Steplab Instructional Coaching Intensive - Raw Notes

  These will be raw notes taken in real time and undergoing very little editing.  They will be words from the speaker blended with my own thoughts as I process what is being said.  While I will try to note the difference, I can't promise that will always happen.  Don't hold a speaker responsible for anything I put here.  

Steplab is an international platform for professional development.  This is the first intensive in the United States.  

The goal for today is for every participant to leave more competent, confident, and motivated to be a high quality instructional coach.

Giving other adults feedback is awkward and must be learned.  

What is instructional coaching?  A cycle of observation and feedback

How does one start?

Connect and clarify conversation - Helps to build the coaching relationship and clarify the process, a foundation need to help the coached person feel comfortable and open.  Without a good foundation, things are unstable.  

• Connect:  Ask some questions that get deeper than the surface level (motivations, goals, strengths, hopes for the classroom).
• Clarify:  Explain the rationale and process, deal with questions and concerns of the coached individual (observations, scripting, rehearsals, video, feedback)
• Close: Model vulnerability as you talk through the relationship with the coached.  "We are going to figure some things out together.  I'm going to learn from you."

Science of Instructional coaching

Typical "after school PD" runs a wide spectrum of effectiveness.  Rarely, it might bring about immediate and sustained transformation. Often, it is interesting but doesn't effective immediate change.  Most of the time, teachers are thinking about what else they could be doing with that time.

There is no correlation between years on the job and expertise, but there is correlation between effective professional development over time and expertise.

People who are satisfied with their jobs feel three things on a regular basis - Mastery, Autonomy, and Purpose. - Drive by Daniel Pink. Helping teachers learn how to do their jobs better will build all three of these.  

PD is often ineffective because:  Teaching is one of the most cognitively demanding jobs that exists, so trying to keep in mind something you want to improve on while doing it is insane.  We develop habits quickly as mental shortcuts, so breaking them is hard.  Whole group sessions have statistically insignificant impact.  Quality instructional coaching shows 2 months gain per year for the students of the teacher who was coached.  (A bad instructional coach is no better than a bad whole group PD.)

Effective PD must 

• Build knowledge (manage cognitive load, revisit prior learning)
• Motivate  staff (setting goals, info from credible source, provide affirmation and reinforcement)
• Develop teaching techniques (instruction social support, modeling, feedback, rehearsal)
• Embed practice (provide prompts and cues, action plans, encouragement and self monitoring, context specific repetition)

If any are missing, it will fall flat.

Three models of coaching were shown and critiqued.  

1.  Gather Evidence:  In the Gathering Evidence phase, you cannot say things like "you gave too many examples."  Give facts about what you observed and lead them to the conclusion themselves.  Notes should be what the teacher and the students are saying, doing, writing, or displaying (time stamps and head counts can be helpful).  Take pictures.

How do you know if a coachee is read to move on from a step?

The right effect is achieved 

• at the right moment for the right reason 
• with the criteria met 
• and has become habitual (at least partly)

If a coachee hasn't achieved their step:

• acknowledge progress and any parts of the criteria that were completed.
• highlight that "students need time to become accustomed to the routine.
• include a consolidating step as a sub-goal

2. Review Progress: Praise and Prompt:

• Praise needs to be specific to the thing they are working on, not generalized to the whole lesson.
• Prompt them to reflect on what success looks like.  It should be a moment of celebration.  Name what part was successful and say, "What do you think the impact was?"
• Quality praise is precise (praise one thing with evidence), linked to the prior step, and includes a prompt to reflect on their success (helps to build insight and form habits)

3. Diagnose

• Always keep the goal in mind and focus the coaching on that thing.  The step is secondary to the goal.
• Form multiple hypotheses about the learning problem.  Don't just coach your favorite technique.
• Search for pivotal evidence that will support your hypothesis and allow coachee to find the conclusion.
• Identify a teach goal to address one problem and suggest a step to help achieve the teach goal.
• Tackle in small steps.
• Pull it all together.

4. Agree on Step - This is the easiest step to do wrong.  And it is the part where the coached individual is most likely to get defensive.

• Decide together - Don't say, "the step I have chosen for you is . . ."  
  
• Ask questions like, "How successful do you think this was?"
• Offer evidence (picture of student behavior or work) if you need to.
• If the teacher is already self-aware, you may not need to provide more.  You can just agree with them.  It is only if the teacher needs leading that you need to give more.  Once agreement has been reached, move on; don't beat a dead horse.

