Reflections on Learning and the Brain 2022 - Resilience

My raw notes are posted earlier on this blog, but they don't do much for me unless I mush it all together in my head to summarize and synthesize.  With that in mind, the next few posts will be my own reflections of some sessions.  This one is mostly out of a presentation by Dr. Deborah Gilboa, but there is a little from Dr. Jessica Minahan in here as well.

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Mental health is a spectrum, from healthy to coping to struggling to unwell.  There is a wide range of what is acceptable for physiological conditions (between dehydrated and overhydrated, for example).  There is also a wide range of what is acceptable for mental conditions.  Being sad for a couple of days, dealing with some changes, and having a day where you overreact to small annoyances is still within the range of acceptable.  The same is true for students.  Don't overinterpret one off day here and there, but if something surprises you, match your level of surprise to curiosity about the cause.  All change is stressful (even very good changes), so the surprising behavior may come from a minor cause or a major one, but it is a good idea to ask some questions.

There's a reason all change is stressful.  Your brain has a lot of functions, but it only has one job - to keep you alive.  Right now, sitting here, reading this, you are alive.  Your brain likes this state, so it says, "Why don't we just stay this way?"  When a change happens, no matter how good, your brain responds with, in the words of Dr. Gilboa, "Okay, cool.  Could ya die, though?" While she was speaking, my mind also remembered listening to the book Peak over the summer.  He talked about homeostasis as our reason for growth.  When you exercise, for example, the demand of your muscles for oxygen remains the same, but you are trying to distribute it to more places.  Your body grows capillaries to maintain the amount of oxygen the muscle gets.  So, paradoxically, your body changes in order to keep things the same under changing conditions.  

In order to keep you "safe," your brain preserves the status quo through three safety mechanisms, recognition of loss, distrust of those causing change, and avoidance of discomfort.  If you look at the trends of the pandemic, you can definitely see this.  In the spring of 2020, we all cried about lost events and opportunities (lost proms and plays and graduations and wedding ceremonies and family dinners).  After a few weeks, you begin to see distrust replace the loss.  People started, not just questioning the experts, but calling them evil and threatening them.  But where we got stuck was in avoiding discomfort. We were all at varying degrees of discomfort with masks or social distancing or plexiglass (the one I hated most), so we complained about them, petitioned against them, or just gritted our teeth until they went away.  To get beyond these mechanisms without getting stuck in them, we must build the skill of resilience.

First, it is important to define resilience.  Many of us would use some kind of phrase like "bouncing back" from a challenge as defining resilience.  The problem with that is that we are not elastic, and we should not expect to return to the exact same shape we were in before the change happened.  We need a definition that helps us understand adaptation as opposed to returning to the previous state.  Dr. Gilboa's definition of resilience is

"The ability to navigate change and come through it the kind of person you want to be."

It's about character goals.  Define what kind of person you want to be in your life, not what circumstances you want to have.  Then, build the skills necessary to maintain those qualities even as the circumstances change.

So, how do we do that?  There are things we can teach students to do (or do ourselves when we are stressed) to help break the loss, distrust, and discomfort cycle.  

• Storytelling - I'm not talking about teaching kids to write (although that could certainly help).  This is about having students state the truth from their perspective.  Can they accurately describe what is happening?  Sometimes, when we are stressed, we can have distorted perceptions and inaccurate thoughts.  When a student says, "I just cannot do anything right," having them list a lot of things they do well will make them better truth-tellers, and having a more accurate picture of reality will help calm the amygdala stuck in the fight, flight, or freeze response.  I once watched a colleague do this with a student.  She was going to speak in chapel and was understandably nervous.  He said, "What's the worst that can happen?"  She said, "I could freeze up and not be able to speak."  He replied, "Will I stop loving you?  Will your parents stop loving you?  Will Jesus stop loving you?"  As she answered "no" to each question, she started to giggle and recognized that her reality was not as scary as she had previously thought.
• Problem-solving - Most secondary teachers do teach kids to solve problems all day long, but they are math problems, physics problems, tech problems, and writing problems.  We need to look to elementary teachers to help our students continue to develop their ability to solve their life problems. Helping a student identify something they can actually do helps them figure out how to navigate the change in their lives.  Dr. Gilboa talked about her friend who teaches first grade.  For those who don't know, first graders ask for help with a problem 478 times per day.  Multiply that by 20, and you can make a teacher absolutely crazy.  So, she asked her friend how she handled that.  She said, "I look up from what I am doing and say, 'You're a good problem solver. What do you think?'"  That's brilliant, and I will be using it on Monday.   
• Asking for Help - We give students mixed messages about asking for help.  Kids will do something outside of their capabilities and make a huge mess, and we will say, "Sheesh, why didn't you just ask for help?"  However, sometimes, when a kid asks us for help, we will respond with, "Well, have you even tried?"  Understandably, they are confused about when they should ask.  I loved Dr. Gilboa's criteria.  She said, "If someone is in physical danger, they should ask an adult for help immediately.  That's above their pay grade, and they should not attempt to solve it first."  If that does not exist, they should try two things before they ask for help from an adult.  That causes them to develop problem-solving because they have to come up with a couple of ideas and see how they work.  It also helps them identify the right people to ask when it comes to that.

So that's what the stressed person can do.  How can we respond to stressed people to help them build resilience?  First, respond with

• Empathy - Don't stop reading (looking at you, Ben).  We have badly defined empathy over the years, calling it "feeling with them" or mirroring.  That's a terrible idea.  Empathy really just means communicating that you care about them and what they are feeling.  Even when instituting a consequence for poor behavior, you can validate a feeling.  You share humanity, so communicate that.  Dr. Jessica Minahan gave a couple of simple examples:
• "You seemed stressed.  How can I help you?"
• "I hate it when that happens."
• "I have some ideas. Would you like some advice?"
• Transparently sourced information - As teachers, we spend a lot of time trying to teach kids about the credibility of sources and where they get their advice.  We need to model that as well.  When kids ask why we are doing something different, it's not disrespect; it's engagement.  They are trying to participate in the thinking process.  If we say, "Just do it because I said so," we rob them of understanding why the change is happening.  If we read an article that says something will improve learning, we should tell them that.  If you just saw it on Pinterest, own it with some humility, and then get your information from better sources.
• Processing time if possible - Sometimes, we can't give students time to adjust to change.  If the fire alarm goes off, we have to respond immediately, and we'll deal with the stress it caused later.  But, if we can give them some warning, we give them time to adjust.  "Hey guys, I'm going to change the seating chart next week" gives your anxious student time to anticipate it and deal with their stress about it.  Elementary teachers often give five-minute warnings before a transition; it isn't going to hurt secondary teachers to do the same.  One thing we need to consider, though, is that screens are so absorbing, time tends to slip.  As a result, our students don't have an internal sense of what five minutes means.  Consider adding an interpretation of five minutes - like "We only have five more minutes on the playground.  That means you can go on the slide three more times."  
• Reasonable autonomy - Giving kids a choice, any choice, even small ones will give them a sense that they can adjust to change.  You can say to a kid, "Would you like to go get some water before we talk about this?"  Have your class vote on whether they would like to learn their new seats at the beginning of class or at the end.  We do not give them unlimited freedom (that would actually cause more stress), but when we give just a little bit of control, it turns down the amygdala and gets them back into their prefrontal cortex, where thinking happens. 

Resilience is a skill, not a character trait.  Teach them the skill.

Learning and the Brain Reflections - Tutoring

The theme of this year's Learning and the Brian was "Calming Anxious Brains."  Because there were a lot of speakers on that topic, it is going to take some time and mental effort to synthesize that into a good post.  With a yearbook deadline yesterday and exams coming up, I don't have that time and must reserve most of my brain's power, so I'll wait until Christmas break for those.  Among all the seminars about anxiety, however, there were a few simple and practical sessions (like this one on tutoring), so I'll begin with those.

This presentation was taught by John Almarode.  He is, hands down, my favorite session speaker at Learning and the Brain.  To say that he is engaging doesn't do justice to his energy.  He is an education professor at James Madison University, and I am always thrilled to know that he is out there training the next generation of teachers (BTW - something to consider if you are going to major in education).  If you have the chance to attend a John Almarode seminar, do yourself a favor.  You won't regret it.  He also does some webinars through Learning and the Brain.  I have not attended those, but I cannot imagine him trying to limit himself to the confines of a screen.  He must have to tie himself to the chair.

