Lessons in Working Memory Challenges

Last week, I got an unplanned lesson in the challenges of working memory overload.  

The instructor for the weight lifting class my friend and I regularly take was out of town, and the substitute he had that night is not my cup of tea.  We decided that, instead of taking a class, we would work out on side by side treadmills.  She's training for a marathon, so she would be able to run while I walked and experimented with inclines.

Now, the Y has some fancy treadmills with fans and touchscreens that allow you to access Netflix, TV, even Facebook and Twitter.  Then, I noticed you could play Solitaire.  I thought, "that might make for an interesting distraction."  

Well, I was right, it was a distraction.  It was also the most difficult game of Solitaire I have ever played.  I said to my friend, "This is like a cognitive test where they put you under some kind of stress and see if you can still complete a task."  The combination of pain in my glutes from the incline, difficulty keeping pace from a constant elevated speed, and leaning in to move the cards on the screen made for a working memory overload like I haven't experienced in quite some time.

Then end result was that I didn't do either the workout or the game very well.  While I was quite sore the next day, it wouldn't make for a very efficient workout on a regular basis.  And the game, well, I wasn't going to be winning any championships there either.  

This got me thinking about teachers I have seen (and been) trying to get kids to do two things at the same time.  It may seem like playing a video while kids work on a paper will be helpful, but the reality is that they won't get much out of the video, and they won't give you their best work on a paper.  I have found that students working on a paper in a quiet study hall still don't get much done because there people next to them for a task that really requires focused alone time.  

One of the things that was most difficult for me during the hybrid year of the pandemic was working memory overload. In the beginning, I would reach cognitive load by 8AM because of the multitude of unfamiliar procedures in using technology to both broadcast my classroom to those at home and show what needed to be shown to those in the room.  While that got easier with time and practice, I was still dividing my working memory between those on the screen and those physically in front of me.  It's why this model, while needed at the time, was unsustainable for future years.  You just cannot maintain a split focus and do either thing particularly well.  

As the great Ron Swanson said to Leslie Knope, "Don't half-ass two things. Whole-ass one thing."

This week, I got two more lessons, this time from tests.  I was helping out in a room where kids with accommodations take their exams.  Some of them are not required to fill in the scan card, so the adults in the room transfer their answers from the test to the card.  As I was doing that, I encountered a matching section with 10 options.  You may know that the scancard only has A through E, so there were also choices labeled AA (which is not possible to bubble on a scan card), AB, AC, AD, and AE.  

This was hard for me to fill in, and all I was doing was transferring their answers.  I was not a kid under stress, attempting to go back and forth between the test and the card while making sure to fill in both A and C on the same line.  I kept thinking, "How hard would it have been to have two matching sections with A through E on both of them?"  

The answer is that it wouldn't have been hard.  This teacher just didn't think of that.  

Another exam was made using College Board questions for an AP test, and this is not the fault of the teacher.  When a teacher chooses questions from AP Classroom, the formatting is preset and unalterable.  This results in images that take up a full page.  While that might sound nice, it means that the question the student is answering is on a different page than the source they must reference to answer it.  It also often meant having a question on the bottom of the page with the answer choices on the top of the next page (and depending on how it was printed, the student might have to flip the page over to get to the choices.  Again, I was having difficulty, and all I was asked to do was transfer the answers from the test to the scan sheet.  

College Board, it is almost 2025, and you make gajillions of dollars!  How about investing some of it in giving the teacher edit ability over their tests rather than dumping it all into AI grading?  It will cost less, give teachers more agency, and not result in a working memory nightmare for students.  (Not to mention it would slow the progression of AI making us less human, which we will regret but refuse to see because convenience is our national religion.  Okay, anti AI rant over for the moment.)

When we start approaching students with working memory in mind, we do things differently.  

• We intentionally stop talking when we want them to concentrate on solving a problem.  
• We don't put something on the screen while we are saying the same thing out loud. We put them up separately.
• We don't expect them to remember multi-step instructions and carry them out simultaneously. We put the instructions on the board or on a paper handout.
• We don't put an un-needed image on our slides just to have an image (or gifs that repeatedly take up space in their brains).  We do put helpful images that make our point clearer.
• We do give appropriate wait time between asking a question an expecting an answer.
• We format tests (when we have the ability to) in such a way that the student doesn't have to switch his focus back and forth between question, choices, and resources.
• And we, in the name of all that is holy, do not put more than 5 options in a matching section when they are expected to fill out a 5 space scantron.

If you have been guilty of this (and Lord knows, I HAVE BEEN), a new semester is upon you.  This isn't about shame.  You know better now, so you can do better now.  Put the past behind you and forge ahead with working memory challenges in mind.

Say to yourself, "I will not ask my students to walk quickly up a hill while playing a game of solitaire."

Transitions are Exhausting

Warning:  I'm in a very emotional place as I'm working through some personal stuff, so expect this to be a self-indulgent post with a lot of rambling.

If you are a parent of school-aged kids, you have probably had the experience of your child falling asleep in the car on the way home from school during the first week.  You probably assume it is because they are getting up earlier than they did in the summer, and that is partly true.  But there is another reason.  Learning new things takes a lot of energy.  

I used to notice that I was especially hungry on days when I taught something difficult.  People laughed at me when I said that.  Then, I found data to vindicate me.  While some processes in the body burn fat or protein in addition to carbohydrates, the brain burns only glucose, and when it is especially active, it burns a lot of it).  So a hard exam or learning activity can drop blood sugar, making the learner tired and hungry.

I've spent this week learning - all day, every day, everything I did.  I've started a new job at the YMCA, and learning the computer system is as overwhelming as trying to get a drink of water from an open fire hydrant.  In addition to the energy drain of all this brain work, I have also had the emotional impact of leaving my 25 year teaching career, where I was supremely confident in my abilities, to doing nearly everything wrong for a week because I was doing it for the first time.  I think I have clocked in and out correctly exactly one time.  Once, I even answered the phone with the name of the wrong branch.  Even though everyone has been very kind and understanding (can I keep using "It's my first week" as an excuse for the next five years?), it has been . . . a lot.  At the end of a shift, even if it was only five hours, I was exhausted and hungry.  

There's also changing email addresses, phone numbers, and passwords on literally everything I do online.  I didn't realize how many things my email address was attached to.  The refurbished laptop I bought online has about 400 kernel panics a day, requiring a reboot every time, sometimes four times in one paragraph of writing (although that has helped me get used to my new password, for sure).  I now understand why my middle and high school students wanted to eat all day long.

I knew this transition would be emotionally difficult, but I'm not sure I was prepared for just how difficult.  Do you know the Neil Diamond song, "I Am I Said"?  It's about his move from New York to Los Angeles at the start of his music career.  There's a line in it that resonates with me right now.  It goes, "LA's fine, but it ain't home.  New York's home, but it ain't mine no more."  I am really looking forward to making the Y my home, but it isn't just yet.  GRACE is home, but when I got on GroupMe this morning to report a problem to the Cycle Instructors group and saw that I had been removed from the GRACE groups, it hit me hard that it really means I don't work there anymore.

I wanted to work at the Y because I want to be part of their mission and to help people.  I don't yet have the feeling that I am doing that.  And, of course I don't; it has only been a week.  Even though my role is problem solving, I don't yet know how what problems there are, much less how to solve them.  In my brain, I know that I will have that sense eventually and that this is just my entry into this mission and that every job is necessary for the place to function, but after several weeks of students and colleagues telling me how meaningful my work as a teacher was, I am experiencing emotional whiplash as I understand that I will have to rebuild that in my journey at the Y.  When I broke my iPod this morning on the way out of the house, I sat in the car and cried for a few minutes before ordering a replacement I wasn't expecting to spend money on.

But God is good y'all.  He gives me little reassurances when I need them.  This week, there have been a couple.  On Friday, I was subbing for a cycle class and saw that my boss was on the roster to observe.  That made me pretty nervous because I've only taught five classes.  She's a super positive person that says things like, "You're gonna crush it," but there is never way to not be nervous when you are being evaluated.  As I arrived and changed into my cycle shoes, I noticed that someone had put one of the scripture slips from the bowl on top of the sound system.  I unfolded it and found this.

You probably cannot read it, but it says, "Isaiah 41:10 - So do not fear, for I am with you; do not be dismayed, for I am your God.  I will strengthen you and help you; I will uphold you with my righteous right hand."  I stuck it in my pocket next to the microphone pack and reminded myself of it throughout the class.