Awareness (Tell me about... I noticed... ) + Agreed Insights (What impact did...?) + Step Plan ( How could we...?) = Successful Change

5.  Modeling - Showing the coachee an exemplar on either video or live yourself will help them to understand what you mean more than just explaining it to them will.

Four steps to effective modeling

Script it ahead of time.

Check against criteria - Are you helping them to implement the step without adding other things in?

Representation - Show a video or model it yourself.

Deconstruction - Explain what it means as you go.  Did you notice when she did this?  What impact did that have?  What did you notice?  Why do you think that happened?

6.  Planning and Rehearsal - Teaching looks easy, but it is so complex that some aspects need to be rehearsed in the same way all performance based professions rehearse.  It helps the teacher establish habits in cognitively non-demanding spaces before going into the messy world of the classroom.  This helps reduce demands on working memory.

• How can you implement this change into an upcoming lesson?
• Script it first.  What do you need to say and do?
• Let's improve the script.  It may take a few iterations to match the success criteria.
• Conduct multiple rounds of rehearsal.
• Feedback between rounds

Professional Development Book Recommendations

Teachers approach summer in a variety of ways.  Some don't even think about school, taking the time to completely unplug.  Others teach summer school and plan for next year.  My approach is in the middle.  I do a lot of reading and make resources that I wouldn't have time to make during the year, but it amounts to an hour or two per day, balancing personal goals and rest time with growing as a teacher.  

If you are a person who doesn't want to think about school, bookmark this post for another time.  If you are looking for some resources to develop professionally, these are a few recommendations.  Feel free to add your own to the list in the comments.

1.  Learning Begins by Andrew Watson - I wish I had read this book earlier in my career (but I couldn't have because he hadn't written it yet).  In this book, Andrew explains the impact of working memory on teaching practice.  When students reach the limit of how many items they can hold in their brain at once, we have hit the wall in our lesson.  Andrew loves science and research, but he is also intensely practical in his advice.

2.  Architecture of Learning by Kevin Washburn - If you have taught for a few years, you know what lessons are sticking points in your classroom.  Kevin's structure for planning lessons is especially useful for those units.  

3.  Powerful Teaching by Pooja Agarwal and Patrice Bain - While this book would have benefitted from an editor to remove excessive exclamation points, don't let it distract you from the good techniques offered in this book.  Retrieval practice takes advantage of how the brain works to make learning stick, and this book offers a lot of options for how to do it. (I also recommend their website, www.retrievalpractice.org.

4.  Teach Like a Champion by Doug Lemov - Doug is strong in his convictions, but he believes in a diversity of practices.  This book has had 3 different editions because it is filled with techniques and videos of real teachers implementing them in their real classes.  

5.  A Mind for Numbers by Barbara Oakley - Don't let the title fool you.  This book is valuable for all teachers, not just math teachers.  She also has a book called Learning How to Learn, based on her highly popular MOOC of the same name.  

While these are all books, there are some great podcasts (Tips for Teachers with Craig Barton, for one) and videos (Go to youtube and put in the name John Almarode).  Perhaps, I'll use another post to expound on some fo them.

Yes, You're Busy - Do it Anyway

This weekend was an extremely busy one for me.  Friday night was dinner with family friends that I haven't seen in a month.  Tomorrow is a yearbook deadline, and that always means spending the day at school proofreading and editing.  That usually starts at 6AM and end whenever it ends, which could be 10-12 hours, depending on the deadline and how well the staff has worked.  I will be speaking in our faculty meeting on Monday, so I had to get the presentation together for that. 

Back in October, I was supposed to attend a seminar by Manny Scott with two other teachers.  He ended up postponing that October date to this weekend.  When he first rescheduled, it didn't occur to me that this would be a yearbook deadline weekend.  Had a realized it at the time, I would probably have asked for a refund or sought out someone else to take my ticket.  I usually protect deadline weekends at all costs. 

As it turns out, I'm glad I didn't realize it.  The seminar was excellent, and hearing Manny Scott's story was worth going to school after 12:30 rather than the first thing in the morning.  I'll probably post more about this seminar another time, but I'm going to keep this short because, as I mentioned earlier, I've had a lot to do this weekend.  I just want to say this.  Yes, you do need to rest sometimes; but we lose a lot of experiences in the name of "self-care."  When there's an opportunity to have an experience that doesn't come along often, stop telling yourself how busy and tired you are.  Have the experience.  You'll be glad you did.