Okay, all that said, let's get on to what I learned from his session.

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There's been a lot of talk during the pandemic about "learning loss."  While students did not make the same gains they would have in a normal year, he felt it was important to point out that no learning was actually lost.  As he put it, "Eight times seven didn't just fall out of their shoe."  (You have to imagine this being said in a charming Virginia drawl.)  Tutoring isn't meant to be remedial.  According to some studies, in fact, it has a negative impact when viewed that way.  Rather, tutoring offers us the opportunity to extend learning and address unrealized potential in our students.  If we view it as a way of moving learning forward, regardless of their starting point, it has the potential to do students a lot of good.

If you are familiar with John Hattie's work on the "effect size" of various practices, you know that 0.4 is considered an effective skill ( because it represents making one year of gain in one year of time - For the statistics nerds, he may have said it was one standard deviation, but I don't actually remember).  Anyway, for everyone, any practice that ranks higher than a 0.4 is something to explore.  He was careful, however, to point out the effect sizes are about potential.  The technique itself has no power, so you still have to think about how to do it well.  

Some of the ideas for addressing "learning loss" have had little to no benefit because they assume that more time is better time.  Summer school has only a 0.19 effect size (because of working memory overload - something I'll address in a future post).  Extending the school year has been talked about in many district, in spite of the fact that is a 0.01 effect size.  Doing more of the same will not work.  A well-designed and effective tutoring program, however, has an effect size of 0.51 so it is worth talking about what it looks like to be well designed.

A good design for a tutoring session should involve the following:

1. Investment in relationship - A student learns better from someone with whom he has a relationship.  There is an opportunity to develop trust and a sense of safety, so the student is more engaged, less afraid to answer a question wrong, and more likely to take on the suggestions of the tutor.  If you have found a tutor your student likes (or there is an established relationship with a peer, neighbor, or family member), stick with them.  Credibility is built on trust and competence, so the relationship helps student develop intrinsic motivation.
2. Address confidence as well as learning challenges - Every teacher has sat in a tutoring session where the student has no confidence.  He came there because he was having trouble understanding the material, so he's afraid to be wrong when you ask a question.  A students' self efficacy (the believe that he can learn with effort) has a 0.71 effect size, which is second only to the teacher's belief that they can help the student learn.  That means we need to get them a "win" early in the session.  After that, you can move them forward much more quickly.
3. Goal setting - If you don't know where you are going, it can be hard to get there.  How you do this may depend on the nature of your session.  If you are meeting with a student weekly, you may be there to clarify whatever they have learned that week.  You may have a goal for the session, or the student may have a goal.  Regardless, it is important to establish the goal at the front of the session.  The goal should be immediate (something we can finish during this hour) and concrete (something we can know if we have achieved).   Saying something like, "We're going to go over some chemistry" doesn't really feel concrete.  On the other hand, if you say, "Today, we are going to balance chemical equations," it establishes an attainable goal and allows them to know when they have reached the goal.  After they have confidently balanced a few equations in a row, they know they have succeeded.  It is also a good idea to have the student state the goal in their own words.
4. Teaching them how to learn - The best tutors will eventually become unneccessary to the student they are tutoring.  That's because the goal isn't just to learn this week's math skill.  It to learn how to tackle any math skill.  It isn't to analyze the novel they are reading for their English class; it is to teach them the strategies needed to analyze any novel.  Tell them how helpful it would be to summarize their learning from memory.  Teach them how to use a graphic organizer, not just for today's content, but for any content.  You aren't teaching the content as much as you are teaching study skills using the context of the content.
5. Teach success criteria - I was honestly stunned at the effect size of this.  Simply establishing for a student how they will know when success has been achieved has an effects size of 0.88!  If tutoring is compared to a hiking path through the woods, success criteria is a bit like knowing the path ends at a waterfall.  I've been on these hikes in national parks.  When your legs are tired, and you are breathing so hard you want to quit, it is helpful to remember that the end goal is a waterfall.  When you start feeling the air get cooler, you know you are close.  When you hear the sound of rushing water, you start walking a little faster in spite of the pain in your calves.  Evidence that you are near your goal is motivating, so give your students that simple power.  "Hey, the goal is to identify the subject and verb of the sentence.  I got the subject of that one, so I'm half-way there," will keep a student going when a teacher's prodding might not.
6. Deliberate practice - Practice matters.  We all know that when it comes to music.  We all know it when it comes to basketball.  We seem to have forgotten it when it comes to education.  We've downplayed it by giving it names like "drill and kill," but intentionally practicing that which is difficult to do has an effect size of 0.79.  To be deliberate has to be challenging, but not impossible, a concept known as desirable difficulty.  ("To retain your brain has to strain.")  Desirable difficulty causes myelination of neurons and promoted dendrite growth in your brain cells.  Repeating something easy over and over does not; in the same way lifting a one pound weight over and over would do little to nothing for my biceps.  Doing something far too difficult can been damaging to learning in the same way attemtping to lift a weight to heavy for me would be damaging for my muscles.  Choose problems carefully that fit into the Goldilocks zone, and you can give your student the tools they need to learn anything.

What I Hope They'll Remember

Most of us have, for better or worse, vivid memories of our middle and high school years.  And, we went to school in precedented times, comparably rather dull compared to what my students are experiencing.  Tomorrow, I return from Christmas break.  Contrary to popular opinion, dropping the ball on the 31st didn't change anything (I promise this is my last slam at New Year's until next year).  I will return tomorrow with my mask in place, walk through the temperature scanner, meet in social distanced department meetings, and plan for more hybrid teaching.  Last school year, it was the final quarter that was upended by COVID, but this year, it influences the entire academic year.  Our students will remember this year, telling their kids and grandkids what it was like to live through the COVID pandemic.  I hope what they remember will be formative of their character.  Here's what I'm hoping for.

I hope students will remember teachers who did not panic.  There's a professional line between being authentic with students and sharing things that are not good for them.  My personal rule is, "A student should not go home worried about me."  When the pandemic hit, teachers felt a variety of things.  Some feared contracting the virus themselves or bringing it home to their families.  Some worried about their students whose home situations were not ideal.  Some were worried about the impact of virtual learning on the education of their students.  We were all sad that we wouldn't be able to connect with our students in the normal ways.  I don't know what every student saw from their teachers, but one of the things I am most proud of at GRACE is that we shared emotion, not panic.  Our students saw us cry, but they saw us wipe those tears, pick up our markers, and keep going.  They saw us put on our masks and do our best  I hope when they are adults who encounter difficult challenges that they will do the same.

I hope students will remember that teachers did everything they could to help them.  A thousand decisions have to be made every day in a normal school year, but I am usually confident in those decisions.  During pandemic teaching, I made a lot of decisions that I had no way of applying my experience to.  I tried to let my students know that whatever the result, I would find a way to make it fair.  Overall, I think we came to a good place, in the best interest of the student, while holding to the integrity of our classes.  Where we stumbled, we admitted it, apologized, and worked together to make it right.  I hope when they are adults who make mistakes that they will do the same.

I hope my students recognize that they can handle more than they think they can.  Stress is not fun, and there have been very stressful days, both in the spring during lockdown and in the fall during hybrid teaching.  I have sometimes sounded heartless to others when I have said things like, "Crying doesn't make you (or me) right."  I'm not.  I don't like to see my kids in tears, but I know that you don't teach grit, resilience, growth mindset, or any other kind of character development if you make decisions based on emotions, yours or theirs.  Chronic stress is unhealthy, but bouts of stress are actually good for you.  You go into a situation believing you cannot do it, then do it, and come out on the otherside realize you are stronger than you had imagined.  I hope when my students are adults, and they encounter times of stress, they will remember that they are strong persevere.

I hope my students will remember to be kind to people in need.  In normal times, we sometimes have the tendency to either look down on people who use government and charitable resources or pity them in a way that depersonalizes them.  We rarely imagine that it could be us at any time.  There were many people who lived perfectly normal lives pre-pandmic, paying their bills each month, carrying a little debt, but never worrying about whether they would be able to afford groceries.  When everything shut down in March, those same people didn't know how they would make it until May.  I was blessed to keep my job, but it was eye-opening to realize that you never know when you may be the one in need.  I hope my students will grow up to be people who give to charity and help their unemployed neighbor and do whatever they can to help.

