podcasts, read books, read blog posts, and, yes, I watch videos. If I retained all of the information in the things I consume, I could rule the world. But the truth is that most of it passes through my consciousness and then back out. I might remember one very interesting point, especially if I found it interesting enough to tell someone about it the next day (retrieval) and have them find it interesting enough to engage with me in conversation about it (feedback), but I will have a temporary and superficial understanding at best if all I do is watch the video. The idea that videos are engaging is ludicrous; there is nothing more passive than watching a video. It's even more passive than a live lecture, which we have all been encouraged to eliminate. Entertainment is not the same thing as engagement. Engagement requires interaction, which videos do not provide. Engagement is a means to an end, but it is not the end. Learning requires engagement, but engagement alone is not learning.

Videos are great as supplemental tools, and I used them frequently. They were super helpful in science teaching because they animated processes. They were good review tools because students could hear an explanation that was similar to but slightly different from mine. But they are not a replacement for quality instruction from a human. Education has been, at its core, a social experience since the Garden of Eden, where God came and walked with and talked with Adam. This is why I don't believe technology is going to replace teachers (even AI).

4. Mr. Beast is the beneficiary of the very thing he is criticizing.  This is where I want to be as charitable as I can with Mr. Beast because I don't think he knows. It's so easy, once you have learned enough for learning to be easy for you, to forget what it is like to be a novice. He may well be able to watch a video on a topic that interests him and that he knows reasonably well and retain something new. A 7th grade math student who is learning a concept for the first time does not have that base. 

Mr. Beast benefits from a strong knowledge base already being in place from his years of schooling (even if he had a teacher or two who only read from a book) that allows his working memory to not be overloaded when taking in information from a video. He has a schema of knowledge from decades of school as well as professional learning to connect new learning with. A freshman year biology student who is encountering Latin roots for anatomical terms for the first time is building that schema, but she doesn't have it yet. Butterflies tend to forget that they used to be caterpillars and think that, since they can now fly, those younger than them should be able to as well. (I'm not sure if that metaphor worked, but hopefully you know what I'm saying.)

At 27, Mr. Beast is old enough to have lived in a childhood where screen time was still considered something we should limit. He would have had some video time but not the constant stream we have now. Because he wasn't engaged by video non-stop in his childhood, he had moments of boredom that trained his imagination, and it was that training that allows him the success he has today. But he doesn't know how to look back and see what got him here. 

Teachers, you are not beholden to a 27 years old YouTube influencer. Do what you know is right. Do what you know works. If you don't know what works, we live in a golden age of books on the science of learning. Start with Why Don't Students Like School by Daniel Willingham or Learning Begins by Andrew Watson. If you want to dive really deep, take a look at How We Learn by Stanislas Dehaene. Form a relationship with a teacher in your building who has been at it long enough to see the fads come and go and return to the basics of quality instruction. Don't give in to the idea that "newer is always better" as our culture seems to have. You are there to teach, not to do the latest thing.

The Post Teachers Need in February

It's February, y'all. It's hard to explain why this means teachers are exhausted more than any other time of year, but they are. So, I'm going to keep this post short and happy.

Getting through the February doldrums requires you to have something positive and future focused to think about.  

So here it is.

Look at your students. They are not the same people you met in August.

• The boy who needed his schedule to be re-printed on the first day of school because he kept losing it is now helping a new kid find his way around.
• The girl who wouldn't wear her glasses or contacts and then used "not being able to see the board" as an excuse for poor attention is now focused and listening.
• The kid who failed your first two tests is working hard and pulling a solid C.
• Someone who came in at the beginning of the year saying, "I don't like math" has found the idea of limited infinity fascinating and now realizes math is more interesting than they thought.
• A new kid who was quiet and separating from the group at the start of the year is now laughing with her friends in the lunchroom.
• The kid who couldn't stand you at the beginning of the year dislikes you less now. (Let's face it, these aren't all going to be 180º turns.)
• All of your students are working more independently than they were at the beginning of the year, and they all have acquired content knowledge. Even the one who is failing tests has learned SOME things.