Twitter as a PD Tool

The first time I got on Twitter, I didn't get what the fuss was about.  It seemed like Facebook for people with ADHD (This was back when it was still only 140 characters).  I also felt pressured to post every time I changed activities.  "I am teaching a class.  I am teaching another class.  I am eating lunch."  This was too much pressure for me, and I deleted my account.  I just wasn't getting anything out of it that I was already getting from Facebook, and I felt silly posting twice.

Then, I attended a teacher's conference at which an art teacher made the case for Twitter as a professional development tool.  I wasn't sure if I agreed, but I thought I should give it a fair shake.  I created another account and cultivated who I followed more carefully than I had the first time.  Instead of the same friends and family that I already had on Facebook, I chose to follow educators and scientific sources.  It still took me a while to develop an appreciation for Twitter, but it was a much different user experience than the scattershot method I was using the first time.

That was five years ago.  While I haven't been perfectly disciplined about keeping my follows purely about education and science (I follow a few things for no other reason than the joy they bring, like @dog_feelings and @nocontextpawnee), I have developed a great deal of momentum making Twitter a tool of professional learning.  Here are a few accounts I recommend to you.  The first list is for all teachers.  The second focuses on science.

Education List
@Wikipedia ‏- I've only been following them a few weeks, and I'm already glad I do
@davestuartjr ‏- He's a teacher with much wisdom to share.
@SteeleThoughts ‏- An Alabama MS principal.  If you aren't following him, you aren't as encouraged as you could be.
@TalksWTeachers ‏- Links to their podcast.
@TEDTalks ‏- If you don't know why, you don't know TED.
@pbsteachers - Some digital resources 

Science List
@NatlParkService ‏- Beautiful pictures, historical facts about America's best idea 
@SlowMotionGuys ‏- I teach a lot of science through slow motion video
@TheCrashCourse ‏ - Actually, this is for more than just science.  They have many grade channels.
@NASA_Astronauts ‏- They post photos from the space station.  Well worth following.
@scifri ‏- The twitter account of NPR's Science Friday with Ira Flatow
@NASA ‏- Always great, but especially awesome as we approach the 50th anniversary of the moon landings.
@ScienceNews ‏and @sciam ‏- Good articles on current science topics
@Fermilab ‏and @CERN ‏- While they are good for the occasional article, it's their photos that make them fun to follow.

Try some of these out, and if there are any that aren't giving you beneficial information, be vigilant about unfollowing them.  It's only a helpful tool if you are reducing the noise from the unhelpful ones.

Accreditation Celebration

For the past two years, we have been preparing for the renewal of our school's accreditation.  For the past two days, we have been visited by the accreditation review team.  This is a great, scary, tiring, exhiliarating, interesting, and unsettling process.  Anyone who gets inspected on their job understands how weird it is to have someone you don't know come in and watch you do your job.

Here's a ridiculously brief summary of how it works.  We start by dividing into committees involving teachers across multiple levels of the school, parents, a student representative, and often an administrator.  Each committee is assigned some aspect of the school to examine.  My committee examined the teaching and learning aspects of the school.  Others involved resource allocation, leadership, etc.  We rated ourselves on various criteria related to that aspect of the school.  We examined everything from whether we think we do it well to whether we think we do it from a distinctly Christian perspective. We gathered evidence to support our opinons (in my case, student work), and we write a report.  Those reports are then compiled into one large report and sent to the external review team.

The team read our report and examined our evidence for about a month before they showed up on our campus.  They wrote questions of things they might like more detail on or would like to see verified.  They toured our campuses, met our leadership, and began their discussions with each other.  Then, they spent most of a day and a half observing our classrooms.  Between them, these six people sat in on 50 lessons.  That's an impressive cross section of our school.  They rated on us the learning environment we provide for our students.

Yesterday afternoon, they delivered their findings (our report card if you want it in school terms) to the administration in detail and then the summary to our entire faculty and staff.  As he began his presentation, I was interested in one thing, the slide with the ratings.  All the other information is helpful and useful, but I wanted to see the brass tacks numbers.  For seven different fields, we were given a rating between one and four during every observation.  Those ratings were then averaged together, and our LOWEST average rating was 3.54!  I believe in what we are doing, but that was an incredible validation of what we knew.  Yes, there were things to improve on, but those were things we had already identified ourselves as needs and are in progress.