Most of all, I hope my students will remember the people who stepped up.  The first that come to mind are nurses and doctors who cared for COVID patients.  Despite grave physical risk to themselves, they walked into hospital rooms and cared for patients.  We don't yet know what mental and emotional toll this will have on the medical profession in the long term, but dealing with patients who cannot have their loved ones with them and seeing a relentless amount of death while hearing member of the public refuse to do their part is going to have long term effects.  Grocery store checkers don't get paid much.  It's an entry level job, often done by high school students.  None of them took the job, thinking that it would one day be dangerous, but my grocery store has been open every day of the pandemic.  Add to that list delivery drivers and postal workers, whose service we literally could not have lived without.  The scientific community stepped up.  The development of MRNA vaccines at this pace is just short of miraculous.  These people worked round the clock, under pressure, and did an amazing thing.  Hiccups are happening with distribution, as they are bound to, but even with those stumbles, we are witness scientific history from regular people who stepped up when needed.  I have seen people from every walk of life step up, from textile who sewed masks during the PPE shortages to engineers who figured out how to make ventilators more efficient to people who put stuffed bears in their windows to provide joy for children to the news media who did their jobs while being called vile names to the Chic-Fil-A employee who still tells me it is her pleasure to serve me waffle fries.  I hope my students will remember that they can step up from wherever they are, no matter what kind of job they have.  I hope they will remember that people find creative ways to help and will do the same.

I know they are going to remember some things I wish they didn't.  They'll be able to name the people who didn't step up.  They'll remember the santizer hoarders and the toilet paper shortage.  They'll remember things that weren't fair and how frightened they were.  But, I hope, they'll chose to focus on the memories from which they can learn so this time won't be wasted.

Communication is EVERYTHING

Everything my school issues, from coffee cups to tote bags and even our email signatures, has the tagline "Equipping Students For Life."  This is because we recognize that education is about more than academic material.  In some ways, the academic content I teach is a vehicle for the skills a student will one day need, including organization skills, teamwork, perseverance, stress management, and scheduling.  For me, the top life skill I could impart to my students is communication.  The rest of the list matters, but communication is everything because, without it, we do not know about what is happening with the rest of the list.

Sometimes, work is turned in late.  I get it.  Life happens.  Our policy involves some grace for that.  Here's the thing.  You can save your teacher a lot of stress and yourself a lot of emails.  All you have to do is communicate to your teacher that your work will be late with a reason why.  A quick email to your teacher that says, "I know the project is due on Friday.  I have been sick for the past three days, so I couldn't complete it.  I will work on it over the weekend and get it to you on Monday." communicates that you are aware that you aren't meeting a deadline, gives a reason, and offers a plan.  I'm not saying this will result in a teacher delightfully offering you full credit, but it will earn you far more respect from the teacher than waiting for the teacher to email you the day after the deadline, not responding to that email, and then offering your reason only after the teacher has put in the zero for work not turned in.   

Speaking of teachers sending emails, we don't do it because we love it.  We do it because we are attempting to communicate with and elicit communication from you.  For the love of everything good, reply!  You don't have to reply to a mass email that was simply meant to inform.  I don't need a hundred responses with the word "thanks."  But, if the teacher has asked you a question, it is incredibly rude to not reply.  Imagine having a conversation with a teacher in real life in which they ask you a question.  Would you turn around and face away from the teacher?  Of course not, so don't do it digitally.  The teacher asked the question because they needed the answer, and when you don't reply, they still need the answer.  

I know that it is sometimes difficult to deal with a problem, and that makes communication about that thing frightening.  But nothing good ever comes from lying low and hoping it will go away if you ignore it.

Parents, as you partner with your child's school in preparing your children for adult life, let me make this humble request, teach your children to communicate.  It will help them in school, in work, in their relationships, and in life more than any other skill.

It Gets Better (Because That's How The Brain Works)

 Last week, I had a strange conversation on Twitter.  A teacher had said that she was worried about starting back to school soon because they would be in a hybrid situation where half the kids would be at school and half at home.  While the numbers were different, her situation sounded similar to mine, so I said, "I've been doing this for 8 weeks.  It's really hard at first, but you find your rhythm, and it gets much easier as you go."  Anywhere but Twitter, this would be considered an encouraging statement from an empathetic person, but Twitter's weird, so I got replies telling me that they were sick of false positivity and tired of being expected to keep a smile while pulling rabbits out of hats.  One said I didn't understand how hard it was to be an elementary school teacher.  I held back from saying, "Sure, physics is super easy to teach online" and instead replied that each context had its own challenges, but that it would get easier with practice.  This led to the most disturbing reply.

"Respectfully disagree.  This will not get easier."

I don't know where this conversation is now because I have a personal rule to mute online conversations after having replied twice.  (Trust me when I tell that is a rule that will keep you sane.  You don't owe your time to strangers, and they are going to make massive assumptions about you when they don't know anything about you.)

First, let's address the idea of false positivity.  I've never been accused of being excessively positive at all.  I'm not a glass half empty person exactly, but I am for sure not a glass half full person.  In fact, I've often used science to say the glass is completely full because air is also matter or used calculus limits to say that it is half empty if you are drinking out of it but half full if you are putting water in it.  This person who has never met me not only thinks I am too positive, but that an obvious statement like, "this will get easier as you do it" is false positivity.

My real issue in this conversation, however, is the assertion that this will not get easier.  This person is an educator who doesn't seem to understand learning.  All new things are difficult and get easier with practice.  He should have seen this every day in his work.  He should be teaching this to his students when they are having difficulty with what they are learning.  I do not understand how anyone spends their life in a classroom could ever say, "this will not get easier."

In case you don't want to go back and read all of my Learning and the Brain posts from last November, here's a quick tutorial.

1.  You walk around the world in mental balance until you encounter a new skill.  
2.  You experience mental disequilibrium (we call it confusion) as the new skill isn't yet incoporated into your long term memory.
3.  As you start practicing the new skill, it occupies a lot of space in your working memory, requiring a lot of energy and your full attention.
4.  You continue practicing, see how to chunk parts of the skill, after which it takes up less space in your working memory.
5.  After enough practice, the skill is transferred to long term memory.  From then on, you know how to do it, and it takes less energy to do it than it did in the beginning.  You return to mental equilibrium with the new skill on board.  This means you have learned. 

When we returned to school in August, it did feel nearly impossible.  Every day was exhausting, and I slept hard every night.  Remembering how to share my screen with the kids at home in a way that the kids in front of me could also see required multiple steps in a specific sequence.  Now, I can do it in a second, but during the first days of school, I had to say the steps out loud each time I did them.  Remembering to end class a minute early to give kids a chance to wipe down their desks with wipes but not so early that they would congregate by the door was difficult, especially because for some reason, despite its being set by satellite, my computer clock is three minutes slow, but I bought a new watch and set it to the school bell, so it's easier now.  In the beginning, I was emailing each of my at-home students daily to see if they had questions, but I soon learned that they were better at communicating with me than I thought (better than those in the room, actually) and that this was not needed.  I now send them a week at a glance page at the beginning of the week to let them know if there are any supplies they will need besides regular school supplies.  That's easier for me and for them.  Lunch duty is easier than it was because my partner and I have our routine figured out.  Students are more familiar with routines, so I don't have to remind them quite as much.  This Friday was the end of first quarter, and it is much less draining than it was nine weeks ago.  

I left out one part of this teacher's reply.  He ended with, "Teachers and students deserve better."  To that, I say, "Well, duh."  Sadly, we are in the middle of a pandemic and not able to live in the ideal world this man wants.  So now, I'm going to do the Twitter thing and assume something about him even though I know nothing about him.  He's a man who believes there is only perfect or garbage with nothing in between.  That's not the world with or without a pandemic.  We teach our students in an imperfect world and prepare them for one as well, but there are things we can do to make it just a little better.  Sometimes, the breakdown of garbage is just the fertilizer a flower needs to grow.

This isn't negativity.  It's isn't positivity (genuine or false).  It's real, and it's our calling. 