My friend, Kevin Washburn, recently published a book on resilience, called Uprise: Building Resilience in Ourselves and Others.  I bought it because I love Kevin and wanted to support him, but I honestly didn't expect to find things that spoke to me because I already considered myself a fairly resilient person.  I had started it a couple of weeks ago and then had to pause to read a different book because of a study we are doing at church this Monday night.  Today was the first time I had a chance to pick Uprise up again.  And even the pause in reading this was God-ordained.  He wanted to me to read pages 49-51 after this week of training.  On page 49, I found these words - "Mastery, where we can perform a skill without thinking, takes time to develop.  First, we establish accuracy; then we build efficiency.  That's why patience is a critical component of the learning mindset. First attempts require feedback and adjustment before additional tries increase accuracy.  This is true especially when trying something new."  It's not like I didn't know this.  I have even taught about it to others when presenting on retrieval practice and formative assessment.  But somehow, seeing it on a page in black and white made it feel more real.  While neither of these moments have prevented me from feeling all of the feelings I described above, they reminded me of how much difference it makes to trust God and how he designed learning as I move forward.  

This blog is supposed to be about education, so let me give this piece of advice to teachers.  If you want to empathize with your students who are learning and making mistakes, try something new and difficult this summer.  Pick something you are likely to be really bad at in the beginning.  Analyze your own frustration in learning needlepoint or basketball or poetry, whatever pushes you out of your comfort zone.  When school starts back in the fall, you will better understand students, model the learning process for them, and be able to tell them how you overcame obstacles.

Now, I need to post this quickly before my computer reboots again.

Fun and Easy are Not Synonyms

There are two classes that I take at the YMCA with the same instructor, Matt.  (I have a lot of great fitness instructors that I like very much; but Matt is the best, and everyone should take his classes.)  One is called Group Power.  It is a weightlifting class.  I love it, but it is a challenging class for someone with little strength and zero balance. The other is Cardio Kickboxing, an energetic class with fun music and dance-y moves where I grin from ear to ear and never once look up at the clock.  For reasons that are beyond me, the difficult class is highly attended every week, and the fun class often only draws eight or nine people.  This week, I expressed my confusion about that to Matt.  Halfway through Kickboxing, he said, "Twenty-five minutes ago, you said this was the fun class.  Do you still feel that way?"  Well, yes, I had been jabbing and uppercutting and kicking and laughing at Matt and having a great time while dripping sweat.  Then, he said, "Let's show her it's not the fun class."  But it still was.  Sorry, Matt, it is fun, and there is nothing you can do about it.

I think what Matt heard was "Group power is hard, and Kickboxing is easy," but that is not what I said.  I said that Kickboxing is fun, so I don't know why its attendance is lower.  It is fun, but it is definitely not easy.

Here's the thing. Fun and easy are not the same.  I googled synonyms for fun, and the word easy is not on the list.

While I have never heard or read the word "clubbable" and have never used the word "convivial," I would definitely use the rest of those words to describe the Kickboxing class.  It is lively, amusing, and enjoyable; it is the highlight of my week.  I would never describe it with any of these synonyms for the word easy.

Being a cognitive science nerd, I can't help but see it everywhere now, even in a conversation like this.  The difference between easy and fun is an important thing when it comes to student motivation.  On Thursday, I read a summary of the Robert and Elizabeth Bjork study, from which they coined the term "desirable difficulty."  They found that there is a sweet spot when it comes to learning and motivation.  If a task is too difficult, students give up.  But if it is too easy, they get bored and stop paying attention.  

Wordle didn't take over the internet last year because it was easy, but people loved it because it was at a doable level of challenge, making it fun.  The same can be said for Sudoku, crossword puzzles, and challenging video game levels.  Enjoyment comes from challenge, and so does learning.  Our memories chuck out things that are too easy to learn.  If you don't put effort into thinking about it, you won't remember it (which is good - this is what prevents our brains from being overloaded with too many memories, like what every person you know wore yesterday and what you ate four days ago).  Teachers, recognizing this should help us construct learning activities that lie in the desirable range.  Students should have to think about concepts or dig into their memory for answers.  They should be getting some things wrong, or we haven't calibrated the level correctly.  There is nothing satisfying about accomplishing something that was too simple and easy, and learning will not result.

Yesterday, I gave Matt a heads-up that he would be making an appearance on this blog.  During that conversation, he suggested that the reason challenging things are fun is because of the endorphin release.  While I had connected that to physical training, that conversation was the first it had occurred to me to apply it to academic work as well.  Perhaps solving a difficult math problem or writing a high-quality essay releases endorphins as well.  I'll need to dig into Google Scholar to see if there is any research on this, but shout out to Matt for getting me to think about its academic implications.

It is important that we explicitly relate this to students so they will be more willing to take on challenges.  In spite of the motivation of challenge, we still have to overcome inertia to get started, so it can be helpful to have examples of the joy of meeting a challenge.  I do this in "pep talks," of course, but I like it better when it comes up naturally in the curriculum.  When I teach 8th graders about the Apollo era, one of the things I show them is JFK's "We choose to go to the moon" speech, part of a 1961 address at Rice University.  This is at the heart of that speech:

"But why, some say, the moon? Why choose this as our goal? And they may well ask why climb the highest mountain? Why, 35 years ago, fly the Atlantic? Why does Rice play Texas? 

We choose to go to the moon. We choose to go to the moon in this decade and do the other things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard, because that goal will serve to organize and measure the best of our energies and skills, because that challenge is one that we are willing to accept, one we are unwilling to postpone, and one which we intend to win, and the others, too."

I love talking to students about this speech because they don't hear talk like this.  For sure, we aren't hearing it from politicians these days; they want to sell us on the idea that their solution to problems is easy, and no one ever has to sacrifice anything.  Students have access to a million technologies whose purpose is to make things easier.  Some of their parents email coaches and teachers to complain if they are being challenged.  Athletic coaches may be the only people truly encouraging them to do hard things on a consistent basis, but even then, I don't know if they are telling their players that the difficulty is, in fact, the point.  Yet, athletes know they feel more satisfaction when they beat a difficult team than they do when they win against the weakest team in the conference.

Nothing worth doing is easy, and it is important that our students know that.  Teachers, we are the people best positioned for showing them that day in and day out.  It's important that we model it by taking on challenges in our own lives, but I don't think they will draw the conclusion for themselves, so we should also take every chance we can to make it explicit.

Group Power is hard.  Spin classes are hard.  Boot camp is hard.  Cardio Kickboxing is hard (but it is also fun).  But with all of them, the hard is the point.  It's why I joined the Y in the first place.  After all, I was not pushing myself at home for free.  I wanted to be challenged, and that is, thankfully, what is happening.  Thank you to Matt, Stacey, Jay, Greg, and Liz for never making it easy.  Learning to read is hard.  Long division is hard.  Analysis of literature is hard.  The syntax of a foreign language is hard.  But the hard is the point.  It's why we go to school.  We want to learn the things we couldn't have learned on our own at home.

I'll end with one more quote, this one from Penny Marshall's masterpiece A League of Their Own.  

Speaking of making this concept explicit, our chemistry teacher has this quote framed and hanging by her classroom door, so students who have just finished a hard class can read it on their way out and remember that was the point.

Try New Things

I didn't plan for it to be, but this week inadvertently became the week of trying new things.  Monday's was actually planned.  I've been taking spin classes since March, but until this week, I had not tried peddling while standing up.  Tuesday, my spin instructor was out and had a sub who isn't my cup of tea, so I took a class called Group Power, which is a weightlifting class.  Wednesday, I had dinner with friends at a restaurant I had been curious about for years.  That's when I realized what this week had become, so I had to try and think of things that were new (a few things related to the senior prank and buying things from Dick's Sporting Goods - If I had been planning it, I could have done better.).

People are often resistant to trying new things.  It can be scary because you don't know what to expect or because you risk failure.  Students resist it because they worry they will embarrass themselves.  And sometimes, you do fail.  Sometimes, you do embarrass yourself.  But sometimes, you find a source of joy you didn't previously know. I will be taking Group Power every week now because it turned out I was better at it than I thought I would be (to be fair, I thought I would be atrocious, so it wasn't hard to be better than that).  I can't wait to take people to the restaurant I went to because it was delicious.  I will try to stand up more while peddling because it works different muscles than seated peddling does.

Students think they already know what they like and often don't think they need to try anything else.  When I encourage them to take art, they will sometimes say they aren't good at it.  It seems odd to them to think you could enjoy something even if you aren't good at it.  They have trouble believing they could get better at it.  They can't imagine that there are things they do not know and don't believe me when I say I regret that I didn't take art and that I would take Latin if I could go back to school and do it over.  By their middle school years, they have bought into the idea that they should only have to learn things that will get them a job, and since I teach physics, they don't understand how I might want those other things in my life.  By the way, I didn't know I liked physics until I took it in my senior year either, so even that thing that became my job was a new thing to me at one point.

I recently wrote a scholarship recommendation letter for one of my juniors.  I made a lot of observations about her in that letter, but the one I spent the most time on was how much I admire her willingness to take on new challenges.  She started acting in middle school and joined the swim team as a sophomore just to try something new.  I wish this quality weren't so rare.