Think about your room. What progress can you notice and find joy in as you get through the last week of February?

Reframing - Learning is Satisfying

"Good afternoon, Beth. Enjoy your workout." 

When I first joined the Y, getting a greeting like this was very helpful. And it wasn't because they knew my name, which pops up on the computer when a member scans in. It was the word "enjoy." It had been a long time since I had done any workouts other than walking, and while I was excited to try new things, I also knew it was likely to be uncomfortable. Framing the workout as something to enjoy changed my outlook on what I was about to do. While that was only a small part of how the Y changed my life, it was an important part.

Often, in school, we give in to a negative view of work - student work anyway. Then, we take one of two approaches at either end of the attitude spectrum.

1. Make everything super fun, even if it sacrifices the actual learning or takes longer than the curriculum pace would allow for. We hope turning everything into a game or relay race will distract kids from the fact that learning is work.  Fun is what matters because it is motivating! And, if we need to trade in some content for the time it takes to tally game points, so be it.
2. Adopt a "suck it up and do it anyway" attitude. This technique is employed most with high school students. We tell them that the "real world" is filled with things they won't want to do but still have to do, and this is good training for that. I'm here to teach you, not entertain you. Who cares if you are motivated or not.

There is truth involved in both of these extremes.  Certainly adult life does involve a lot of things that have to be done whether you are motivated to do them or not, and certainly some things are inherently fun.  But the day to day of school exists between these two extremes.  Motivation often comes from places we don't expect and find it difficult to plan for.

What if we reframed work for our students the same way the Y reframed a workout for me? 

Example:  Lifting heavy things is not inherently fun, and no peppy song will change that. It's uncomfortable on purpose. Does Matt change the "lesson plan" to make it less difficult? Does Dana say, "Let's skip around outside instead of doing triceps because you will be more motivated if it is fun"?  No. (Although that second one would be a decent aerobic workout; it would not achieve the purpose of the BodyPump class.) They do two things that are motivating:

1. They are joyful. This is not the same as making activities fun. It's an attitude they communicate. I have had instructors for this class that take it (and themselves) so seriously you cannot focus on anything but the number of reps left. That makes for an awfully long class. I have also taken it with an instructor that just makes everything silly, singing along with every song to the extent that you can't know what you are supposed to do next. Matt and Dana are neither of these. They are joyful about the workout. They make some jokes, but the class isn't about the jokes. They create a community spirit by knowing who likes certain songs or certain movements. "We're doing planks just for your today, Dan." or  "I know Kamryn is going to like the Rhi-Rhi bicep track today" or "Beth's favorite - shootouts." Planks, shootouts, and biceps are just as challenging, but they are now framed as someone's favorite, so others might find joy in them too.
2. They focus on the satisfaction of the outcome. While I have never heard the phrase "no pain, no gain" in my time at the Y, the sentiment is still there. The payoff of the discomfort you are feeling in the moment or the soreness you will have tomorrow is in the satisfaction of the outcome. So, while you are doing a sumo squat with a weighted bar on your back, Matt tells you which muscles you are strengthening. While you are clenching your upper thigh in Barre, Dana says, "It's your free butt lift, courtesy of the YMCA." 

So, school teachers, what can we learn from this? We can learn that there is a happy medium between frivolous and fatalistic. 

A teacher doesn't have to be a non-stop fun machine to approach learning with joy. You cannot out-entertain or out-engage their phones, so stop trying to. Show them your joy and watch it spread. There are not many ways, for example, to make learning the periodic table a rip-roaring good time, but my students knew how much I loooooooved the periodic table. I constantly expressed my own amazement of it and told them that I hoped they would one day learn enough about it to appreciate it as much as I did.  "Every year, I find something new to appreciate about it," I would tell them, even after teaching it for over 20 years. When we balanced chemical equations, I would say, "If you are the type of person who enjoys solving puzzles, you will probably enjoy these" because there is definitely a satisfaction that comes from the equation finally coming out right.  I took EVERY opportunity to communicate how much I loved learning new things, including my delight when they asked a question I couldn't answer because then we could find out together. I didn't limit it to science because I wanted them to see that learning is joyful outside of what you do for your job, so I talked about art and music and books and how much I liked the unit circle. If someone had Julius Caesar sitting on their desk, I made a big deal about it being my favorite Shakespeare play. Learning can be joyful for its own sake, and we don't have to gamify our classes to communicate that. (I'm not trying to dog on people who gamify, by the way. I would just ask you to think about the opportunity cost involved if you are spending a lot of time on it.)