Three Dimensional Teachers

A few years ago, my friend Ben came to my room to ask a question about prime numbers.  We talked for a moment, and then the bell rang for my class to start.  The student nearest to me asked what had just happened.  I said, "Every year, he gets fascinated by one math thing.  Last year was Mobius strips; this year is prime numbers."  The student replied, "But he teaches Latin."  Since I have a good relationship with this student, I replied sarcastically, "Yeah, when we start teaching, they make us pick one thing.  We're not allowed to like anything else."  The student realized how silly that was and, I hope, came to view his teachers as actual human beings.

I am interested in . . . almost everything.  Seriously, I'm hard-pressed to come up with an example of something I don't find at least a little interesting.  I don't like sports, but I appreciate their physics.  There are genres of books I don't read, but that doesn't mean I don't find my students' interest in them worth talking about.  I'm sure if I knew anything about it, I could find something in the Punic Wars to be fascinated by.  There's a way to find almost everything interesting.  I want my students to know that.  I want them to understand that choosing a career does not mean being that thing.  To that end, I try to communicate with them about many things.

My classroom is decorated with a variety of things.  Of course, much of it is science, but not all of it science that I teach.  One section of a wall is covered with materials about blood donation.  One day, a student said, "When do we learn about blood in this class."  I said, "We don't.  You'll learn about it in Biology next year."  He asked why I had so much stuff about blood on the wall, and I told him about blood donation and why it was important to me.  I have an entire wall of National Parks, not because I will ever teach earth science, but because I love National Parks.  I have bobbleheads, not only of Newton, Einstein, and Fauci but also of Michael and Dwight, Sheldon and Lenoard, and various other pop culture characters.  I have artwork of former students as well as some professional artists that I admire.  I want my room to tell my students that it is okay to love more than one thing.  Fortunately, my school has a high percentage of students who read for pleasure.  I love that and want to encourage it in all of them.  When one of them is reading something I loved, I make sure to comment on it.  

Why does it matter that students view their teachers as three dimensional people with a variety of interests?  For one thing, it would be difficult to form relationships with all students if the only thing I was capable of talking about was physics.  It shows them that being excited about learning, all learning, is an enjoyable part of life.  It shows them that they can be people with a variety of interests as well.  Part of education is becoming a fuller person, so they shouldn't see the educated people in their lives as less full.  

John and Hank Green of Crash Course are good examples of passionate learners in many areas.  Hank is known more for science and John for history, but if you follow them at all, you know they are also just generally nerds for knowledge.  In one of their Vlogbrothers videos, John describes how much he loved sitting in the theater during the lead up to one of the Harry Potter movies and watching excited people enter the theater.  He said, "Nerds like us are allowed to be unironically enthusiastic about stuff. Nerds are allowed to love stuff, like jump-up-and-down-in-the-chair-can't-control-yourself-love it. Hank, when people call people nerds, mostly what they are saying is, 'You like stuff', which is just not a good insult at all, like 'You are too enthusiastic about the miracle of human consciousness'."  

Let's teach our students to be nerds, not because we think academia is the only thing there is, but because we want them to be enthusiastic about the miracle of human consciousness.

Humans - Capable of More Than We Think

 My 8th-grade students have academic blogs.  This week, I asked them to look at the inventions of the time period since 1899 and explain which one they thought was the most important.  Of course, most students wrote about the internet and the smartphone.  A few got clever with things like chicken nuggets and chocolate chip cookies.  Several wrote about air conditioning.  One of the boys who wrote about air conditioning made this statement.   "If we didn't have air conditioning then I don't think that mankind would still be alive."  Now, he's in the 8th grade, and they are prone to exaggeration, but it got me wondering if he realized how recently the invention of the air conditioner is in relation to human history.  It was invented less than 120 years ago and wasn't used in the majority of homes until the late 1960s.  The human race had survived since Adam and Eve without it until about 55 years ago.  

Don't misunderstand, I am also very grateful for Willis Carrier's invention, but this middle school blog post got me thinking about how limited our perspective is on what we can endure.  It also reminded me of what I've been seeing on social media in the past six months from people who don't believe themselves capable of doing the things we need to do to get through the current pandemic.  I've seen so many words like "unsustainable" and "incapable" and "cannot possibly endure until May."  Repeating these words to ourselves and reading them over and over has a deleterious impact on our brains because they fail to put human capabilities in perspective.  Let's do that.

My grandparents grew up in the Great Depression and fought World War II.  Depending on the criteria used, the Great Depression is calculated to have lasted between nine and eleven years.  The average deployment length for an army soldier in World War II was around ten months, but many served more than one deployment.  They endured 24 hours per day without a break (and, I might remind you, no air conditioning) away from family under the constant threat of death.  We are being asked to work longer hours with more duties, but we go home at the end of the day in our cars to climate-controlled homes.  

Their grandparents, by the way, fought World War I and endured the 1918 Spanish Flu pandemic, which killed from 2.7% to 5% of the world's population.  Those fighting in the trenches experienced or observed multiple diseases, from cholera to typhoid.  They slept in dirt, sometimes surrounded by their fallen brothers.  When supply lines were blocked, they survived on food rations that we wouldn't think enough food to survive, much less do an important job with. We were asked to sit on our sofas, watching Netflix and eating food that was delivered to our house two hours after we ordered it.

Perhaps it isn't fair that I've focused on the conditions of war since they aren't representative of everyday life.  Let's continue this historical tour of human endurance.  Those born in the 1850s came of age during the time of the Civil War, but thanks to The Homestead Act, many took on the challenge of settling the West.  Traveling in covered wagons, they endured bitterly cold winters and risk of diseases in frequency we cannot imagine today (in spite of kids rediscovering the video game Oregon Trail).  When they finally arrived in the West, they had to clear land for farming and ranching, build their homes, and sew clothes.  Should I remind you that they didn't have air conditioning or running water for that matter?  Their version of self-care was . . . nope, I can't finish that sentence because self-care was a concept not yet invented.

We could keep going.  There's the generation that literally formed America by writing a constitution after fighting a revolution.  There are those who spent months on boats, traveling the oceans.  Before that, there were those who got on boats, not knowing their destination or even if there was a destination because they believed it was possible they would fall off the edge of the earth.  We can go all the way back to those who literally lived in caves.  People who did not know where their next meal was coming from established civilization for the generations that followed, and we have staged protests over the closing of restaurants while eating food that was put in our car at the curb.  

I'm not saying this year hasn't been difficult.  Of course, it has been.  But it is not unsustainable.  Our responsibilities have increased, but they are not beyond human capability.  People have endured conditions far worse than these for far longer than a school year.  Repeat after me.  WE CAN DO THIS!

Variety is the Spice of Education

When I was a student teacher, I was placed in two different schools during the semester.  Because both schools I was placed in were largely upper-middle-class, majority-white student schools, there were some in my university program who were concerned that I wouldn't get varied experience.  They needed not worry.  My experiences could not have been more different.  I know the differences they had in mind were cultural and socio-economic, and in those ways, the schools were similar; but the classrooms bore no resemblance.  

The first teacher I was placed with taught juniors and seniors physics, astronomy, and AP Chemistry.  He ruled that class like a judge rules a courtroom, and the students did exactly what he wanted them to do exactly when he wanted them to do it.  He could leave the room, and nothing would be different when he returned because they wouldn't dream of stepping out of line.  My second placement was in a basic skills level freshman science class with a very pregnant (our last days were the same day), very relational, very casual teacher who would come in some mornings and say, "Okay, what are we doing today?"  She would not ever leave the room because she might return to a pile of rubble if she did.

In the defense of my experience, a panel member asked me, "If he is on one end of the spectrum, and she is on the other, where do you see yourself?"  It was a good question.  I knew I absolutely could not have been either one of them.  She was so casual that her room was chaos most of the time, but her kids loved her and wanted to be with her.  I'm not sure how much science they learned, but they knew she loved them.  That level of daily chaos and uncertainty would make me insecure.  His room ran like a Swiss watch, but when the bell rang, the kids left like they were being fired from a cannon.  They learned a lot of science, but I doubt he knew their names outside the classroom.   