I spoke to one of our administrators, who said that our technology program was praised in particular.  He told them that they see a lot of computers and many one-to-one programs, but they didn't see people using it as well as we did.  I would like to point out that this is due to the tireless effforts of several people.  Sean and Diane, you may not be with us any more, but you got us started on the right foot, noticed our plateau / regression year, and took action to move us forward.  Laura, Tomeka, Daniel, and Carol, you have continued to coach us and encourage us to use the technology, not just in new ways but in more meaningful ways.  Dana and Anthony, you tirelessly put out fires and prevent them.  None of this would happen without your continued efforts to make it all work.  Thank you to all of you because we know you work hard to make our work easier.

The other statement made yesterday that stuck with me was that they felt our Biblical worldview integration was natural and unforced.  They even said students had commented on that.  It stuck with me because I came from public school and really had to learn to do it.  For years, I felt that I was perhaps forcing it, and I appreciate that people have taken the time to really help us INTEGRATE, not add, biblical teaching into our curriculum.

We will see the details of this report in days to come and begin work on the areas of suggested improvement; but for right now, we all get to take a deep breath and thank God for the incredible community in which he has placed us.

More Than Devices

In last week's post, I ended with a shout out to Laura Warmke for helping me work through some new ideas to replace an old project.  This week, I thought I would share about Laura and her role in our school because it might be unique.  At the very least, it is rare; and it should not be.  Laura has made us better teachers, and I'm not sure I can give a higher compliment than that.

Let me start with a bit of history.  When I started at GRACE fourteen years ago, teachers were calculating grades with a calculator and a pencil.  I created a spreadsheet, and I think my colleagues viewed it as sorcery.  During the years that followed, our school slowly grew in technology by allowing students to bring their own devices and encouraging teachers to learn new things.  As new teachers were hired, they brought new skills and ideas.  The whole time, we were encouraged by our IT Director, Diane Scro.  She supported, taught, trained, and cheered us on in our efforts to come forward.  She even convinced our head of school to start implementing Smart Boards in our classrooms.  Big SHOUT OUT to Diane for pulling us forward.  Diane was joined seven years ago by Sean Blesh, and that team was the force behind our one to one program.  Together, they held teachers hands as we learned Mac and began to implement technology based lessons into our plans.  They both understood that they were dealing with teachers across the spectrum of skills and fear when it came to technology and were able to move everyone forward.  Big SHOUT OUT to both Sean and Diane for the way they led us during this time.  They couldn't have been better resources.

Five years ago, our librarian moved to Tennessee.  That's when we hired Laura.  If you are over thirty, you probably think of librarians as older women who tell you to be quiet, lest you disturb the books.  That is wrong.  They are now media specialists.  That's not just a PC term like "administrative assistant."  Media specialists will still lead you to the book you need, but they will also help you find information from credible internet sources, connect you to visual media, make sure you are staying within fair use guidelines, put it in a perspective of research, teach your class to do more than google, and possibly connect you with an expert.  It's not just about books anymore.  Laura is all these things, but she is also someone who cares deeply about teachers and helping them make the best lesson possible.

Two years ago, Laura's husband finished his PhD and got a job in the Midwest.  For some reason, Laura wanted to live with her husband, so she had to move to Indiana or Illinois or whatever too.  I was not okay with this; but as He often does, God made it work even better than we knew.  We now have a wonderful new media specialist, Daniel O'Brien (Big SHOUT OUT to Daniel for implementing Maker Spaces and our 3-D printer), but we also didn't lose Laura.  She became a telecommuting technology coach.

Let me say that in different words.  We have a faculty member who lives over a thousand miles away!  She provides all the support and love she always did, but she does it using Google Hangout (while staying home with her babies).  Every quarter, I have at least one meeting with her just for the purpose of talking through new ways to integrate technology and create more depth in our lessons, especially challenge based learning projects.  She is also available by e-mail, and we share some google docs for things that require more extended collaboration.  She physically comes in for teacher week at the beginning and end of the year and for the North Carolina Technology in Education Conference; but most of the time, we just see her head.  This happened because GRACE understands the need for teacher training in technology.  No matter what devices a school has, without teacher training they might as well be a chisel and stone.  All schools should have someone like Laura (NOT Laura, she is ours), someone who is looking out for the deeper application of technology rather than just the use of it.  It's the way to make your one to one program more than devices.

Summer Reading

I mentioned in my post It Must Be Nice that one of the best parts of summer was reading for pleasure.  Since it has been far to hot to do a lot of walking (or really going outside in any way at all), I have done A LOT of that this summer.  Since I go back to school this week, my reading for pleasure will have to significantly decrease.  Here's what I've gotten to enjoy this summer.