Learning is hard work. There's no getting around that fact. If you think changing your muscles requires focus and energy, it pales in comparison to changing your neurons. But a teacher doesn't have to adopt a "Life's hard; then you die" mentality to help students learn. They can, like a good weightlifting instructor, emphasize the outcome of the work. "When you learn to write a well-crafted paragraph, you will be able to communicate your ideas in a way that is actually persuasive to others" will help a student realize that the hard work of writing well has purpose.  "You know who uses this kind of math? Video game designers" will help kids recognize purpose beyond the grade book - even if they don't intend to become a game designer themselves. Learning has multiple outcomes, so think about value and relevance outside of making money from it.  I once had a student who was clearly going to be a musician and didn't understand why he needed to learn chemistry. Was I going to convince him that he needed science as a fallback? No, that would have been stupid, but I didn't convince him that the brain training he was doing to write chemical formulas would help him ad lib when he forgot the lyrics on stage later in his life.  

By being joyful and focusing on outcomes, we can help students reframe the learning experience. It is challenging and requires work, but it is also satisfying and enjoyable. We must communicate that these are not mutually exclusive. 

Book Review - The Lockdown Artist by Jay Wamsted

One of the best things I can say about a novel is that I lost sleep over it - not because of the content, but because when it was bed time, I wanted to read one more chapter. This is absolutely the kind of experience I had with The Lockdown Artist by Jay Wamsted.

I have followed Jay on Twitter (currently X) for quite some time and know him to be a fun and engaging school teacher. When I saw that he had written a novel, I wanted to support him, and I knew that the book would be fun.  What I didn't know was what a gripping story it would be - think 1984 in a high school for a general framework, but it is more than that. There are shades of Frankenstein and Hunger Games (and sadly some hints of Project 2025 - although that might have been my addition as I was reading it just after the deaths in Minneapolis).

What I most appreciate about Jay's writing is how much he respects his young adult audience - something actually quite rare in YA literature. So many YA authors feel like they have to over-explain to avoid confusion, but what that really does is avoid excitement. Young readers like to have things revealed after they have thought about them for a while, hence the success of the Harry Potter franchise, where some payoffs came two to three books later.

In The Lockdown Artist, you arrive along with a new student, Liam, in the middle of the school year.  Rather than spoon feed you an explanation of the school, Jay knows that the reader is capable of figuring things out as the story unfolds and doesn't bore them with a ton of exposition at the beginning. You find out parts of the mystery as the characters do, so there are surprises around every corner (almost literally). There were moments where I sat up straighter and said, "No.  Oh, what are they going to do now?" out loud while I was reading.

Characters can be tricky in YA lit as well because they are often written by adults who either write their teen characters as adults in young bodies or write them as clichéd tropes of pop culture references. Jay's teaching experience means he knows adolescents, and he writes these teenagers as complex, three dimensional characters (salty language and all) rather than stereotypes. I appreciate that, and I think young adult readers will too.

The book didn't end quite the way I envisioned or perhaps even hoped, but it does end in an interesting and thought provoking way. I highly recommend this book to high school, college, and adult readers who enjoy a little dystopian fiction in their lives.

Yes, We Are Like That - And We Should Repent

When Joe Biden was President, and there were shootings or tragic crimes, he often put some variation of the sentence "This is not who we are as Americans" in his response speech. While I know what he meant, each time I thought, "If it's not, then how does it keep happening here?" It would have been more accurate to say, "This is not who we SHOULD be as Americans."