If you are an adult in the life of a child (whether that is a parent, a teacher, a coach, or a camp counselor), please encourage them to try new things - new foods, new sports, new musical instruments, new classes, new friendships.  You may help them find a career, but you may just increase the amount of joy they have in their lives.

We Did What?

At our senior dinner last week, our college counselor described what our current seniors had experienced since the start of their freshman year.  This, of course, included both the lockdown spring and the hybrid year.  As she described it, I had a sort of out-of-body experience.  While I know we did those things, I can't quite connect to them.  I turned to the person next to me and said, "How did we do that?"  

While lockdown and hybrid were certainly the biggest an most unexpected things we have ever done, the truth is that my teaching career has been full of things I would not have imagined before they happened.  

I've had to deal with a student having a grand mal seizure.  I've taught during a shooting threat.  I witnessed a fight in the cafeteria. I had a student take me shopping for jeans (a different time -  I wouldn't do that now).  I sponsored multiple clubs, organizing trips and judges and events.  All of that was before I turned 25, and none of them are things I would have imagined before the age of 20.

The year I taught in Wake County is a bit of blur, but the defining moment was when the principal came in to tell me about 9/11.  Who could have imagined the country could be attacked at 9:30 in the morning, and teachers would continue to teach until 3 in the afternoon?  All day, I had to make decisions about how to deal with this unfolding story as bells rang and new groups of kids came into my room.  Should we watch the coverage because it is historic, or is it bad for their brains to soak in it all day?  These aren't decisions a teacher thinks they will have to make when they choose this profession at the age of 18.

I've been at my current school for 20 years, and occasionally I say to the teacher next door to me (we came the same year), "Man, we have seen a lot."  And, as is becoming the pattern, most of the things we have seen were things we weren't prepared for.  We've been part of new building projects, hiring new people, taught subjects we've ever taught before (algebra, health, and video editing were not in my mind ever), and growing our programs.  We've guided students through grief while dealing with our own.  We've put out fires (both metaphorical and literal).  We've learned to teach in new ways year after year, written textbooks, made videos, adapted to schedule changes, collaborated with other teachers, and dealt with three accreditation cycles.  When I imagined my teaching career as a college student, I pictured planning and teaching lessons and grading tests.  The rest of that wasn't something I had even considered.

As I distribute my 18th and final yearbook on Friday, I look back and can't quite imagine that there have been 18 of them.  Part of me still feels like I am new to the job and don't know what I'm doing.  When I took a job teaching science at GRACE 20 years ago, I could not have envisioned that one day, I'd be carting around 1280 pounds of books.  I'm getting ahead of myself because that is next week's post, so I'll stop now.

My point is this.  It's a good thing we don't know what is coming.  We would believe it wasn't possible to do things we've never done before and have trouble even imagining.  But afterward, we can look back on it and say, "We did what?" and "Yes, we did that."

Alumni Visits

I'm pretty tired from yearbook distributions and exam prep this week, so this one will be short.

This time of year, colleges are getting out for the summer while high schools are still finishing up.  At GRACE, that means one of our favorite things, visits from alumni (we missed these so much last year when visitors weren't allowed in the building).  In the past two weeks, I've had hallway chats or long conversations with students who graduated last year, graduated in lockdown, or graduated so long ago that they are now graduating college.  In some ways, these conversations are all the same.  "What classes did you take this year?  What are your plans?  Do you feel like you were well prepared?"  Yet, each conversation is different because each student is different.  One boy has changed his major because he realized his hobby would stop being enjoyable if he tried to make a living at it.  One girl has changed her mind five or six times and may be in college a couple of extra years.  One girl found her passion early and stuck with it.  Some are still searching because their first year of college wasn't exactly normal.  

What they all had in common was a sense of joy in talking to us, their high school teachers, about what they are doing now.  They understand that we meant what we wrote in their yearbooks - that we want to know how they are doing.  We are invested in the adults they are becoming, and they remember that enough to spend some of their free time coming to their old school building to talk to us.  We don't take that for granted because most of us did not return to our schools to visit.  I think I went one time, but it was to talk to one specific teacher, but some of these students spend hours traveling down the hall, stopping into room after room and return if one of the teachers they wanted to talk to wasn't there when they stopped by.

When I'm having a tough day with students, I find it helpful to think of them as half-baked (in the sense that they aren't done maturing yet).  No one would eat a cake halfway through the bake time because that would be gross.  This is true with kids too.  They are not yet who they will become, so it isn't fair to judge them when the process isn't complete.  These visits show who they are farther into the process, and they are a good reminder to have a broader view of students.  

Feedback- Part 1 - "I've Got You"

In all of John Almarode's presentations, he talks about feedback.  No matter what else he has talked about, he says, "All of this is meaningless without feedback."  He also makes the points that feedback is about helping a student to improve.  In his Almarodian way (I'm coining that right now), he says, "Feedback should not be, 'I've Gotcha.'  It should be 'I've got you.'"

Each year, I spend a ton of time giving feedback to my 8th-grade students, and I try hard to keep this idea in mind (not that I ever had a gotcha mentality before, but I am trying harder to be really intentional about keeping feedback focused on making the product better).  The opportunity to practice this most comes from the NASA paper that I've written about before. (Actually, when I wrote about it before, it was the Mars Paper.  Sometime, I should write about that change.  Keep an eye out.)

Here's the gist of the assignment.  Students are told to inhabit the role of a NASA administrator and determine the top three priorities that NASA should invest in.  They are given time to explore the NASA website to see what they are already doing, and our media specialist comes into the classroom twice, to talk about good research and to talk about proper citations. 

The first thing that was due was their thesis.  Now, remember, they are in 8th grade, so I am not expecting super-sophisticated and nuanced writing.  I'm fine with it if they want to fill in a sort of formulaic "NASA should invest in ________, ___________, and __________."  I had them send them to me in email so that feedback could be returned as quickly as possible. 

The majority of the feedback fell into three categories:
- not reading the instructions
- choosing a priority that is impossible to support (using black holes as garbage dumps)
- missing the point of the assignment

How I give feedback is determined by the error itself.  A student who has not read the instructions is going to get different feedback than the student who is just misunderstanding them.  

- Quote the instructions - Those who have not followed the instructions will get a reply that quotes the rubric and refers them back to it.  I word it politely, but it usually says something like, "Remember, you were asked to . . . "

- Ask them to think closer to the box - Don't get me wrong; I like creative thinking.  There are, however, ideas that are too out there to find support.  Their feedback usually sounds something like, "Points one and three are fine.  Do you think you will find an expert who says the same thing you are saying to support point two?  If not, you might want to choose something more doable."  

- Giving my own example - I struggle with this one because I have found that students just put what I said, and I don't want to do their thinking for them.  

Feedback takes time, but it is time well invested.  This year, I got better papers on the whole than I have gotten in most years.  I wish it were possible to give thorough feedback on every assignment.  It isn't.  The complexities of the pandemic have made strong feedback more difficult (more on that next week).  It requires a lot of work in a time when we are exhausted.  But it matters.  It matters more than the grade because it builds your relationship with the students.  Start increasing it on the big things as you can, and keep in mind that you are communicated "I've got you."

Just For Two

As a yearbook photographer, I am accustomed to documenting great experiences.  From homecoming dances to sports, I have been privileged to record some of the happiest and most meaningful school events.  As an RFK camp photographer, I recognize the meaning of sending kids home with a record of their positive memories. This weekend, I documented an amazing experience.  It was amazing, not because of its large scope, but because of its small scope.  Twenty masked adults came together to create a camp experience for TWO campers.  

This Week's RFK Staff

For those who are not regular readers of this blog, let me back up and explain RFK.  Royal Family Kids, Inc. is an international organization that provides summer camp for abused and neglected children using volunteers that have been trained to meet their needs and create life-changing moments and positive memories.  Normally, this is a five day overnight camp.  Adults arrive on Sunday and transform a basic campground into a vibrant and welcoming place for kids literally overnight.  With bright and happy cabins, a pretty elaborate theatrical stage, a beautifully decorated dining hall, a highly productive woodworking station, and, of course, a fully outfitted pool, nearly 40 kids arrive on a bus to be welcomed by an enthusiastic group of adults that are thrilled to see them.  That enthusiasm is maintained until we say goodbye to them on Friday.

As with all things, COVID-19 prevented us from having anything resembling normal camp.  Our directors tried to create a plan, but there was just no way to make it work with proper distance, and I cannot imagine masks all day outside for five days in mid-July.  Most camps sent kids gifts and notes, calling it "camp in a box," but our directors wanted more for our kids.  They wanted them to have social interaction during this isolating time.  So, they created a "camp experience" for three hours on three Saturdays, allowing campers' parents to choose which location worked for them (as our kids are spread out all over Eastern NC).  The first week, we had 22 kids signed up, but by the time the event came, we were down to 13 due to symptoms or exposure.  Those 13 had a ball, building a wooden crate, hydro dipping cups, playing field games, singing camp songs, learning Romans 8:39, and receiving medals and birthday gifts.  