Even during the summer, teachers read about school.  

1.  I checked Reality is Broken was a recommendation from our Technology Coach.  I can't say I loved it quite as much as she does (and I'm always skeptical of books that promise to "make us better"), but I did get some valuable insight into the thinking process of gamers.  

2.  I ordered The Way They Learn when I was at a seminar and saw Cynthia Tobias speak.  I've been teaching long enough to know learning styles, but Cynthia is great about giving practical advice you might not have read before.  It's worth the read just to hear her stories (although those are better live because her delivery is fantastic - I wonder if she does her own audio books).  

3.  Life Together by Dietrich Bonhoeffer was assigned by the school as summer reading.  It's the best book they have ever assigned us to read.  I now have another of his books, The Cost of Discipleship, on my reading list for the future.  

A couple of years ago, my mom gave me the complete collection of Sherlock Holmes by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle for my birthday.  There are 57 short stories and 3 novels.  Early on, I decided that I would enjoy the experience more if I didn't binge on them.  I tend to alternate Sherlock stories within all of my other book reading.  In this way, I can enjoy "new" ones for years.  I will admit to reading the "Empty House" immediately upon finishing "The Final Problem" because I couldn't stand leaving Mr. Holmes dead at the bottom of a cliff.  Reading these has given me an even greater appreciate for the brilliant BBC series that I already loved.  Steven Moffat and Mark Gattis have taken elements from these stories and made really fun and quirky allusions to them in the show.  The show is enjoyable without knowing them, but recognizing them in the episodes makes for richer repeat viewing.  It has also made reading the books for the first time really fun because as soon as I come upon a little item, I can stop and say, "Oh, I see what they did there."  I recommend Sherlock Holmes to anyone who loves reading.

I started listening to R.C. Sproul on the radio a few years ago.  When I purchased a Reformation Study Bible, it came with some Free e-books.  These are two of them.  I am currently in chapter two of Believing God: Twelve Biblical Promises Christians Struggle to Accept by his son, R.C. Sproul, Jr.  What I appreciate about both is that they tackle very complex topics, but they explain them in ways that are accessible to the average reader.  Unlike a lot of theological writings, I don't feel like I need a seminary degree to deal with their writing.  Search just about any theological question you have on  www.ligonier.org and they will likely have a book or essay that addresses you question.

I didn't intend to let the Harry Potter franchise pass me by; it wasn't a decision or anything.  I had just never gotten around to reading them.  Last year, I had to admit to a couple of freshmen that I had neither read them nor see the movies.  They - were - horrified.  One of them had to get up and walk it off in my classroom.  I promised her that I would start reading them this summer and that I would finish by the time she graduated.  Well, they were a lot quicker reading than I was expecting, so I actually got through the first five.  I have also now seen the first five movies.  I am slightly bothered that the books got better with each reading but the movies peaked at number 3.  The director left so much out of 4 and 5 that I was disappointed by the things I was missing.  Anyway, thank you to Caroline for getting me to read these.  It may be next summer before I can read the other two, but I will greatly look forward to them.

The author of this book was a freshman in the first school I taught at in Oklahoma.  Her dad was also my pastor.  We are now seventeen years later, and she has become a wife and mother of two.  Her daughter has Down's Syndrome, and this book is about the journey from the shock of diagnosis to the understanding that God's sovereignty placed this child in her home for a reason.  If you know someone with a special needs child, I recommend this book.

We now live in the world of pragmatism.  If you read my blog, you know that I hate the cliche, "It is what it is."  We also live in the age of "slacktivism," believing that using a hashtag is the same as doing something or that they are philanthropists if they dump ice on their heads.  We don't have a lot of people who truly fight for right in the modern world.  For that reason, I chose to read about these two great men of the past.  

1.  I had seen the film version of Amazing Grace, but the book by Eric Metaxas gives so much more detail that it is an even more inspiring story.  William Wilberforce did not drop his cause when it became difficult or even when it cost him his health.  He devoted his life to ending the slave trade.  He pounded at what seemed futile for decades, and we owe him a great debt.  