During my first couple of years, I found my own style.  I was fortunate enough to have a principal who recognized that talent came in different forms.  In case you are wondering, I am extremely planned but open to changing on the fly if the plan isn't working.  I enjoy bantering with students, but I don't let them just all shout out whatever comes to mind.  You won't walk by my room and find me playing hacky sack with a bunch of kids, but I have been known on occasion to lip-sync the entire run of Toto's "Africa" and cannot control myself when it comes to dancing along with Kahoot music.  I have planned exactly what I want to accomplish during the day, but some classes require a lot of focused examples while others take me down a few rabbit trails along the way.  I have expressed deadlines, but I also know that students have different challenges outside of class and that misbehavior is often an expression of unmet needs, so when a student communicates with me, I am open to extending said deadline for individual students.  I do not allow eating in my class (because bugs), but fidgets are fine unless they become distracting.  I find as many reasons to say yes as I can, so that when I have to say no, it is actually meaningful.

The one year I taught in the North Carolina Public School System, I was miserable (like gain 30 pounds in a school year miserable).  There were a lot of reasons for that, but one of the primary ones was that my supervising administrator seemed to feel that there was only one way to be a great teacher (which was, conveniently, the way she taught when she was in the classroom with no acknowledgment that she taught a high-level elective while I was teaching a course that was required for all freshmen (a third of whom were on IEPs).  We were supposed to accept all of the differences of our students, but teachers were expected to fit in a box.  I grant you that the teacher in the box was an excellent teacher, but it just wasn't me.  Thankfully, it was not my first experience, or it might have been my last.  

We, in education, have sometimes sacrificed common sense on the altar of consistency.  Yes, it can be challenging for kids to remember the policies of several teachers, but that is training for life.  Kids need different kinds of teachers.  For one thing, they are going to encounter different kinds of bosses.  In their adult lives, they will encounter all kinds of personalities and have to adapt.  If we don't teach them to adapt, we are not equipping them for life.  

More importantly, kids need different kinds of teachers because there are different kinds of kids.  Some kids need the teacher who shows them how to not take themselves so seriously (Thanks, Mr. Dorrin).  Some need the teacher that challenges their thinking and believes they are capable of meeting that challenge (You're the best, Mr. Sandberg).  Believe it or not, some respond well to a well-crafted lecture (I was mesmerized by yours, Mr. Freeman).  Some students respond to the passion of the teacher and find a love they didn't know they had (I cried in an art museum because of you, Mr. Watkins).  Students that connect well with some teachers don't connect at all with others.  If all teachers were the teacher in the box, we might only reach a small percentage of our students.  We need different teachers to connect with the nerds than the theater geeks.  We need the inspirational English teacher that inspires a love of poetic imagery AND the one that teaches them to craft a proper grammatical sentence (That might be the same teacher, but it might be different teachers over the course of several years).  

Experienced teachers, you probably have a good idea of who you are in your classroom.  Yet, you may sometimes feel guilty that you aren't like the teacher who gives each kid their own personalized greeting at the door.  Or, you may be the cool teacher and exhaust yourself with the effort to be more like the serious teacher down the hall.  Don't.  If your classroom environment is working and your kids are learning, you don't need to be like the teacher down the hall.  Young teachers, it may take you a while to figure out what works for you.  There's much to be learned from your colleagues and mentors, but don't try to be them.  Take from them what works for you, but adapt it for yourself.  You'll find your style, and it will be exactly what some student needs.

Poet William Cowper wrote that "variety is the spice of life."  It's also what keeps school interesting.  Don't fear it.  Embrace it.

Teachers - Stop Beating Each Other Up

This is going to be a short post because there is not much nuance to what I want to say.  It is sad and disheartening to see what teachers are doing to each other online during the return to school.

In March, when the shutdowns began, EduTwitter was kind of a lovely place to be.  They were sharing best practices, showing tech hacks, and encouraging each other that we could do this.  Of course, we were also getting a lot of love from the public as parents realized that teaching their child was kind of a hard job.  About two weeks in, I had to make conscious efforts to limit my time reading teacher posts because they had turned dark.  They were frustrated with their admins and district leaders, feeling that expectations were changing weekly or daily; and while I was sad for them (because my administrators were super supportive and helpful), I was disappointed at the lack of professionalism and often wondered how they were keeping their jobs.

August is very much NOT March.  The whiplash caused by the change in public support is unnerving.  We went from heroes to villains during the summer.  The very same people who were praising teachers in March for their adaptability now have expectations of their kids' teachers that simply cannot be met by human beings as though June and July was enough time to reinvent their practice even while not knowing if they would need to.  Even my beloved Ken Jennings took a soft jab in a joke where he said it was called remote learning because of the remote chance his kids would learn anything.  I wasn't offended by Ken's joke, but it is illustrative of the changing attitude about what teachers are doing.

But, this post is not about the public.  It's not about parents.  It's not even about the teachers who criticize their administrations.  It's about those teachers who insist on beating up other teachers on Twitter.  

- A teacher had posted her rules for her online students, and a swarm of teachers descended on her because she didn't want them to eat while she was teaching them.  This isn't a choice I would have made, but they don't know why she made it a rule.  Perhaps, she has, like others, developed misophonia during the pandemic and the sound of chewing will be distracting.  Perhaps seeing the kids eat will be distracting to her in-person students who cannot eat in the classroom.  
- Some teachers are assigning homework during this time, and they are being responded to with all caps, hand-clap-emoji-filled tweets, telling them that they don't care about their students.  

- While absolutely no one knows what the best way to do hybrid learning is, there are many who will attack the way you have decided to navigate it in your classroom.  Worse, when someone tries to explain their choice, they are accused of toxic positivity and told they are buck-passing cowards for not standing up to their admins and districts.  (I saw this happen yesterday to a poor woman who is just doing the best she can.)

What bothers me about all of this is that none of these attacking teachers seem to care about context.  What's right in an elementary school reading class is not even close to what is right in a high school math class.  What's wrong to expect of a special needs 5th-grader may be perfectly fine to expect of a junior in an AP class.  What is feasible for a private one to one school in the Research Triangle is not even possible for a rural public school in West Virginia.  Context has always mattered, but this situation makes it matter more than ever.  

Teachers are all doing the best we can right now.  Some may appear more confident than others, but we all know that we are not delivering the ideal that we would like to be.  While you are doing the best you can, it is fundamentally cruel to be mean to someone else who is also doing the best they can.  Would you allow your students to do that?  Twitter shouldn't turn us into Heathers.  We're teachers, and everything we publically do sends a message to our students.  Tearing other teachers apart because they carry out their practice differently than you do models intolerant, hateful, bullying behavior to your students.  

You have to stop.  You just have to.  

Unexpected Benefits - Connection at a Distance

This is a short post.  Teachers are tired right now.

I am currently in a hybrid teaching situation.  For those who think it isn't possible, it is.  I'm not saying it is easy, but with each passing day, the tech takes up less space in my working memory, and the ability to address those in my room as well as those on my screen gets a little more natural.

Because we are now two weeks in, it was time to give the first test.  Figuring out how to do this fairly has perhaps been the most difficult thing to wrap my mind around.  Giving a regular paper test makes cheating far too tempting for those at home.  Giving something different to those at home than those in the room was just going to create perception problems.  So, I decided to do what I did when everyone was at home, using a combination of Go Formative with monitoring (for multiple-choice questions) and Flip Grid (for short answer questions or skill-based questions).

While no method is perfect or without the potential for cheating, and the videos take a long time to grade, this combination is what works for me in this moment.  

Yesterday, I discovered a benefit I had not anticipated.  While watching the videos on Flip Grid, I got to know my students better.  From the hams who practically performed their answers to the introverts whose voices I rarely get to hear in the room to the creativity of a student who cut out a picture of a fire hydrant to use in her video as though it were real, I got to see the personalities of my students in a way that I would not have if they had written the answers to the questions on paper.  

The quarantine of the spring and the hybrid classes of the fall have forced us to examine our practices to figure out how to make them work in this situation.  Doing so has been difficult, and we are all tired.  It has, however, had the upside of finding benefits to methods we might not have otherwise used.  As you innovate, keep your eyes open for the unexpected benefits.