This week, we were supposed to have 6 kids, but by Thursday, we had heard from four who couldn't come.  We put on the exact same camp experience for them that we had for the 13 last week.  There were 22 people at this event, only two of which were our campers.

I don't know if those two boys went home yesterday saying, "Twenty adults loved me enough to put on the camp just for me."  I hope, in 2030, when we are all looking back on this time, that might be an insight they have.  I hope the photo album they will receive in a few weeks will send that message to them every day.

It's been a few weeks since this education blog was actually about education, so let me make a connection.  School will be starting again in just under a month.  Depending on where you live, some schools will be fully online while others will open partially in person.  Either way, students are going to look to their teachers for tone.  They are going to see us do hard things, whether that is trying to figure out how to form relationships online at the beginning of the school year with kids you've never met or figuring out how to teach your in-person class while also involving those you are streaming to at home.  They are going to watch us work harder than we have ever worked before to do things in ways we have never done them before.  We are going to model learning in ways we could have never imagined before this year.  What I hope they feel from all of that is, "Wow, these people care about me enough to work this hard."  I hope they will recognize how much education matters.  I hope, when they are looking back on this time as adults many years from now, they will say to their children, "You have no idea how much teachers love their students.  I experienced it in 2020."  

Student Insight

I need to write about something that is NOT the Coronavirus.  Take a breather, and let me tell you a story about my physics students.

In my honors physics class, we read the book The Pleasure of Finding Things Out, a collection of speeches and essays by renowned physicist (and somewhat cult-figure) Richard Feynman.  When we started doing this, I decided on two things.

1. I didn't want to ask them factual questions about the book.  Rather, I wanted them to reflect on how some of the book's themes play out in the 21st century. 
2. I wanted these conversations to be public, so we use Twitter chats to hold our discussions.  With Feynman being such a well-known figure, I hoped that people would stumble upon the discussion and join in.  That's only happened once so far.  Because the questions aren't just about science, some of my colleagues have joined in, responding sporadically to insights about ethics or learning.

Some of the discoveries I have made as a result of doing this were planned.  Others were accidental.  I knew that if I asked the right questions, I could get deep reflection and insight from my juniors and seniors.  Some examples

• I gave them the Oppenheimer quote ""I am become death, the destroyer of worlds." Then, I asked, "Do you think he was overly dramatic, or was this the correct response?" There were some who interpreted it from a very 2020 perspective, feeling like he was fishing for people to tell him he was wrong. Others said they would have felt the same way, knowing they had invented something so destructive. Others pointed out that Feynman and many of his colleagues entered deep depression after the bomb was used.
• There is a story in the book where Richard Feynman is sent to Chicago to gather information but is not allowed to talk about his Top Secret work and was instructed to lie. I asked, "When he was sent to Chicago, he was instructed to lie in order to get information from people. This atheist said his conscience bothered him. What do you think of that?" While I expected their answers to discuss the ethics of lying and whether it is every okay. (Rahab lied to protect the spies and is praised in Scripture.  Christians lied to Nazis about the Jews they were hiding in their basements.)  I didn't expect an answer that led to the philosophical question of whether we, as humans, have a universal sense of right and wrong.
• Our discussion on the pros and cons of nanotechnology is too long to write about here, but it was quite interesting.
• Last week, I asked "Feynman says, “The imagination of nature is far, far greater than the imagination of man.” He gives a gravity example. What is something in nature that you find astounding because you could not have imagined it?"  I got answers ranging from Yosemite's cliffs to Auroras to snow hanging from tree branches to sunrises. One said that he couldn't wrap his mind around the massive nature of outer space.  One student even said golf courses and clarified that while they were man-made, they "derive their richness from what is already there on the land."
• I also posted, "Feynman observes that a roaring ocean is made of tiny particles all following patterns. How has God made it so that individuals (whether atoms or people) cause a massive outcome no one of them could on their own?"  Answers ranged from blood cells to armies to the wind.  

I didn't expect these exact answers, but I did expect that, if I posed the right questions, I could get deep thought.  What I stumbled upon was that it is a way to make connections on a non-academic level.

• The boy who provided the answer about Yosemite talks about Yosemite a lot.  He's a rock climber, and once he visited Yosemite, it became his dream to climb El Capitan.  I've learned a lot about climbing from him, and, while I'll never climb a rock, I love national parks so we have a basis to share.
• In the first chat we have, I post, "When Feynman describes how molecules make a catastrophe called fire, he is so joyful. Is there any learning that makes you feel joyful like that?"  My intent was that they connect the rest of what Feynman has to say to something they like (because, let's face it, they don't all have a consuming passion for physics).  What I realized the first year while grading these was that I now had a list of my students' passions.  Since physics relates to absolutely everything, I make a list and try to connect practice problems or concept illustrations to the things they love.  This is, of course, easier if they are passionate about cars, golf, or exotic animals than it is if they are interested in politics or economics.

In the past few years, I have found much joy in asking my students open-ended questions, in which the point is less about getting a "right" answer than an interesting train of thought.  What I most love asking is "What's your favorite . . .?  Explain why."  It could be about their favorite thing they have learned in this chapter or what they think is the most interesting thing about the human ear or who their favorite scientist is.  The answers they give to those questions are longer, more interesting, more amusing, and filled with far more information than the answers they give to the standard "explain how this works" questions (I do still ask those when needed because it doesn't make sense to ask them what their favorite thing is about how boats float or what's the most important part of the breathing process).  I find it even more valuable to do this with middle school students because it stretches them past memorizing in a way that doesn't seem scary.  (What 8th grader doesn't want to talk about their favorite things?)

Teachers, I know it can't be every question on every assignment, but try to find ways to allow your students to show their insight, not just their learning.  Even if it is only one question per chapter test, you will find great joy in grading them. 

(And, if I can make just one Coronavirus reference, during these next few weeks when we are all teaching online, these are ways to assess learning at a distance in a way that isn't possible to cheat.)

Expecting Perfection Does Not Lead to Perfection

Imagine the following fictional parent-teacher conference. (I promise it is fictional.  It does not represent anyone I have recently met with.)

Teacher:  Hello, Jenny's mom.  Jenny is a delight to have in class.  I really enjoy teaching her.
Jenny's mom:  Thanks.  Let's talk about her grade.
Teacher:  She's doing well.  She asks great questions in class and has given some very insightful answers on her tests.
Jenny's mom:  That's good, but her grade is a B.
Teacher:  Yes, I'm really happy to see how much she improved between her first and second tests.  She's getting better at analytical thinking, which takes some time to develop at this age.  That B+ is great.
Jenny's mom:  In our house, a B is not acceptable.
Teacher:  If she keeps improving at the rate she is, it will be an A in no time.
Jenny's mom:  I think we'll hire a tutor and take her phone until it comes up.  On another note, she has anxiety.  What is the school doing to help her with that?

While this conversation is fictional, I know there are some of you who will recognize parts of it.  There is frequently a disconnect between the teacher's viewpoint of success and a parents.  It sometimes works the other way too, with a parent believing their child cannot do better and the teacher believing they can, but that's a topic for another post.

Sometimes, we see this start very young.  We've all been at a children's soccer game in which a parent is "coaching" from the sidelines, losing their mind over a missed goal and screaming at the ref or coach for a perceived injustice.  We all roll our eyes at that parent and inwardly tell them off in our minds.  "They're five-year-olds, lady.  Stop screaming or squeeze into a uniform and go show them how to do it."  That parent is only going to get more anxious when the stakes are raised, which might be how we ended up with the moms who felt comfortable photoshopping their kids into athletic photos and paying for SAT scores in order to get their kids into Stanford.  It's also what leads some kids to cheat in order to get the grade their parent expects from them.

As adults, we know that we are good at some things and just okay at others.  We even allow for the fact that we aren't good at a few things and are happy with ourselves (and our friends) when we improve a little at those things.  In our kids, however, we seem to think that they must perform at the same level of mastery on everything they do.  In my career, I've met only a handful of kids who don't seem to have a weakness, those who are good at science and math, eloquent writers, creative artists, and able to sing and play instruments.  They are exceptions.  The vast majority of my students have been particularly great at some things and pretty average in other things.  One of the most dyslexic students I ever taught struggled greatly with algebra because letters and numbers were hard enough separately.  She fought valiantly just to pass, but she was a gifted artist who now owns a graphic design business.  I have had students who struggle academically but are gifted with an extra dose of kindness and empathy.  I have met some incredible scientists who have trouble writing a coherent sentence.  They work to improve so that they can communicate clearly, but they aren't going to write the great American novel.