For the past two weeks, as we have witnessed the clash between ICE agents and protestors in Minnesota, there have been similar sentiments online. After Renée Good's death, one tweet read, in part, "We love our neighbors. We aspire to live by the Golden Rule. We are better than this." Another said, "Consider the outlook Jesus would have on you celebrating her death. We are not them. Stop acting like you are."

This isn't a semantic difference. To declare that our actions do not reflect who we are just doesn't make sense. What are we asking people to judge us by if not the things we say and do. If not our actions and our words, what are we?

Statements like this, even when well meaning and aspirational, are a problem. They give cover to the darkest parts of us while allowing us to delude ourselves into believing that our hearts are not dark. You've gotten this non-apology from someone, "I'm sorry I said that, but you know I didn't mean it. That's not who I am." We've seen this from celebrities like Paula Dean, Mel Gibson, and Michael Richards after their very public racist rants. Some jumped to defend them because of the circumstances under which they said it (duress, drunkenness, being pushed to their limits, etc.). 

But here's the thing. Something can't come out of you if it's not in you. No matter how hard you squeeze an orange, you won't get coffee out of it. 

If a tube is unlabeled, the only way to know if it is toothpaste or Preparation H is to put it under pressure. Pressure doesn't create; it reveals. 

We shouldn't apologize for saying something we didn't mean; we should apologize for meaning it. And, we should definitely not minimize things by claiming it to be outside of our character.

Teachers, this matters in our classrooms. If we want to help our students develop good character, we cannot let them get away with "that's not who I am" apologies. And, we can't model them. When we have lost our temper or crossed the line in our speech, true apologies are needed, not evasions of responsibility dressed up as contrition. True apologies include three things: 

1. An admission of the action (I did/said this thing.) 
2. An acceptance of the damage done (This thing I did harmed you.)
3. An attempt to make things right (I will repair what can be repaired, and I will not do this again in the future.)

This is going to take more time than "Say you're sorry," which is what we so often do with little to no regard as to whether or not it is sincere. But the discipling that happens is worth the investment. Most teachers have some kind of paraphernalia (coffee mug, wall hanging, t-shirt) that says we touch the future; well here's how we do it. Imagine a future in which people have been taught, not just to say they are sorry, not even just to express remorse, but to reconcile. What a better future that would be. 

Notes from NCAIS Neurodiversity Conference - January 30 2026

NCAIS is the North Carolina Association of Independent Schools.  This conference is focused on meeting the needs of neurodiverse students. The notes below are raw, unedited, and will likely be mixed with my own reactions (I may not agree with what a speaker has said and will process my reaction to it). I will update between sessions.

Keynote: The Neurodiverse Hero's Journey - Become the Strong and Kind Adult in the Room by Peyten Williams, Bowbend Consulting

Every hero's journey begins in the ordinary world as nobody special, before there is a call to adventure. If you have come to a conference because you want to see change in your classroom, that is your call to adventure. 

Neurodiverse people have a wide variety of both strengths and challenges. 

You don't have to be an expert to support these kids. You just have to show up.

Threshold guardians are those who resist or gate keep your efforts to change. What is standing in your way? It could be systems, limitations on resources, or your perception of fairness when it comes to support.

• What in your faith, values, or character made you choose teaching?
• How do you grow your social emotional intelligence?
• Do you need to broaden your perspective? Are you trying to support them or trying to "fix them"? (Lori told me in a book interview, "We didn't view that as a challenge, just a different set of facts we had to deal with.")
• What tools do you need in your toolbox? Do you know how to use them?
• Are you giving yourself grace? Nothing feels easy without practice. Keep practicing until it becomes natural.
• Who are your helpers and mentors as you learn? What research can you rely on? Who is in your community that you can learn with?