High Expectations and High Grace

Your brain works best when it has a proper balance of neurotransmitters.  The big three are dopamine (released when exposed to affection stimulation - a loved one, likes on social media, a pet), serotonin (released when you are exposed to light or when you smile or laugh), and norepinephrine (produced in response to appropriate stress levels in order to keep you alert).  There are a few dozen more, however, and right now, most of us do not have a proper balance of them.  Chances are your norepinephrine is at least a little high.  If you haven't been getting touched very much, your oxytocin is likely depleted.  If you haven't been exercising, your endorphin balance is probably a little low.  

We know what happens if you are deficient in each of these, but it may be hard to predict the symptoms you will experience from a combination of deficiencies and excesses.  Some symptoms may physical (muscle tension, headaches, digestive abnormalities).  Others may be emotional (irritability, overreactions to minor stimuli).  Some may even appear to be mental (brain fog, memory lapse, shortened attention span).

As school starts back, you have to be aware that you, your colleagues, and your students have had different experiences during the past several months.  Some of your students may have received more touch than ever as their mothers were home with them all day.  Some of your single colleagues have not been physically touched since March.  Some students may be sensitive to sound than they were last year.  Some teachers may be more irritable than their normal personalities.  You may find yourself unable to remember what you were going to do next, and your students may experience the same.

High Expectations:  It's important to have high standards.  That's still true during a pandemic.  During the final quarter of the school year, my school continued to take attendance and give assessments.  Other schools in my area froze grades and essentially made class attendance optional.  I am not judging those schools because I don't think anyone could have known what the RIGHT thing to do was, but I did make some interesting observations.  Students who continued with some degree of normalcy and whose teachers still had expectations (with grace, which I'll address in a second) fared better emotionally than those whose schools no longer expected anything of them.  I am not an expert in psychology, but I believe the reason for this was that those who still had expectations required of them understood that this crisis was temporary.  Things would still matter in the future, and we were still attempting to prepare them for that future.  Those students who no longer felt like anything mattered were likely to believe there was no future.  One of the things I'm proudest of GRACE Christian School for last year is not panicking our students.  They saw emotion from us, but they never saw panic.  They knew we were sad because we missed them, but seeing us carry on every day was reassuring.  (If you are an expert in psychology and believe I'm wrong, please let me know.  This is just my own musing on my observations.)  This is a year for high expectations.

High Grace:  It is also important to have grace.  While this is always true, I think it is more so now.  With some exceptions, most people have walked around within an expected range of neurotransmitter balance in their daily lives.  That means their actions and emotional responses have been at least somewhat predictable in the past (or at least somewhat simple to understand).  This is not going to be the case this year.  While all of our neurotransmitters will be out of balance, they won't all be out of balance the same way.  Don't be surprised if you have more trouble holding some students' attention while others are unusually hyper-focused.  Some students may need to use the restroom more often than your normal policy allows.  Some may cry more easily than usual while some may show little if any emotional responses.  It is going to be more important than ever that we have compassion for our students, even if we don't understand why they are responding the way they are.  This is a year for high grace.

A word for parents and students:  This is also a time for you to extend grace.  School always involves a million details, but we can usually rely on experience to help make decisions.  This year, there are more details and most of them cannot be done in the same way they have been done in the past.  Your administration has spent all summer planning.  I think, from the outside, it may seem like this is just an issue of space and masks, but there is literally nothing that happens in a school that hasn't been influenced by this.  In the midst of their own neurotransmitter challenges, school leaders have exhausted themselves trying to think of everything they can in order to plan for it.  Whether they are teaching fully online or in a hybrid situation, your teachers are learning to do a thousand things they have never done before.  We are going to drop the ball sometimes.  There may be days when we only get 995 of them right.  We have very high expectations for ourselves, but we need grace from you just as much as you need it from us.  

More Than One Right Way

Think of your top five favorite teachers?  Were they all alike?  I cannot speak for you, but mine were not.  I had great teachers who used many different techniques to accomplish their goals.  Some of my best teachers were strict about deadlines, teaching me about responsibility.  Others were willing to accept things late, teaching me about flexibility.  I had great teachers who engaged us in collaborative efforts, but one of my favorite teachers was a straight-up lecturer.  I was enthralled by him, and I learned a lot as I absorbed every word.  One of my best teachers always affirmed students' thinking, even if they were wrong; but another one of my great teachers was not shy about telling you when you were wrong and needed to think again.  Not all great teachers look the same. 

Even in the midst of COVID-19, the beginning of the school year starts with professional development.  Professional development is great, but it can make you feel terrible.  One of the people near me (who is a fantastic teacher, by the way) said that she always feels guilty when she sits in a seminar because she thinks they are telling her that what she currently does is wrong.  It isn't.  I work with fabulous teachers, and their approach to education is fabulous.  I'm not saying we can't all learn ways to improve, but great teachers shouldn't feel like they have to turn everything they are doing upside down in order to fit in box that holds the current educational fad.  

Here's the thing.  There's a lot of science behind what we do.  You can see a myriad of my own blog posts regarding things I've learned from Learning and the Brain conferences to see that there is a ton of science that can inform our technique.  There is, however, also a lot of art to our craft.  Just like a painter can understand the chemistry of paint, but mix it different ways to get the hues they want in their painting, we can apply the same brain science in a myriad of ways to accomplish learning in our classrooms.  One of the most interesting speakers at last year's Learning and the Brain conference made a great analogy.  He said the experiments we carry out in education research are like plants in a greenhouse.  We have very controlled conditions, so we can test one specific variable (because that's what a good scientific experiment is).  The conclusions we draw are based on those very narrowly drawn parameters.  Applying those techniques in your classroom, he said, is like growing plants in your yard.  You no longer have control over the conditions, and there are many variables involved that will influence the outcome of your technique.  That means you can't just adopt wholesale a technique based on the idea that "studies say" this works well.   You have to adapt techniques to your context.  It would be crazy to think that some techniques wouldn't work differently in a rural area than in an urban one.  I know some techniques that do NOT work in public school work beautifully in a Christian school because there is a different expectation of worldview.  Kids who have suffered trauma will respond differently to some words than those who have not experienced trauma.  As a science teacher who is interested in brain research, I have to resist the idea that there is a magic pill that will work with every brain.

I know there are some procedures in the world that can only be done in one right way.  I assume there is only one right way to land a 747, and that all other ways are dangerous.  Brain surgery, I imagine, doesn't have a lot of room for the individual expression of the surgeon.  Teaching is not restrictive in that way.  You might be a teacher who strongly believes in a student-led classroom and get your students to learn a lot, but you might also be a teacher who knows that their expertise is valuable to your students and that they don't know what they don't know and teach your students a lot as well.  There is not ONE right way to teach a class, and every other way is wrong.  There are at least a dozen right ways to teach the same content, so don't feel guilty if the one you have chosen doesn't fit the seminar you are sitting in.  That may just be another one of the right ways.

You don't have to be the same as the teacher across the hall to be a great teacher.  Good teachers don't fit in a box, so stop trying to make yourself fit in one.

Change Begets Change

If you spend much time around education, you'll hear it.  "Education hasn't changed in 200 years," someone says, and people nod.  I roll my eyes.  Some of you reading this have said it, and yes, I rolled my eyes at you so hard I nearly sprained a socket.  It's an easy line to say, and all you have to do to get people to believe it is show two pictures of kids sitting in desks.  The problem is that image is silent and stationary and doesn't show what is really happening in the classroom.  All that image really proves is that humans still sit in chairs and need horizontal surfaces to write on.  Education has changed dramatically in the two decades I have been doing it.  If you brought a teacher from 200 years ago into 2020 (even before the pandemic), they would not recognize what school now is.

Expertise in Classrooms

Two hundred years ago, you had the same teacher no matter what grade you were in.  She read a lot, but she had no specific training in any one subject.  She taught you reading, writing, math, and science with no specific training in any one of them.  Now, your science teacher has a science-related degree and is required to engage in professional learning in both their subject area and pedagogy.  You may have the same teacher a couple of times (if you are in a private school), but you don't have the same teacher from kindergarten until graduation, which is what was happening two centuries ago.  It started to slowly change at the beginning of the 20th century, when cultural values shifted from the idea of Renaissance men to that of specialization.  People stopped being simultaneously farmer and architect and musician and philosopher and started being a farmer or an architect or a musician.  Teaching changed because culture changed.