When we demand students get straight As, we are asking them to be equally good at everything they try, something we would never ask of ourselves or another adult.  We tell our students that they must be captain of an athletic team, leader of a service organization, perform well on the SAT (despite knowing that the research shows no correlation between SAT scores and college success), get 4s and 5s on AP tests . . .  It's no wonder we are experiencing anxiety at unprecedented levels (even more than during times of world wars).  We are telling students that anything less than perfection is unacceptable. 

Successful people are not perfect.  You know why?  No one is.  Most successful people did not make perfect grades.  If they did, they were not being properly challenged by their teachers.  Most are not equally gifted in a hundred different skills.  They tend to be specialists in one thing.

Successful people are learners.  They are people who grow.  If they encounter something they don't know how to do, they put in the work to learn how rather than complaining that they weren't taught it during high school.  If we recognized that our kids have strengths and weakness and celebrated their growth rather than expecting perfection, our kids would have less anxiety; and we would ultimately raise better adults.

Be The Adult

This week, my school had parent-teacher conferences.  Like everything else in teaching, there is a wide spectrum of experience, from "my daughter thinks you are just the best" to "my daughter thinks you are mean" and everything in between. 

There is one that has stuck with me this year.  As I spoke with the parents, I said, "I wish he realized we are on the same side."  They went home and spoke to him, resulting in my receiving an email apology.  I replied with forgiveness and told him the same thing.  "I hope you know that we are on the same side."  As I have thought about it, I'm pretty sure I've not been acting that way.  Tomorrow, I will apologize to him because we have both been acting like middle school students.  That's age appropriate for him, but it isn't for me.

As a middle and high school teacher, I spend most of my time around (surprise) middle and high school students. That can result in being a bit embarrassed around adults as I laugh at things middle schoolers would laugh at.  It can result in my knowing things I really wish I didn't know but have to - like some of the text abbreviations.  It sometimes results in becoming a little more snarky than is appropriate simply because I am surrounded by the masters of the art.  When that happens, it is important to recognize it and correct it.

I know you know this, but there is no such thing as a perfect teacher.  Even those teachers that I hold in such high esteem that it is just shy of idolatry are fallible human beings.  We are going to make mistakes, and we are going to sin.  What's important is to own up to those mistakes and sins, not sweep them under the rug and hope no one notices.  The students will notice them.  More importantly, they will notice how we respond to them.  We should admit our wrongs, apologize for them, and do whatever we can to make them right.

In an age where adults spout off their anger on social media, talk about their dependence on wine like it is normal and not a reason to attend a meeting, deal with their stress by coloring, and talk about "self-care" like it is a virtue, our kids don't see adult behavior modeled very often.  Teachers, we are there to teach more than math, history, and science.  We are also role-models, and we simply must act like it.

Be the adult in the room.  They need it.

Do Your Methods Match Your Mission?

Last year, I did a whole series of posts on my school's mission statement.  All schools have a mission statement.  All churches have a mission statement.  All businesses have a mission statement.  At this point in America, I think it is possible that all individuals have a mission statement.  As a reminder, the mission statement of GRACE Christian is

"GRACE Christian School is a loving community that spiritually and academically equips, challenges, and inspires students to impact their world for Christ."

Mission statements are good to have and to put on t-shirts and coffee mugs, but what is more important is to use your mission statement as a filter.  Do you take the time to ask yourself whether your goals, objectives, or even methods align with your mission statement?  I think most of us are good at making goals from it, but I'm not sure that most people filter our methods through it.

I confess that it took me until last year to ask myself that question.  I knew our school's mission statement and I was fully committed to it, but I don't know that I intentionally constructed my classes around it.  So last year, after deciding to be almost obnoxious about it, I set out some student goals based on the specific mission of my school.

Equip:  Make you the informed thinker you need to be to make good decisions.  Ultimately, I want my students to make good decisions.  Whether that is choosing the right classes to take or exercising integrity in difficult moments, students must be informed. 

I teach them science, but I also tell them as many things as I can about as many ways as God gives me.  I show them that I love art and literature because it shouldn't just be an English teacher thing.  If they are interested in something, I learn what I can about it.  From baseball to theology to music, if you are going to make wise choices, you must be informed.  I can't teach them everything, but I teach them as much as possible and model for them that I am always learning. 

Challenge:  Ask you to perform better than you think you can at things you don't think you are good at.  If there is anything that two decades of teaching have taught me, it's that kids are capable of more than they think they are.  I teach eighth grade, so they enter my class with seventh-grade skills.  They have to leave my class with high school skills so they will be ready to learn more deeply.  For that reason, I use a lot of class time training.  I don't give them a study guide.  I teach them three ways to make their own.  I don't provide a "word bank" for tests.  I advise them on how to create good flashcards for themselves.  I spend a lot of review time showing them how to eliminate wrong answers in multiple-choice questions, a skill they will need for at least the next four years and possibly longer. 

Many of my good students perform lower in the first quarter than they are accustomed to.  It frightens them, and they want me to go back to their comfort level.  Sometimes, their parents want that too.  It would certainly be easier to do so, but I know that isn't right.  We would never take a toddler who falls down after their first few steps to go back to crawling, and we should tell kids who fall at their first few self-improvement attempts to go back to their old ways either.  We should comfort, encourage, and support; but we should not allow them to revert to their old ways.

Inspire:  Ask you to look beyond the grade, the curriculum, and the tests to see what you can do with your education.  This is the part of the mission statement I know I cannot accomplish.  God inspires, and he uses the many teachers a child has (including academic teachers, parents, culture, coaches, and even friends) in their lives as tools. 

So many of us are focused on grades and how learning applies to a job that we forget the purpose of education.  It's nice that we can get jobs related to our education, but it isn't the point.  The point is that they become more human.  A robot can be programmed to perform a job task or given the knowledge (data) needed to complete a calculation.  Part of being human is interacting with other humans who are different than we are, people with different skills, values, and interests.  The multidisciplinary approach to education helps them become better at those interactions.  When I have
this conversation with students, I say, "What if the ONLY thing I could talk about was physics.  Would you want to spend time with me?"  Of course, the answer is always no.  What if scientists only married other scientists?  What a boring life that family would lead.  Being interested in things makes you more interesting.  It allows you to interact with more people.  It allows you to serve more people.  Don't lock yourself into one thing.

Defining Impact as Building a Legacy

I had planned to write about something different this week, but I saw this video a few days ago, and it will not let me go.  I'm in my car, on the way to church, and a line from this pops into my head.  I'm reading a book or watching tv, and the kind way this man is addressing the issue with millennials comes to mind.  It's 15 minutes long, but watch it, even if it means not reading the rest of this post.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hER0Qp6QJNU

I could write a ten-part series based on this video, from the neurological consequences of telling a child they are perfect and special to the fallout of giving kids what they want as soon as they want it.  I could write about the influence of technology and the trap of instant gratification or how your mom can't get you a promotion.  I could write about the trauma of being unfriended or the fact that we have age restrictions on other addictive and potentially damaging things.  I may write about those someday, but there is a small part of this video that just keeps rolling around in my mind enough that I wanted to process my thoughts about it here.

The part that keeps coming back to me is about nine minutes in, where he talks about people who want to quit their job after only a few months because they aren't "making an impact."  I teach students who use this word a lot (and in a school that has the word in our mission statement).  I truly believe they are sincere when they say they want to make an impact.  However, much like the people who want to be famous or parents who just want their kids to be happy, lack of definition makes this difficult to achieve.

In the video, Simon Sinek describes it this way, "It's as if they're standing at the foot of a mountain, and they have this abstract concept called impact that they want to have in the world, which is the summit.  What they don't see is the mountain.  I don't care if you go up the mountain quickly or slowly, but there's still a mountain."  This is such a perfect description of the issue.  Those who climb Everest certainly do it for the view at the top, but they certainly wouldn't find it as meaningful if a helicopter dropped them onto the summit.  The messy and difficult journey matters. 

In addition, what if there were no way to tell when you had reached the summit of a mountain.  You could succeed and not know or be frustrated by constantly climbing without knowing what you are climbing toward.   A word like "impact" is not a goal because there's no way to know when you have achieved it.  I was listening to a great TED talk about how unhappy kids are whose parents' goal is their happiness.  When the goal of parents was that their kids become good citizens, there was a way to know if you had been successful.  Did your child have a job, contribute to the economy, serve a neighbor, vote, and pay their taxes?  You had raised a good citizen.  The happiness goal is just too elusive to know if you have achieved it.  What is happy?  Are they happy enough?  Are they happy about the right things? (I mean, there are probably identity thieves who are happy with their work.) . This idea that a person's job should be one in which they have an impact is similar.  What kind of impact? (Because again, an identity thief is making an impact.)  In what way do you want the impact to happen?  How far do you want your impact to reach?  It's all just too mushy to be a goal.