2.  Do you have an English translation of the Bible in your house?  Chances are that you have more than one.  You take it for granted that an English speaking person would have access to the Bible in their own language.  You probably don't know that the reason you have it is because some very brave men gave their lives for it.  The  British government was so intent that no one have an English Bible that they passed a law, making it illegal for anyone to write or print a new book without official approval.  Was this a misdemeanor for which you would be slapped on the wrist or fined?  No.  According to the law, "an offender would be marked with a red-hot iron, and his eyes would be plucked out of his head or his hands cut off."  Knowing this, William Tyndale hid during the time he was translating the New Testament from the original Greek and teaching himself Hebrew so that he could translate the Old Testament faithfully as well.  He was caught and executed before he could complete his work, so other brave men took up the cause.  We think we have sacrificed when people look at us strangely for praying at meal times, but these people knowingly risked their lives.  

Endurance - Shackleton's Incredible Voyage by Alfred Lansing as recommended to me by the head of our English department in response to a Shackleton quote I retweeted.  She knows books, and she said she thought he was one of the greatest meant of the twentieth century.  After reading this book, I would have to agree.  First of all, it is a non-fiction book, but it reads like a novel.  As I was reading it, I kept thinking, "If this isn't a movie, it should be."  I have just learned that there are two movies, one with Kenneth Brannagh and one with Liam Niesen, so I will soon be ordering one or both of those from Amazon as soon as I finish this post.  I couldn't believe how many thing happened to these men.  I kept reminding myself that these were, in fact, real people and not just book characters.  It is excellent.

After I have finished Believing God, I plan to read a book that has been sitting on my nightstand for years, My Vision for Mars by Buzz Aldrin.   

     

What Your Education Degree Didn't Teach You

My degree is in secondary science education with an emphasis in physics.  To earn that degree, I took many courses in educational psychology, theory, and methods.  I had standard general education classes, which I loved.  I took every science class I could fit into every minute of the day.  I even had a zero credit seminar in physics and engineering, which I also loved.  (I think I just really just loved classes, so it is probably good that I made that my life.)

In seventeen years of teaching, every one of those classes has been valuable.  I have never taught an Anatomy class, but I have shared much of what I learned in anatomy with my students, and the understanding it gave me of how light and sound and electricity interact with the human body certainly make me teach the physics differently than I would have otherwise done.  I have never taught English, but writing skills have been important in my life nonetheless.  I enjoy talking about the novels my students are reading and believe it is important for them to see a well rounded life.  I am grateful for everything I did learn in college; but after seventeen years in the classroom, I've come to realize how much I didn't learn while earning my degree.  I'd like to make a few proposals.

Drama - Teachers spend much of their day pretending.  That doesn't mean we aren't genuine with our students, but it is sometimes important to pretend that something is less funny than it is just to maintain classroom management.  Some days, you might not be enthusiastic about the necessary but not thrilling topic of the day (e.g. required steps for showing your work); but it would be detrimental to your students' motivation if you show that.  You might be a single person who has just had your heart broken; it would be unprofessional to bring that into your classroom.  Some days you have to pretend to be in a better mood than you are really in because, while being real is good, being completely transparent is not.  You have to pretend at least a little.  A theater class in improv might prove useful in the development of those skills.

Lab Storage Safety
This one is, of course, meant for science teachers.  My first teaching job was in a brand new building.  We were putting all of our equipment and chemicals on the shelves for the very first time.  While all six science teachers had an understanding of chemistry on a level they could teach, none of us knew the safest arrangement of chemicals on shelves.  We knew that alphabetical was a recipe for disaster, but no one had been trained in proper storage.  I'm guessing that most colleges believe that we will glean this information from our understanding of chemistry, but that is like hoping that we could write a novel in Arabic just be learning their alphabet and a few passages.  There are simply too many combinations chemicals and their compounds.   A semester of lab safety would make us all safer.

Group Crisis Management
In the years I have been teaching, I have taught through a variety of difficult circumstances.  My second year in the classroom, my school received a shooting threat.  I was teaching on 9/11.  Ten years ago, a student in our school died.  During a homecoming pep rally, one of our teachers experienced a serious injury, which we believed at the time to be life threatening.  Recently, one of our teachers has battled cancer.  When we were told on Friday that the cancer had returned, you can imagine what it was like to step into a  classroom of hurting kids while dealing with our own shock and sadness.  When I tell you that I taught through those circumstances, I mean it.  It was not healthy on 9/11 for students to travel from room to room, watching television footage of terror; so I taught science.  When our school was threatened with a shooting even, I couldn't just decide to make the day a wash.  I taught differently, with my eyes alternating from window to door and back again all day, but I did continue to teach.