Lab Science

In spite of the fact that all it did was send a beeping radio signal, the launch of Sputnik in 1957 changed a lot of things here on earth.  In the midst of the cold war, scared people increased the construction of bomb shelters, worried that it might be taking pictures of them from above, and of course, propelled us to the moon.  It also changed the teaching of science in America.  Seeing the need for engineers, schools were asked to identify those with aptitude early, and science instructions took a major turn.  Lab experiments were no longer the domain of university courses only.  High schools began building labs, and hands-on activities became valued.  Teaching science changed because culture changed.

Collaboration

In the early 90s, there was a survey of business owners, asking what they looked for in a potential employee.  In the top five of those answers was the ability to collaborate on projects.  Schools began to implement cooperative learning programs, in which each member of a group of four was given a role, like the recorder or the one we made fun of in my math classes, the encourager ("Go girl, multiply those numbers.").  It was a little clumsy at the start, but as we have grown to value collaboration, we've gotten better at it, and students are better able to identify what their contribution should be. Social values changed, so education changed with it.

Choice

Parenting changes with each generation.  In just my lifetime, there has been a pronounced difference from parents telling their child that the teacher is the authority and you should respect them whether you feel respectful or not to parents telling their child that the teacher works for us, and I will meet with them to make sure they understand you.  I'm not complaining because some of those changes have been positive, but if it it has changed this much in my 44 years, imagine how much it has changed in the last 200 years and the impact that has had on education.  One of the most recent is that of choice.  Parenting books and websites started advising parents to get behavior "buy-in" from their kids by giving them choices.  That training led kids to expect choice in a lot of areas, and teachers like the idea of "buy-in" as well, so we now incorporate as much choice as possible into our lessons, allowing students to choose from a menu of books and then allow them to display their understanding in a variety of ways.  The change in parenting values led to a change in pedagogy.

Shifts in Discipline

The changes in parenting also led to massive changes in discipline.  I never got spanked at school, but my brother did.  Corporal punishment has, of course, been eliminated from schools, but that is not the only change.  Detention and suspension still exist, but they are far rarer than they once were.  We are more likely to have reasonable conversations about feelings with students.  Again, I'm not saying this is a bad thing.  I'd much prefer a heart change to compliance-based behavior modification.  What I am saying is that the change in societal values and parenting techniques led to a change in schools as well.

Brain Science Based Pedagogy

The invention of the MRI and the fMRI changed everything.  Many myths we had about the brain (use only 10%, logical left vs creative right) were debunked.  It has taken a long time, but we are now in a position to apply the information coming out of that research to pedagogy.  I have attended two Learning and the Brain Conferences, but they have been doing this work for 20 years.  When we started learning what stimulates dendrite growth, we could use less trial and error and more confidence in our knowledge while lesson planning.  Change in science and technology brought about change in education.

Use of Technology

Speaking of technology, what impact has that had on your classroom?  It's been quite a bit in mine.  From the ability to communicate with absent students to quickly googling the answers to questions.  From 3D printing projects to twitter chats and blogs.  From online editing tools, like Grammarly and TurnItIn.  From out of class resources like Crash Course and Khan Academy to in class communication like Socrative and Flip Grid, my students in 2020 (even before the pandemic) had a MUCH different classroom experience than my students in 1999, when there was an internet, but using it meant reserving time in the computer lab.  Technology has changed rapidly, and we have taken advantage of those changes for our students.  We haven't even talked about how well-positioned some schools were to move their instruction online (I know they all weren't and that there was a digital divide, but imagine if the pandemic had happened in 1990 instead of 2020).  Changes in technology always scare people and lead to changes in instruction. 

Projects that are both Socially and Academically Minded

Because of internet access, there has been a lot of focus on expanding projects from knowledge-based to social-minded.  Almost all school projects now have some aspect that includes either a creative or social component, usually both.  Things like the famous 20% time projects were not possible when my career began, but we are now using students' interests in and knowledge of the wider world to have them think about their interconnectedness.  This was made possible by changes in technology and widespread because of changes in societal values.

"Relationships are Everything"

Teachers on Twitter use the statement "relationships are everything" a lot.  They aren't everything, but we have found they are critical to everything else in education.  Those changes in discipline and choice and buy-in that I mentioned earlier are helped enormously by students and teachers building a level of trust with each other.  The aggregate of society's changes in values led to a big change in education.  We spend far more time during the first days of school doing relationship building (and I maintain that's why online instruction worked well last year.  We'd had three quarters of knowing each other and trusting each other and knowing each other's voices before we went virtual.  That made all the difference.  

Discussion

Look into a classroom today, and you will see discussion.  Teachers asking prompting questions to students who may answer out loud or sometimes online or in writing.  Two hundred years ago, teachers did not discuss things.  Children sat silently until called on, and that was to elicit a specific answer to a specific question.  It was not to ask kids what they think or to relate learning to their experience.  If they spoke out of turn, they might be hit with a ruler or asked to stay inside while others played.  Kids now have a voice in the classroom.  While it as different levels in different classrooms, it is far more than it once was because we now value their thoughts in a way we didn't in the time of "children should be seen and not heard."

I could go on, but this post is already longer than I meant for it to be.  My intent isn't just to list the ways education has changed, but to show why.  Changes in the world, whether those changes be in values or technology or knowledge, lead to changes in education.  Here comes another one.  We are going to figure out the hybrid thing because COVID-19 will require it of us.  One day, having a student who is at home sick join us online won't seem like a big deal.  It'll just be part of the normal course of school because we figured it out when we had to.  Those tweets with hand clap emojis saying that we cannot do this will seem silly in hindsight because we will have figured it out.  

Change in the world begets change in education.  Most of the time, the changes are gradual.  This one isn't.  Get ready to adapt.  It's what we do.  It's what we've always done.

Step Up to the Information Buffet

There are a lot of metaphors for learning and access to information.  When the internet first became a thing in the mid-90s, we called it the Information Superhighway.  When I first began teaching, someone told me that my students would be adrift on a sea of information and that I should be like a lighthouse.  While all the metaphors have some value, there is one I came across recently that rang eerily true.  In her book, None Like Him, Jen Wilkin talks about the world in which we live as having a buffet of information.  This seems the most applicable analogy to what I see in the 21st century.

Too Much.  Just like a buffet allows you to stuff yourself in ways you wouldn't at a normal meal, the plethora of news sources and their 24/7 availability allow us to overconsume under the justification of "staying informed."  I have seen advertisements for apps that allow you to stay "up to the minute."  Is that really a virtue?  I mean, unless you are in a situation like the people of Boston in the days after the marathon bombing, what is the value in being up to the minute?  Is there a correlation between the information being immediate and it being accurate?  I haven't done the research, but I would imagine there is a negative correlation between those things.  Perhaps, taking the time to check sources and verify information would result in better information rather than just more.

Consume What You Like.  Reject What You Don't.  No one eats everything on a buffet.  It just isn't possible.  When I got to Golden Corral, I first walk the entire length of the restaurant to see what they have before putting a fried chicken leg, a cheese biscuit, some scrambled eggs, and six strips of bacon on my plate.  Are there healthy options available to me?  Yes.  Do I eat them when I am at Golden Corral?  Of course not.  When Sweet Tomatoes existed in Raleigh, I ate delicious and healthy salads, but I'm not going to eat salad at a place where I man will make me an omelet while I put a marshmallow under a streaming chocolate fountain.  That's just crazy talk.  The internet has allowed us to do the same thing with information.  Are there good sources out there?  Yes.  Do I take the time to go beyond the first page on a Google search result to find them?  Rarely.  And I know how to recognize it when I see it.  Not everyone was as blessed in training as I was.

Illusion of Satisfaction.  I don't know how many times you have been to a buffet and stuffed yourself to the point where you know if you move, you will either vomit or burst the button right off your jeans.  Because of what you have chosen to eat, it burns pretty fast, and you are at home a couple of hours later, looking for some crackers or something.  I think there is an analogous experience with information consumption.  We listen to so many talks, watch so many videos, and read so many articles (and yes, I'm aware of the irony that you are reading this blog post) that we feel like we are overflowing with information.  However, because of what we have chosen to consume, we aren't actually informed.  If we get into an intelligent discussion, we are hard-pressed to bring out good information from a credible source and find ourselves referencing that well-respected publication called, "somewhere."  You know what I mean - "I saw somewhere.  I read it somewhere."  After consuming all this information, we are not informed.