Mindsets:  

• What does this learner need to access learning with dignity? Belonging is not a reward fo compliance; it is a prerequisite for learning.
• Ability is context dependent. A difference is not a deficit in all situations. (Dr. David Rose, in a Learning and the Brain keynote, talked about his tone deafness being a benefit when the church organ was out of tune.)

Is there some technique or attitude that isn't working, but you just can't let go of it?

It is hard work. You will have to ask yourself, "Is this worth it?" That's when you have to circle back to your purpose.

Your transformation is not to become perfect; it is to become the strong and kind adult in the room.

You then return to the ordinary world different and able to transform the ordinary world.  What will you bring back?

Session 1 - Building a Neurosupportive Classroom by Kenna Skarda, Ravenscroft School

All students have nervous systems. 

Physical spaces are designed, in part, for neurology. I like to see the door in whatever room I am in. That's a neurological adaptation related to safety. Some students are that way too, and they are typically fidgety and turning around in their desks a lot. They don't like to be trapped in the middle of the room or to be facing their desk directly. Mental unbalance can lead to physical unbalance, and vice versa. People don't always have the ability to verbalize it, so it sometimes shows up in their behavior.

You can see similar effects in grocery store lines. How to people wait? Do they dance around with their feet, rearrange things in the cart, pull out their phone?

Whether you are the strict teacher or the easy going teacher, you will be the exact right thing for some student. Kids who are dysregulated often seek out the highly regimented teacher because they know intuitively that teacher will regulate them. Those kids who are overly contained will seek out the hippie-dippy teacher because they will fill in the gaps of what they need.

What sensory experience are you creating?  Is it good to have bright lights or dim lights? That depends on the time of day or what kind of mood you are trying to create. If you can get variable lighting, it will help you to create the environment you want. Do you have a few blankets or a space where kids can leave sweaters in order to help a kid learn without the distraction of being cold? Might a weighted scarf or a Ravi blanket help with your fidgety kid? 

Naming your adaptive tools will make kids want to use them and take care of them. They don't care if an object goes missing, but if the object is named Carl, they will turn the world upside down to find Carl if he gets lost.  They might not ask for a weighted blanket; but they will ask for Louise.

Your brain is easy to trick. If you tell yourself you are dumb, your brain will believe you and behave that way. Feel free to lie to yourself and tell yourself that you can do anything. 

For the first time in history, we are seeing a reverse of the Flynn effect. This is largely because of constant computer work and lack of physical work. 

Doing the pretzel, curling in and twisting, drawing a figure eight with a laser pointer, or other crossbody moves (or practicing balance by moving back and forth while standing on one foot) will help with regulation during challenging feelings. Offer a few things. Students will naturally gravitate toward what they need.

You have to make your plans while they are calm. If you wait until the limbic system is involved, you aren't getting them back.

You can turn on your parasympathetic nervous system with breath work. Slow breathing or breathing through your left nostril only calms you down. You can also have them count backwards by 7s (or something that requires thought). You can have them tap or hold themselves tightly or rub their earlobe.

You can pump them up by activating the sympathetic nervous system.  Fast breathing thought the nose, jumping jacks, fast tapping, or going upside down.

Cognitive self reflection - have them identify what went well and what they could do differently next time

Session 2 - Ten (ish) Quick Tips to Incorporate Neurodiverse Support Into Your Teaching by Alli King and Michelle Hernandez, Carolina Day School

We are teachers who try our best to figure things out through trying and failing and trying again. Have grace with yourself as you make mistakes because they will happen.

Tip zero:  Be conscious of font choices. Are you making things harder to read by going too cute?

1. When giving directions, get attention from all fits. Be explicit and clear. Provide checklists.
2. Explain the why for an expectation. Give specific and immediate feedback.
3. Have your schedule displayed. Announce any changes to the routine.
4. Have a calming plan
5. Have visual cues - timers, graphic organizers, color codes, anchor charts, models
6. Built in movement - as part of the plan
7. Using peers - turn and talk, etc. (I disagree that this helps the neurodivergent student, but I didn't want to disrespect their presentation by leaving it out. The people behind me have not stopped talking since we sat down, and it is driving me cray - I can't imagine that increasing that would help me if I had ADHD.)
8. Check ins - Formal or informal, make sure you follow through. Allow check ins before and after submitting their work.
9. Flexible seating
10. Metacognition - help kids reflect.