When we gathered in chapel to be together and ask questions after the death of a student, my friend came by my room with boxes of tissues for us to take with us and said, "Here's something they didn't teach us in teacher school."  She was right, and that should not be.  I know they couldn't have addressed every potential problem, but any teacher who teaches more than a couple of years will experience a class in crisis.  Some training in how to deal with groups of frightened, sad, or angry students just makes sense.

To the people who write degree plans, all the things we learn about content and methods are important, and I am grateful I had them.  The real work of teaching, however, involves much more than I ever learned in college.  Consider adding a few of those "rubber meets the road" type of courses - even a seminar with veteran teachers as guest speakers could be useful.  Please consider.

Let Them Be Curious and Make Them Curious

Last week, I had the pleasure of attending a conference of Christian School teachers in my area, called ACSI Nexus.  This is not a normal convention because for the most part, we all listen to the same speakers.  There is a live site (in Maryland I think) that beams out the signal to satellite sites all over the world.  This year, we had an excellent collection of speakers (see my notes in a previous post).  The one I most looked forward to was by Dr. Kevin Washburn.  I looked forward to it partially because I have seen other presentations and enjoy his style and partially because his topic was the role of curiosity in the learning process.

We all know (I hope) that a student will be more likely to learn something they are curious about.  Some have taken that to mean that we should not have curricula.  We should just allow students to explore whatever interests them, and then they will get the things they need for the career they will ultimately have.  Aside from that being a little hippy dippy for 2015, let's analyze the problem with that.  A student doesn't always know what they will like until they have been exposed to it by a passionate advocate of that thing.  My second favorite vegetable on earth is a zucchini (the first is green peas in case you are interested), but I would have never have eaten the first bite of zucchini if it had not been for my friend Kay's mom.  When you ate dinner at Kay's house, her mom pulled a number out of thin air and required you to eat at least that number of everything before you could say you didn't want any more.  I'll never forget this day.  She was steaming zucchini, and that looked weird to me.  She said, "You don't have to like it, but you have to eat three slices."  Those three slices have turned into three hundred thousand slices over the course of my life.  You don't like the food example, here's one that is more on point.  The great love of my academic life is physics.  When I tell people what I do, I do not get positive responses from most people; but I adore it.  Before I took it in high school, I didn't know that I liked it.  My chemistry teacher insisted that I take honors physics, so I did.  On day four, I had already decided that teaching physics would be the thing I did for a living.

Why, because the man in this picture was amazing at showing me how much he loved it; and it made me love it too.  This photo (which I took, developed, printed, matted, and framed myself) hangs behind my desk on the wall of my classroom.  I am still inspired by his love of physics as well as his love for teaching.  This is Jim Barbara, who was THE best physics teacher I could have had.  One thing I remember the most is that he liked it when I asked him questions.  I had poor Mr. Barbara the last period of the day.  Not having another class to run off to, I would stay after class and ask him everything from why electricity hurt when it shocked you to how a key  opened a lock.  I'm sure Mr. Barbara had other things to get done, be he patiently and enthusiastically answered every question.

So, if we aren't going to take the hippy approach to curiosity, there's always the other end up the pendulum's arc.  I'm the teacher; I know what you need to know; you don't; listen to what I am telling you; don't worry about learning anything else; don't worry if you haven't been excited to learn anything I have taught you all year long; just learn it.  If you are this kind of teacher, please leave the profession.  Don't wait until the end of the year.  Go to your principal and resign as soon as you finish this post.  There is not room for you in 2015 teaching.  We all know that we can't make everything a student learns thrilling just as we can't deep fry zucchini in chocolate sauce (well, there is the fair, so maybe we can do that).  But if you haven't made your students curious about anything, you have a problem.  If they have had no enthusiasm for learning anything all year, it isn't them.

So, what is the middle ground between the hippy and the autocrat?  It is two fold.  First, you can make your students curious about whatever you are teaching them.  You may have to get creative, but you work in a creative field.  Google "demonstrations for _____" whatever the thing is you are teaching tomorrow.  When I teach Bernoulli's principle, I start class by asking someone to blow under a sheet of paper I have sitting on two books.  I offer them a dollar if they can blow it up and off the paper.  When it does the opposite of what they think it is going to, I can talk for twenty minutes, explaining the principle and how it relates to flight and why the windows blow out of your house in a tornado and how a curve ball works.  I could do the demonstration after we have learned it, but doing it before makes them want to understand it.  It doesn't take a different amount of time, and it is way more fun.