Poisoning Others.  All analogies break down somewhere, and this may be where the buffet analogy falls apart.  I don't think I influence others too much at a church picnic when I eat strange combinations of foods, other than perhaps recommending those foods to other people.  With bad information, it is different.  When I pass along something false or non-credible on social media, my friends and followers will at least read the headline and draw some kind of conclusion whether they read the article or not, whether they check the source or not, whether they digest the information through a discerning filter or not.  I recently had the experience of a friend (one who use to teach proper research skills to her English students) posting something that was from an obviously sketchy source (It's not always super obvious, which is why you should be careful about just hitting share, but this one was from a conspiracy group, so it was clear).  When I questioned it, she said, "I don't agree with everything I share.  I just passed it on because I think it is interesting."  To beat the food analogy to death, she might as well have said, "I found this food on the ground and I gave it to you because I thought the dirt made a nice pattern."  We are all in positions of some influence, even if it is just on a few people, but teachers need to be extra careful.  There's no such thing as casually sharing an opinion with a student (a lesson I've learned many times when my words were quoted back to me later).  If you share things without checking the source, you teach others to do so as well.  If you pass along inflammatory opinions without regard to their impact, you teach students to do the opposite of what you try to teach them in class.  Do not poison students and hope they can discern the junk food information from the healthy when you haven't.  

When you step up to a food buffet, you experience the consequences of your choices, but because of the way your body is designed, it won't do you too much harm if you only occasionally consume poorly (Birthdays and Thanksgiving won't cause too many long term problems if you don't have them a hundred days a year).  Your brain, however, isn't made that way.  You will suffer the long term consequences of daily exposure to the data buffet, so consume responsibly.

What I Feel vs. What I Know (Returning to School in the Age of Coronavirus)

It's June 21, and in any other year, there would be a few weeks of summer left before I start thinking about what the day to day of school life would be in the next school year.  As we all know, however, 2020 is not like any other year.  Rather than waiting until the middle of July, I have been thinking about it since the third week of May.  In the past two weeks, I have attended four virtual meetings about school, two regarding how to address racial reconciliation in the Christian school environment and two about the impact COVID19 will have on our daily operations next year, from daily temperature checks to how lunch will be distributed.  It's no wonder my heart rate and blood pressure were high when the Red Cross checked it last week.  There's a lot to feel.

I'm having a hard time describing what I feel.  Fear isn't the right word.  I'm not scared.  I've cried a few times, but I'm not sure sadness is what I feel either.  I think about next year a lot, but I don't know if that counts as worry.  Perhaps apprehensive is the right word?  I'm not sure.  

I know this.  Each year that I have taught, I felt strengthened by the years of experience I had behind me.  This year, I don't feel that stability.  I think that's what causes me to think about it so often, trying to visualize something I've never done before.  And, of course, the dark side of edutwitter has reared its ugly head.  Don't get me wrong, Twitter is often a great place of sharing and encouragement for educators, but it is also where some teachers reveal their most cynical sides (and a few who I cannot fathom remaining employed after what they have said about their administrators).  There is no aspect of school operations that isn't touched by the need for social distancing, and planning around that feels more difficult than anything we've ever face (even more than teaching virtually).

But here's the thing about adulting.  We don't have to be ruled by our emotional responses.  We get to recognize that what we feel and what we know are two different things.  We get to pause and reflect rather than just react.  So here are some things that I know.

1.  Teachers know how to teach.  I said earlier that I don't feel like my 21 years of teaching experience are strengthening me in the way they have in the past.  I FEEL that, but I KNOW it isn't true.  I may not know the best way to simultaneously address an iPad and a live group of students yet, but I know how to explain scientific principals and have been growing in that knowledge for over two decades.  I still know how the learning brain works, and I can use practices that support the learning brain, even if those practices play out differently with those at home than it does with those in front of me.  As I go into next year, I am NOT rebuilding teaching practices from scratch; it only feels that way.

2.  I have the best administration in the world.  What Twitter has shown me is the difference administrators make in the attitudes of teachers.  Most of those who have posted negative thoughts have done so because they don't feel supported.  The few I have chosen to engage with have reported constantly changing expectations, lack of compassion from their leaders, and either micromanagement or complete absence of support.  If you are one of those teachers, I'm so sorry.  My administration is the best.  They lead with strength but not with a heavy hand.  They are phenomenal planners and problem solvers, but they also listen and even solicit the input from those of us in the classroom daily.  They encourage us to think of this as a way to innovate our practice, but they know some of those innovations will fall flat and will help us clean up any messes we make in the process.  They are not "figuring things out as we go," but they will respond to unfolding needs.  As I go into next year, these are the stable people I get to lean on.

3.  Growth Mindset matters now more than ever.  As teachers, we encourage our students to do things they do not yet know how to do.  When they say they cannot do something, we often respond that they cannot do that thing yet.  We encourage them to learn and grow.  Since March, we have had unprecedented opportunities to model that.  On March 16, I had never taught a single class period on Google Hangout.  I have now taught around 150 class periods that way.  Did they all go perfectly?  Of course not, but if I'd be kidding myself to think that all of my in-person classes are flawless.  (I say this as a person who is on record as a believer in face-to-face instruction, so please don't think I'm saying they are the same.)  We are showing kids that we can take on new challenges, which may be more important than any part of our curriculum.  I hope that by the time school starts, the man who tweeted this will decide to model learning for his students rather than show them that he won't do anything he doesn't already know how to do.

 

4.  We determine our students' responses.  While this particular time is unprecedented, I have taught through more than one crisis, some on a local level  (like a shooting threat in my building) and others on a massive level (I was teaching high school on 9/11).  I've taught through personal heartache and corporate grief.  Here's what I've learned.  How teachers act influences how students feel.  During my second year, there was a threatening letter found in my school in Oklahoma.  I started each class by telling my students that there was a plan and that they do what I told them to do without arguing.  We then went on to have the class almost normally.  There were teachers that day who started every class in a panic, and their students spent that class period in fear.  At the beginning of virtual teaching, my students did see me cry, but they did not see me panic.  There's a difference between being genuine and putting all your feelings on display.  They saw that I missed them, but they didn't see me doubt whether or not I could meet their needs (because even if I felt that, it would not have helped them to know).  I believe in "being real" with your students, but be professional about how much you share.

5.  Imagination is powerful.  The human mind has an incredible talent.  It can imagine things that have not happened.  It can paint pictures of things that don't exist.  It can project multiple scenarios into the future and predict (although not necessarily accurately) what could occur.  This ability is powerful.  It is how we invented.  It is how we made vaccines.  It is how we put men on the moon.  The mind's ability to imagine is how we created the modern world.  It can be and has been a powerful force for the good of the human race.  It can also be a force that hurts us.  Our imaginations can make us fear change (perhaps the reason people get cold feet before their weddings).  It can make us imagine the worst-case scenario and then dwell on it when it is not yet a reality (and may not become reality).  How many times have we anticipated something terrible and then found it not to be so bad when the thing we feared actually happened.  Because next year is filled with unknowns, our imaginations are filling in the blanks.  There's no way to stop that; it's what the brain naturally does.  While we can't stop it, we can remind ourselves that what we have imagined is not real.  It is likely that some parts of it will happen but it is unlikely that all parts of it will.  Let's thank our brains for preparing us for the worst but also recognize that the worst scenario is rarely the most likely scenario.

I teach my students about neurotransmitters and their role in our emotions.  I take some of the romance out of attraction, but I think it matters to say feelings are temporary responses to stimuli.  Feelings are valid, but they are not a foundation on which to make decisions.  Take them into account, but don't let them overpower what you know.  Remember that God is faithful and trustworthy, and honor him with your actions.

My principal reads this passage to us 5-10 times a year, and it is helpful, so I will end with it.  If you are a person of faith, I hope you find it encouraging.

        Psalm 127:1-2

Unless the Lord builds the house,

    those who build it labor in vain.

Unless the Lord watches over the city,

    the watchman stays awake in vain.

 

It is in vain that you rise up early

    and go late to rest,

eating the bread of anxious toil;

    for he gives to his beloved sleep.