Session 3 - I presented during this one - no notes 

 

But you could go to my website www.thelearninghawk.com for the slides

Another Kind of Differentiation: Supporting Teachers Who are Diverse Learners

Do you have a teacher who won't sit in a faculty meeting?  They stand in the back corner or pace at the back of the room. It may seem like he doesn't care, but he is better able to focus and contribute if he is moving. 

If we are going to ask teachers to respect the neurodiversity of students and accommodate for them , we should recognize that adults have them too and accommodate for them.

Gave a case study of a teacher with poor executive function skills and asked questions about how they can help without shaming the teacher or losing out on her strengths. And a second case study about a teacher with anxiety. 

The Taylor Swift Effect - Have a vision, appreciate differences, and be steady in the face of uncertainty. Have people who you can melt down with and then pull yourself back together so you can be strong for others.

Expect competence, not sameness

Establish psychological safety

Be careful of bias - teachers are allowed to disclose their differences

Find support that helps ALL employees succeed

Accentuate strengths and positive attributes rather than focusing on deficits

Prepare meetings that accommodate for movement

Chunk large tasks into smaller deadlines

Provide information with a choice of format

Focus on quality of content - offer editing support with format

Create predictability and clarify expectations

Making Things Clearer - Not as Straightforward as it Seems

In the publishing of the book Show Your Work: Teaching Smarter With the Science of Learning, I'm learning a lot about the writing and publishing processes. I'm learning even more about the re-writing process. Two weeks ago, I got back all of my copyedited pages and had to accept or reject them and answer questions.

Copy editors do not play, y'all. The form they sent me said it had had a "medium" amount of editing. Then, each chapter I opened had anywhere between 75 and 175 changes or queries, leaving me to wonder what a heavy amount of editing would look like. Most of the edits were small - removing a space, adding a comma, or changing a capital letter to a lowercase one.  Some were citations I had forgotten to include or changes made to fit their publishing style (the MLA I learned in high school is less useful than I was led to believe).

The edits that made me laugh the most were the ones that asked if I would like to "use the expanded version for clarity." This was the automatic note any time there was an acronym.  For the most part, that makes sense. Jargon isn't accessible to most people, so if you are referencing a study done at the NIH or by the APA, it is obviously better to spell out National Institute of Health and American Psychological Association. It helps people determine the credibility of the source.

But, there are exceptions. When I was asked if I wanted to use the expanded version of SAT, I had to respond that I didn't think it would be clearer if I said Scholastic Aptitude Test as most people walk around with a vision of the SAT easily accessible in their minds and would actually have to take a beat to translate the expanded version back into the acronym for it to make sense to them. So we left that one alone. The same went for an interview I did with a biology teacher in which he talked about a question he asks students about ATP, the energy carrying molecules produced during cellular respiration.  If you remember this from biology at all, you definitely only remember it as ATP. So, when asked if I wanted to use the expanded version for clarity, I had to reply, "No, I think referring to it as adenosine triphosphate will make it less clear, so let's leave that one."

My point is not about publishing or acronyms. It's about making things clear. Our jobs as teachers is to take something that isn't easy to grasp and put it within reach. When a student first looks at the periodic table, it is just a jumble of letters and numbers arranged into a strange shape, but when they leave my 8th grade classroom, they should be able to interpret things like number of protons and number of neutrons from the numbers in the square as well as things like number of energy levels and number of valence electrons from the location on the table. My teaching about the periodic table should make the information clearer.