One more problem.  "Impact" is a word that sounds like it's something that happens fast.  Earthquakes have impact.  Wars have impact.  A punch to the face has impact.  It's a sudden result.  What Simon Sinek is trying to communicate is that you cannot reach the summit without climbing the mountain.  That process may difficult, non-linear, and long.  Most people who are out there, sincerely hoping to make "an impact" are frustrated that it doesn't happen after each action.  They don't see making an impact as a lifelong activity; they see it as something they can accomplish after a week of trying.

Let me humbly suggest that we change our language a bit.  What we really mean when we say we want to have an impact is that we want to do something that matters.  We want to make a change in the world.  We want to build a legacy.  Perhaps we should change the way we speak to high school and college students to this language, the language of building.  Doesn't the image of building something communicate so much more about the process than the word impact?  A person who enters their career with building something in mind will find fare more fulfillment in the process of learning and doing their job than the person who goes in expecting to make a quick and sudden difference. 

Let's focus on building something and enjoy the messy, difficult, interesting, and growing process that is.

Almost Obnoxious - Part 4 - Academically Equip, Challenge, and Inspire

Last week, I talked about how our school spiritually equips, challenges, and inspires our students as part of our mission statement.  We are aware, however, that our school is not a church.  It is a school.  Thus, the other part of our mission, to academically equip, challenge, and inspire.

Equip
The academic equipping of students is the mission of all schools, and it is no small task.  Let's first address what it is not.  Academically equipping students does not mean teaching them every skill they may need in life.  We are not in the business of teaching them to cook and sew buttons (though I have nothing against a good home ec class).  We are not teaching them to repair a transmission (again, no problem with schools offering a shop class).  If you are a parent who wants your kids to know those things, please teach them to your children.  We are also not attempting to teach every piece of content they need to know for any career they may choose.  For one thing, that isn't possible.  There would just be too many things to know.  Also, they may have careers that do not currently exist. 

What does it mean to academically equip?  It means teaching them how to learn.  A few years ago, our graduation speaker said, "An educated person doesn't know everything; but in a pinch, he can learn anything."  That perfectly sums up the way I see my job.  In the same way you don't lift weights because the weight needs to be off the ground but because it trains the muscle, academic content, while important, mostly serves as a vehicle for the training of the brain.  Equipping students with the ability to learn is how they become prepared for whatever life may throw their way.

Challenge
What does it mean to academically challenge?  Again, I would start with what it is not.  Academically challenging students does not mean giving them more work or harder work to do.  While GRACE does have a rigorous curriculum, our mission to challenge them comes from asking them to raise their level of thinking.  Creating a base knowledge is important in any subject, but asking them to apply that knowledge to the problems of the world is what creates the challenge.  Our science department asks students to examine their impact on the environment, create a plan for growing crops more efficiently, and propose solutions to some of the problems in the developing world (lack of access to clean water, electricity, etc.).  Our math department challenges them to design a tiny house and decide whether it might be a feasible solution for people experiencing homelessness.  Last year, our 8th-grade English teacher allowed students to put the book they were reading "on trial" to defend whether or not it should remain a part of the curriculum.  These sorts of projects push the knowledge students have learned far beyond the surface level of understanding that a simple multiple choice test measures.

Inspire
As I mentioned last week, inspiration is not something we can accomplish.  We can't write academically inspire into a lesson plan.  It's something that happens because of the magical combination of the right student having the right teacher learning the right content.  What inspires one student won't necessarily inspire the student next to him.  Every teacher has some students who think they are the best while others in the same class can't stand them (which is why you can't base your feelings about your career on their feedback).  God brings the right teacher into a student's life at the right time to help shape that student.  It's something that only He can plan.

Next week, I'll address the ultimate goal of all of this, that our students "impact their world for Christ."

Almost Obnoxious - Part 3 - Spiritually Equip, Challenge, and Inspire

Our mission statement hangs on three walls of my classroom.  It hangs in the school lobby.  I walk past it a couple of hundred times a day.  In case you haven't been reading this series, it says,

"GRACE Christian School is a loving community that spiritually and academically equips, challenges, and inspires students to impact their world for Christ."

Read again.  There are parts of it that I am skilled to do, and there are parts of it that WE are skilled to do.  There are parts of it, however, that are, in fact impossible.  That doesn't mean we should change our mission.  Quite the contrary.  It means, we have to call in the big guns.  The portion of our mission statement that says we will "spiritually . . . equip, challenge, and inspire" is not within our power.  It is only possible if we are daily putting this part of our mission in the hands of God.

I don't know if you have ever written a mission statement with a group of people.  You wouldn't believe how long it takes to dissect each phrase and word.  The first draft of this statement only included the word "equips."  Some of the teacher in the room felt that word was too small, that it made it sound like we only did the minimum.  While I disagreed, I certainly understood how, if they thought that others might as well.  We spent several minutes brainstorming other words with the intent of replacing the word equipped.  When we were through, the three favorite words were "challenges and inspires," and there were a few people who still fought for the word "equips."  We ended up keeping all three words, not because it was easier, but because each of those words means something different that we agreed we wanted for our students.  Let's look at each of them.

Equip
 As I said earlier, there was a contingent in favor of this word because it means giving students what they need.  Imagine that you are an astronaut being sent on a mission.  You would expect NASA to equip you with training time and manuals, a suit, oxygen, biomonitors, etc.  You would expect that the ship would be equipped with fuel, safety devices and procedures, food and water that can be consumed in microgravity, waste disposal equipment, electrical systems, and guidance computers.  As you can see, equipping is hardly a small thing.

When we set out to spiritually equip students, the job is daunting.  We have chapel and Bible classes.  Our English classes teach students to analyze literature, and those skills are useful for Bible analysis as well.  We converse with our students often about spiritual issues.  Tomorrow, our high school students leave for a spiritual retreat, in which they will hear sermons but also be broken into smaller groups to discuss topics that have been specifically chosen for them by the faculty and staff.  While there may be people who thought of this word as small, you can see that God must be the one who does the equipping because it is too big a job for us.

Challenge
Challenging students comes with the job description of any teacher.  English teachers challenge students to raise their level of writing and increase their vocabulary.  Science teachers challenge students to ask big questions and draw conclusions from things they observe.  Foreign language teachers challenge students to speak when it is not comfortable to do so.  In Christian education, all of those things are still there, but we are also tasked with challenging our students to stand up to the influence of their culture, one that is increasingly secular and even militantly atheist.  Sometimes, it feels a bit like we are standing in a raging storm with the culture flashing lightning and blaring thunder, while we shout at our students to fight back.  It would be easy to give up on this if it were up to us.  Fortunately, God will challenge their hearts.  We, their teachers, are merely the tools he uses to do so.

Inspires
If there is any word in the mission statement that I know for sure I am incapable of achieving, it is this one.  I can teach.  I can talk.  I can design lessons.  I can give students opportunities.  I cannot inspire.  Only God can do that, so we as teachers should pray each day that he will.

What I Wish I had Known My First Year

As the new school year is about to begin, there will be thousands of young men and women entering the classroom for the first time as teachers.  If you have made this career choice, congratulations.  That's not an easy thing to do in 2018.  The early part of this year was filled with teachers protesting all over the country, so you may think that it is a pretty lousy job that you will do in poor conditions (and they may actually be true in some places).  Someone in your life probably tried to talk you out of teaching in the last four years, attempting to convince you that you could make more money doing something else or that you wouldn't be safe because news coverage of school gun events make it seem like every school has one (much like plane crashes give people fear of flying even though the numbers are quite small).  At some point, someone has probably used "Those who can, do . . ." in their attempt to dissuade you from following the call of education.  So, before I mention some things I wish I had known, let me congratulate you for ignoring all of that to choose this profession.  It has its challenges, yes; but you will soon find that those challenges are far outmatched by its rewards. 

All that said, there may be nothing more difficult to get through than your first year of teaching.  Other than student teaching, there isn't a way to experience it until you are in a room alone with your students, who, along with their parents, expect you to be as good as the teacher they had last year even though that teacher had 15 years of experience to your 1 day.  Keeping a few things in mind will help.

1.  It's okay to not know the answer.  Students will ask questions every day that you won't know the answer to.  Don't be scared of that.  There is too much knowledge in your discipline for you to have it all in your head.  After a while, you will find it to be your favorite thing when a student asks you a question you don't know the answer to.  You will know that it means you are doing well, engaging students beyond the text.  In the first year, however, it can be frightening.  You might think that the students will think you are dumb if you don't know the answer.  In reality, they will respect your authenticity.  If there is time, google their question (or ask them to) to model the search for knowledge and the finding of credible sources online.  If there isn't time, tell them you will look it up (and write it down on a post-it so you will remember to look it up.  They will be floored if you return the next day with an answer to the question they may have forgotten they asked.  "I don't know" is a powerful sentence.  Use it.