But much like the publishing discussion, there is often a way that seems right but ultimately is not. Explicit teaching vs. discovery learning gives us as an example of that. The theory behind discovery learning seems logical - students will remember things better if they figure it out themselves. And wouldn't it be lovely if that was how our brains actually worked? But they don't. Asking a student to compare the causes of the French and American revolutions when they haven't learned anything about them yet (but have access to Google) doesn't result in deeper learning about either revolution or the larger concept of revolutionary causes. Our working memories are too limited for that. (I'm not saying you shouldn't have projects or labs; I am a science teacher and had many of both - but it should come after students have learned a concept, not as a replacement for it.)

One of the things that makes teaching hard is that we often can't have one way of doing things. Some material will be clearer if reveal it one step at a time while other material may be clearer if we first show an entire worked example, giving students the broad view before the details. We cannot just choose one method and hope all content will fit that method. 

Even trickier, it is not always immediately evident when you have chosen correctly.  Sometimes, it is immediately obvious if you have chosen incorrectly. I once thought it would be good for my students to see the broad picture of bond types before we began learning about them.  I drew a spectrum on the board with "small electronegativity difference" on one left and "large electronegativity difference" on the right. I then proceeded to place covalent bonds, ionic bonds on the right, and polar covalent bonds in the middle along with their broad definitions and some examples. My students left that day completely overwhelmed and totally lost. The next day, I reassured them that I was going to teach each type individually and not to worry. But my hope that seeing the big picture would help them understand how the pieces fit together was not realized. The next year, I taught each type on its own and used my little spectrum drawing as a review/retrieval tool. "Where would covalent bonds go?" I asked, and they correctly answered that they would be where the electronegativity difference was small.  This way was obviously clearer, but I might not have known that if I hadn't tried it the other way.

So, sometimes, we are dealing with a process of trial and error. Sometimes, you can benefit from another teacher's experience.  And sometimes, you just have to use your best professional judgment and hope to be right. 

Give yourself a break. The best way to make things clear is often not clear itself.

Things (and People) Will Fail - What's Your Plan?

This week, a member at the Y came in talking about how much they had just spent repairing the top floor of their house. In their home, as in many newer constructions, the water heater was in the attic. As dozens of gallons of water flowed over the pan and down the walls of her house, the drywall buckled and the paint swelled, resulting in tens of thousands of dollars in damages.

The logic of putting it there has always eluded me, and it was a deal breaker when I was looking for my house. You water heater WILL fail. It's not a matter of if, but a matter of when. It needs to be in a place where damage can be minimized. There needs to be a plan for failure. And the pan is only a good plan if you catch it right away, which is unlikely if it is in the attic.

On Wednesday of this week, the Verizon network was down for over 8 hours. For many, this was a simple inconvenience, with the phone screen saying SOS for most of the day. For a few, it may have meant an inability to call for emergency services or run their business properly. But the issue I found the most interesting was experienced by some people whose cars were apparently tied to the Verizon network. Several Y members who owned Teslas were left unable to start their car. Having your car paired with your phone seems convenient until a failure occurs. Then, it is important to have a manual work-around (and I honestly have a hard time believing one doesn't exist).

The same is true of students. They will fail. It's not a matter of if, but when. 

I don't mean that every student will experience a failing grade, although some will. Failure means something different to everyone. But they will fail in some way, and it will vary among different students. There are students for whom a D is no big deal, but they feel morose if they lose a basketball game. There are students for whom a C+ is a slap in the face. I even had a student once who stood in my classroom screaming, "I failed. I failed!" if she made anything below a 96%. While she obviously had deeper issues that would interest a team of Viennese specialists, I had to be prepared to deal with fallout whenever I put in a grade. Otherwise, I would lose all of my class time to the inevitable melt down.

So, teachers, here's my advice. Put some thought now into how you will handle failure with your students. You can't possibly anticipate everything, but there are some pretty common ones you can expect. Do you teach juniors and seniors? Some will not get into their first choice college, and at least a couple won't even make it into their safety school. They are going to be understandably sad; but you can't turn your class into a therapy session. What will you do?  Do you teach freshmen? The homecoming dance may be their first experience of rejection from a romantic interest. You might remember how devastating that is. How do you plan to keep it from derailing everything you have planned for your students that day? 