2.  Don't be afraid to ask.  A lot of first-year teachers are afraid to ask for help.  I think it is self-protective because you think your job will be more secure if you look like you've got it all together.  Any administrator or colleague worth their salt will know that you don't have it all together because no one does.  Your school may have assigned you a mentor teacher.  That may be great.  If it is, ask them as many questions as you need to.  If that isn't great (because sometimes it isn't), befriend a teacher near you and make them your unofficial mentor.  If you have an administrator who is open, ask them questions.  They probably have experience in the puzzle you are trying to solve, so you want to know what they know.

3.  You don't have to say yes to everything you are asked.  You are going to be asked to do a lot of things, and you are going to feel like you have to say yes.  Parents will ask you to do things specifically for their child.  Some of those will be legitimate, and some won't.  If you don't know the difference, see point 2 and ask another teacher.  You will be asked to sponsor more clubs than you can handle.  It is okay to say, "I wish I could, but I am already the sponsor of two clubs."  I promise the student will not hate you forever. 

4.  Silence is more powerful than words.  When students are misbehaving, it is easy to go into lecture mode.  The problem is that lectures don't work.  Kids are used to being lectured.  Their lives are filled with sound.  If you refuse to speak, you will get their attention far better.  I don't do this often, but there are times when kids have gotten out of hand during a review game, when I've stopped or warned several times, when the kids are just not listening, that I have stopped and said, "You obviously don't need me" and then sat down at my desk and said nothing for the rest of the period.  (Don't try this if there are more than five minutes left in class.)  If you decide to try this, resist the urge to speak; don't even make eye contact.  Sit down and start grading something.  It freaks the kids out so much that you can hear a pin drop during that time. 

5.  Be the one in charge.  The easiest thing to be in your first year is the "fun teacher" until it isn't easy anymore.  A few months in, when the kids believe they can get away with murder, it becomes incredibly difficult.  Being the one in charge doesn't mean that you have to be mean and never smile.  You can do fun things in your classroom, but you will be the one who decided to do it.  You can enjoy your students without giving them everything they ask for.  My students know that they are not to take things off my desk without permission.  I rarely say no when asked, but they should not presume that I will be without asking.  Once it is established that you are the decider of what happens in your classroom, you can sing and dance and give them candy (although I don't recommend that) without losing your authority.  Kids don't say they appreciate this, but they do.  They don't actually like the easy, fun teachers that they can push around.  I know this because I've heard them complain about those teachers.

6.  Misbehavior is rarely personal.  Most books will tell you that the poor behavior of students is never personal, but I take issue with that.  On rare occasions, there will be a kid that just hates you know matter what you do and will try to take things out on you.  That is exceedingly rare, so you should treat most misbehavior as a kid's lack of impulse control and the testing of boundaries.  Even with those kids for whom it is personal, don't react to it that way.  It will only escalate the situation, turning it into a power struggle.  Avoid power struggles whenever possible because you have professional boundaries they don't have, making it hard for you to win.

7.  Have backup plans for your backup plans.  The thing that was hardest for me to navigate in my first year was timing.  I'd walk into a classroom with a plan I thought would fill 50 minutes, and it might take 20 minutes or 3 class periods.  It's just difficult to know until you have done it.  You need some things that you can do any day.  I have a bell in my room.  If I notice we are finishing up early, I pull out the bell and put it on my cart.  Then, I call out pairs of kids to the cart and ask them questions about things we have done in this chapter.  It's the quickest way to have a review, and you can fill time with it until you run out of material.  You are going to have a plan for a great lesson that requires the internet on a day when the internet is down, so you should be able to teach that material with a marker and whiteboard if you have to.  You do NOT want students with nothing to do.

8.  Apologies don't make you look weak.  When you have done something wrong, own it.  Apologize to the student you smarted off to.  Apologize to the class if you graded something wrong.  Make every effort to fix it.  You will strengthen your relationships with those students.

9.  Enjoy your job.  This job is hard, but it is also the most enjoyable way to spend a day.  You get to go to work, not at an office or on a roadside, but in a room full of youthful enthusiasm.  Your kids can tell you great stories.  They will teach you things you didn't know.  They will make you laugh.  If you can't enjoy those things, teaching may not be your calling.  If you can, it makes even difficult days better.

Learning Styles Aren't What You've Been Told

Disclaimer:  I am a classroom teacher, not a lab researcher.  I have done my best to represent the research I have found, but I do not claim to have found every study or conclusion.  

Just in case you have lived under an educational rock for the last thirty years, here's a quick rundown of learning style theory.  The idea was that each child is born with a particular predisposition for the method in which curriculum is presented.  Visual learners would do better if the information was presented visually.  Auditory learners did well by listening carefully but would find visual aids a distraction.  Tactile and kinesthetic learners need to manipulate or perform labs in order to learn.  Teachers have been trained for the past three decades to find the learning style of each student and try to reach them using that style.  It sounded good.  It sounded logical.  It seemed virtuous to reach each student in the way their brain was designed.

Teachers always want to do what is best for kids, but we need to be careful that it is research-based, not just something that sounds good in a workshop.  The idea of individual learning styles sounded right, and we taught kids to find theirs for two generations.  The problem is that research doesn't back up what we have been telling them.  In fact, there are multiple studies that show potential harm from buying too much into the concept.

MRI's have been quite instructive on the function of the brain, but it is taking time for the findings to make their way into instructional practice.  Brain imagery has revealed that while the brains of different people will show activity differences based on academic disciplines (showing support for the theory of multiple intelligences), it does not behave differently if the same information is presented in different formats.  The conclusion of these researchers is that the presentation style is a preference, in the same vein as a favorite color or preferred musical style. 

It is difficult to let go of the "matching" approach to learning styles even when we know differently.  So, what's a teacher to do?  Instead of trying to match individual students, controlled experiments are now showing that it is best to match the style to the material being presented.  If we think about it for a moment, this just makes sense.  No geometry teacher would ever think that they should teach in an auditory only way, even if every student in the room was an "auditory learner."  No one who teaches poetry would think that they needed a kinesthetic approach, no matter what the preference of the students because that just doesn't make sense with the material.

As a teacher, think deeply about the material you are presenting and the best method for presenting it rather than trying to work in circles around all your student preferences.  Allow them to process according to their own preference.  It may actually be helpful for a student who has heard you teach material in an auditory method to draw visualizations of what they have heard or summarize it to themselves out loud as their method of internalizing material may be useful, but that simply requires that you as a teacher give them a bit of time for individual reflection.

Establishing Credibility Before Connection

Several months ago, a local youth pastor came to my school to speak to our students in chapel.  At the beginning of his speech to our middle school students, he said, "What?  You are in 7th and 8th grade?  I thought you were juniors and seniors."  Thank goodness I was on the row behind my students because I couldn't conceal my distaste.  I was offended on behalf of my students because he was treating them like they were stupid (young and stupid are not the same thing).  Telling students an obvious lie is not a way to get them on your side because this generation values authenticity above all, and a youth pastor should really know that.  For the rest of his speech, I was unable to take anything he said seriously because of the way he started.

If in hindsight, I want to give him the benefit of the doubt, I can guess that he was trying to make a connection with them.  Given that he was going to be with them for about twenty-five minutes, I don't think that is possible.  You can't make a meaningful connection with middle or high school students in half an hour or less; it requires the hard work of relationship building.  What he needed wasn't connection; it was credibility.

Later that day, I was talking through this experience with the teacher friend I go to when I need wisdom and/or perspective.  As we talked about this idea of credibility before connection, she said, "One way to start would be by showing them that he took his work seriously."  During teacher week, we had a workshop (actually presented by that same friend) about student motivation based on the work of Dave Stuart, Jr.  The first key was credibility.  Making genuine connections is discussed but not until later.  Obviously, this is an important aspect of teaching, so let's address how we can make ourselves and our classes credible.

1.  Communicate that you take your profession seriously.  Many teachers are focused on being fun and entertaining in order to engage.  These aren't bad things, and I like to think I'm fun for my students, but it doesn't build credibility.  Too many jokes early on may undermine your credibility.  Start with the message that you take your class seriously by telling students about your preparation.  Hang your diploma and teaching certificate on the wall of your classroom (You wouldn't go to a doctor who didn't hang his, no matter how funny he was).  On day one, I tell my students about my education, years of experience, and ongoing professional development.  Do I throw in jokes?  Of course.  Is the first day a stand-up routine?  Absolutely not.  One day last year, a delightful 8th-grader said to me, "I've decided I trust you more than my other teachers because you have been doing this for a really long time."  Setting aside that she complimented me and called me old at the same time, it reflected something important.  She knew that I had been doing it long enough to know what I was doing, and that made her trust my decisions.