The bad news is there is no way to avoid this. Students will fail at something. And, to be honest, that is a good and healthy thing. You want them to experience failure and learn coping skills when the stakes are low. Kids build resilience for adulthood by taking acceptable risks and learning to bounce back when things go sideways. 

The good news is that you are not the sole source of help for them. You have have resources. As you make a plan, think through which members of your school community might be helpful. You might have a great relationship with that child's parents and make a quick call. You might have a school counselor who can help. Your special needs teachers can teach you some tricks. Most schools have some "Barbara Howard" type teacher that just has the touch for calming kids down. Think about those resources as you anticipate the issues you might encounter with students. 

You will handle different situations and different students in different ways, of course. Just don't let the fact that failure happens take you by surprise. If you do, you will react rather than act, and you won't react in the most effective ways (which will then make a vicious circle because you will feel like you have failed. 

Can Prior Knowledge Interfere with New Learning?

This is not one of those posts where I ask a rhetorical question and then answer it. I won't be wrapping this one up with advice to teachers.  I am genuinely just musing here based on something I noticed last week that caused curiosity.

In my part of education land, we talk a lot about connecting new learning to prior knowledge. Out knowledge base is our already existing schema, and new learning finds a place to fit within it.  As Daniel Willingham tells us, we can only learn in relationship to what we already know. Prior knowledge enhances reading comprehension and problem solving; you can only think critically about things you know well.  This is all well established and backed by solid education research.  

Here's what I'm wondering, can new learning and old learning interfere with each other? In particular, I am thinking of things with a high degree of similarity. 

Let me explain what got me started thinking about this.

I attend a liturgical church. If you aren't familiar with that, it involves a fair amount of congregational participation during the service - prayers we say together, call and response, and recitation of the creed and the Lord's prayer - stuff like that, individual churches will vary). 

While all of it is printed in the bulletin, making it easy to read along, I decided that I wanted to memorize the things that are consistent every week. This includes, in my church, the: 

• Collect for Purity (easy to learn with a little retrieval practice)
• Lord's Prayer (I've known that one since I was in kindergarten)
• Confession of Sin (a little more retrieval - got it)
• Doxology (been singing that most of my life - check) 
• Nicene Creed (aye, there's the rub)

So, the Nicene Creed is the one that got me thinking about this.  I grew up reciting the Apostle's Creed, which is a lot shorter. But I don't think the length of the Nicene Creed made it difficult; I think it was that there are some similarities to the Apostles' Creed. Where they were similar, my brain wanted to race straight through the one I knew better.

For example:  The Apostle's Creed begins, "I believe in God, the Father almighty, maker of heaven and earth; and in Jesus Christ, his only Son, our Lord." The Nicene creed takes a little more time with the Father before moving on to the Son, so it begins, "We believe in one God, the Father, the almighty, maker of heaven and earth, of all that is, seen and unseen. We believe in one Lord, Jesus Christ, the only Son of God . . ." 

So, I did my retrieval practice work, and I had it down reasonably well.  By reasonably well, I mean I was slightly halting as I thought about whether the next line is "eternally begotten of the Father" or "of one being with the Father." But, I knew it well enough to say in a group without looking down to check the bulletin.

That is, until last week. On the final week every month, we use a different liturgy, known as a Morning Prayers service. That one uses the Apostles' Creed, the one I know so well I could probably rattle it off if you shook me awake in the morning and asked me to say it. Last week, the first week of the month, when we started the Nicene Creed, I completely fumbled it. 

So, my musing is this. Did one week of reverting back to the well known creed interfere with my ability to retrieve the one I know less well?  Will this change once I know it better? Is my already existing schema preventing attachment because they are too similar and trying to occupy the same cognitive space? Is there research on this, or is it too weirdly specific for an adequate experiment? 

So help me, Daniel Willingham, I don't know the answer to any of these questions, but I am going to spend some time this week retrieving the Nicene Creed so I don't feel so lost again this Sunday.

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.