2.  Communicate that you take all classes seriously.  I've seen many parents over the years tell their students that they "don't use algebra either" or that "8th-grade doesn't matter anyway" or that they "couldn't spell very well either."  Then, they are at a loss for why their student doesn't do their homework.  They mean well; they mean to comfort their child.  Instead, they demotivate their child.  We can't stop that from happening at home, but we can stop it from happening in our classrooms.  As a teacher, you should never communicate that some part of education doesn't matter, even if it isn't your own subject.  Undermining any class' credibility undermines them all.  When a student asks "when am I going to use this in life," make the answer about something other than getting into college or a job.  Showing your love for your class motivates your students in ways you may never be aware of (I should write about my history teacher some time).

3.  Communicate that you take students seriously.  It is easy to communicate that you don't take students seriously, even without meaning to.  Blowing off an answer just because you didn't expect it will make that student less inclined to answer again.  Giving a student's question a blow-off answer will make them less inclined to ask them again.  It can be difficult to stay "on" all the time, but it is the quickest way to establish or lose credibility with our students.  If you truly to do not have time to give a question serious consideration, tell the student you will think about it and get back with them.  Make a note to answer them later.  In my school, all students have a computer and school email address, so I ask them to email the question to me in order to remind me to get back to them.  You would be amazed by their response when you give them a thoughtful and thorough reply. 

Taking these things seriously doesn't mean being a dower teacher that doesn't allow fun in their classroom.  Once you have established that we do important work in this room, there's plenty of room for personality, but if you start with personality, that may be all your students ever see. 

It Should Keep Getting Better

Projects - Love them or hate them, but you will have them.  This is especially true in science.  There are some concepts that simply must be learned by doing, not to mention all the non-academic learning that comes from projects (which I should write a post on in the future because it is so important).  Because projects matter so much, it is important that we use reflective professional judgment to decide how students can best use their time rather than throwing every good idea we have at them, overwhelming them with work.

When deciding on whether to do a new project, tweak an old one, or keep it exactly as it was this year, there are some questions you need to ask yourself.
1.  What is the academic objective?
2.  What is the "other" objective?  (This could be social, behavioral, or even spiritual)
3.  What are they learning from this project that they cannot learn by doing it some other way?
4.  If retooling a previous project, what can I do to reduce confusion or increase efficiency?  What did someone do last year that I can incorporate this year?

After asking those questions, you may reach one of three conclusions about your project.

1. It should be dropped altogether as it has become a Grecian Urn.  If you don't have time or inclination to read the excellent Cult of Pedagogy post about Grecian Urn projects, here's the summary.  A Grecian Urn is any activity whose time and effort are disproportionate to the learning outcomes.  Something might be fun, but if it is taking days of class time, it should also be rather meaningful.  If it is not, drop it or give it to kids as an optional at home (extra credit if you believe in that sort of thing) activity.  If it is that fun, they'll want to.  If they don't, it probably wasn't as fun as you thought.

2.  The project should stay exactly as it is.  I'm going to suggest that this particular conclusion is rare.  It is difficult for me to believe your project is perfect exactly as is and that making changes could only do damage to the result.  Some projects are classic traditions that everyone should do (e.g physics egg drop project) because it unites us as learners across generations, but that doesn't mean those projects shouldn't change with technology or renewed priorities.  Before you settle into this conclusion, give it some serious thought.

3.  Tweak the project.  I submit to you that this is going to be the answer about 75% of the time.  If you are a creative and interesting teacher who cares enough about your skills to be reading education blogs, you probably had a good idea.  The process of reflection should allow you to identify what was really good about that idea and what needs to be changed.  This may happen only a couple of times, or it may happen every year of your time teaching a course. 

An example will likely help, so let me tell you about a project in my physics class that used to be called "The Electricity Project."  Warning: It plays out over multipl years, so it is long.

I have a healthy respect (that sometimes rises to the level of fear) for electricity.  It's one of the few things in my home I won't tackle on my own.  I don't know what caused this in me, but I don't want to pass it on to my students; so fifteen years ago, I started assigning a project in which they simply had to do some electrical circuit building (series, parallel, and combination circuits were my only requirements).  Many of them built a model of a house and lit each room.  Some built models of car lots or airports and lit each car or plane in series but the runway or lot lights in parallel.  These were all fine and accomplished the instructional objective "recognize the three types of circuits" and my personal behavioral objective "don't be afraid of 9V batteries."  This was fine for a time, and the kids enjoyed it.  They were also nice to have at student showcase nights.

Seven years ago, two students asked if they could do something that was electrical but didn't fit the project instructions.  If you teach high school, you know why I heard this with a skeptical ear at first.  Then, they proposed their idea.  They wanted to build an electric guitar from scratch.  "Umm, that's the coolest thing I've heard.  Yes, of course, you can do that."  I changed the rubric, not just for that year but for the future.  Instead of "build a model with circuits," the requirement became "build a functioning electrical device."  It still fulfilled the objectives the previous version had, but you wouldn't believe the difference in creative projects I got.  I had students who built games that would allow a bell to ring or light to come on when you got a correct answer.  I had some fun electrical versions of tic-tac-toe.  A student attempted to build a theremin.  I even got a Jacob's Ladder and a tiny rail gun that fired paper clips one year and a Tesla coil that had to be operated outside the next.  Because they were so interactive, we had a day of electrical fun, setting them out all over the room and inviting people to come and play with them. 

Four years ago, our school started really pressing in on the idea of Challenge Based Learning.  What would kids do if we took the constraints off and gave them a real-world kind of problem?  Knowing that the addition of another project would be burdensome to all involved, I brainstormed with our technology coach about how I might adjust an already existing project to become challenge based.  I decided on the electricity project.  Given how many people around the world have limited access to electricity, that seemed an ideal problem to solve with their knowledge of physics.  Also, at that time, our IT director was a former missionary to Haiti, where he had his own challenges with keeping electricity consistent in his home.  "Out with electrical device building . . . In with electrical problem solving," I thought.  I don't have time to tell you about the epic failure we had in the first year of this project, and I've already written about it, so read that here.

The next year, as I reflected on the project, I decided that clearer instruction was needed.  Perhaps I had taken the challenge based learning tenant that the teacher shouldn't have an end in mind a little too seriously.  I assigned groups and adjusted directions but had essentially the same project (check here for those adjustments).  Things were better but still not what I was hoping for (I've blogged about this a lot, apparently - see here for that year's result).  I wanted some real ideas, not just windmills.  The next year, we began our year with brainstorming groups in teacher meetings.  If you had an idea but needed input, you presented it to other teachers (mostly outside your own area).  Two teachers said, "It sounds like your idea is a little too hypothetical.  What if you gave them a real place?"  When we began brainstorming sessions last year, I was astounded by the difference that made.  Suddenly, I heard them taking weather into account because "you can't have solar panels in a place with sandstorms all year."  They were discussions about how difficult it would be to find diesel fuel in their particular part of the world or whether it was even windy there.  The fact that they were researching the resources of the area brought this project so much closer to what I envisioned.

Then, the biggest change happened quietly and almost accidentally.  The group that was assigned to Yemen came to me and said that the biggest problem with their lack of electricity was that they had so little clean water.  "Can we build a solar-powered water pump?"  As with the electric guitar, I didn't want to say no to a good idea just because it didn't fit what I had in mind.  Of course they could build a solar-powered water pump.  Aside from the atrocious spelling in their video, this was the best project of all the groups and the one people talked about the most.  They were compelling and knowledgeable and, most of all, invested in their solution.  This challenged me to change this project once again.

I consulted with our current tech coach about broadening the project.  Instead of focusing on electricity, I would assign the area.  Then, they had to decide what was the most critical challenge before them that could be addressed by physics/engineering.  Not knowing what they would decide, I wasn't sure building something was practical, so he suggested grant-style presentations with PSA videos.  Yes, this was coming together.  Of the 8 groups, six said lack of access to potable water was the biggest need in their area, one said flooding led to disease and water problems, and one said sanitation was an issue (because they had garbage and raw sewage in their streets).  In the six groups that addressed water access, there were six different solutions.  This showed me that they did, in fact, research what made the most sense for that country.  I was so proud of their results, and we got great feedback from those who attended the forum.  This was finally the challenge based learning project I wanted it to be.

You may have noticed that the objectives had changed.  No one built anything that had to do with circuits.  I accomplished that objective in one day of handing out 9V batteries, wire, and Christmas tree light bulbs with the instructions to "play and tell me what you learned" after a day of teaching about the different circuits.  That was a memorable day as one group pretty much tased themselves for twenty minutes by linking 32 batteries together and touching wires, showing that they weren't afraid of it.  This project is so much more meaningful that I can't imagine going back to building a simple model to show you can make circuits.  They can learn that another way.  This project now gives them things they couldn't have learned in another way.

If you teach for several years, your project should be getting better.  You may not have one that changes as much as this one did, but don't be afraid if you do.  Share the progression with the students.  They need to see that we continue learning.  They need to know that you have deep thought about the reasons for what you assign them.  They need to know that we haven't arrived at perfect ideas yet but that we are always reaching for them.  If you want them to keep getting better, you should be too.