The second is to follow some rabbit trails.  As you can tell from the title of my blog, I believe strongly in the rabbit trail.  I have always believed that this is where most of the learning happens.  I have also been teaching long enough to know that you can't just follow EVERY trail wherever it leads.  You have the pressures of curriculum, AP requirements, and common core.  Some of you may even have administrations who expect you to cover the entire book.  This doesn't mean you can't allow for some of them.  There are a lot of ways to do this.  Have a five minute time period after they start asking questions where you keep calling on kids before you have to say, "Now, back to what we were doing because we do have to finish."  Invite your kids to e-mail questions to you, and then use a half day (when it is hard to accomplish a whole lesson anyway) to answer them.  I knew an elementary teacher who had a stack of post its on every student's desk so they could write questions as they thought of them and then ask them when she had open question time.  If you teach the same subject long enough, you will know where it is important to work in time because the same questions arise every year at that time.  When I teach sound waves, I spend one day on the human ear because it helps to connect all the stuff we learn about frequency and amplitude and timbre if they understand the ear process the wave.  After a few years, I realized that I was answering questions every year about ears popping on a plane, tubes, and hearing under water.  I had planned my lesson bell to bell and quickly answer those and then talk really fast about everything else.  Now, I know those rabbit trails are coming, and I leave time in my lesson for them to ask.  If they don't ask, I throw the rabbit in myself.  I say something like, "Sometimes, people ask about why your ears pop on an airplane.  Do you ever wonder about that?"  That's usually enough to get them going the direction I want, thinking they saw the rabbit themselves.  For those worried curriculum coverage, how is the discussion of pressure on the eardrum not a reinforcement of what we already learned about pressure in the curriculum?  The discussion on hearing under water is introducing the concept of refraction, which they will be learning later in the same chapter.  They'll be so much more interested in learning that when I say, "Remember the answer to Brad's question a few weeks ago about hearing under water?  Guess what?  Light does that too."

There are all kinds of ways to take advantage of student curiosity, whether they have it when they walk through the door or you throw a rabbit at them to take them down the trail you want.  They will  like your class more and (more importantly) learn the material more deeply and fully.  That's what we all want, no matter what the other pressures are.

ACSI Nexus

I know I already posted this week, but since we are at the ACSI teacher convention, I thought I would discuss some of what I learned here.  This is really an act of public note taking more than anything, but it could potentially help you as well.  Who knows.  ACSI has invited us to tweet our thoughts and download their app, so I thought adding a little blogging to the technological mix couldn't hurt.  Also, it is helping me pay attention because two days in an uncomfortable chair in a darkened room can be taxing on the attention span.  We are also participating in a school scavenger hunt while we participate.  One of the challenges was to take a selfie of your scavenger team at the sign in table.  Here's my group Bluevengers  as well our librarian and English teacher husband wife team.  They appear to be psyched about Nexus Live.





Dr. Dan Egeler - A Pilgrimage to Servanthood:  Wearing the Mantle of Humility
Told story in which a monkey "rescues" a fish from the water and thought he had done a good thing.  What was right for the monkey wasn't right for the fish.  Servanthood is as important to leadership as any other quality, and it requires humility.  Humility is considered a virtue.  (Personal reaction:  That's supposed to be true, but I'm not sure it is in our culture.  We seem to think pride is a virtue and anything that humbles you is "shaming.")

Characteristics of a Christian Community
- hospitality
- gratitude
- truth telling
- promise keeping

Students need to connect to who the teacher is.  We must teach their head, their hands, and their hearts.  We do so with our hearts.  The heart provides the catalyst for the head and the hands to be effective.

Five Elements for a Pilgrimage to Servanthood
1.  Openness - the ability to welcome people into your presence and make them feel safe.  Don't form an opinion about an important matter until you have heard all the facts.

2.  Acceptance - the ability to communicate value, worth, and esteem to another person.  Who a person is now is different from who they will be.  The person you may be tempted to ignore or treat badly now may one day be a person you would be tempted to worship.  People are not mortals; they are eternal.  There are no neutral contacts.  We are either nudging people toward eternal horror or eternal splendor.

3.  Trust - the ability to build confidence in a relationship.  Both parties must believe that the other will not intentionally hurt them and that the other will act in their best interest.

4.  Learning - the ability to glean relevant information about, from, and with other people.  This does not come naturally to most people.  It requires trust and humility.  (Personal reflection:  You must learn from those who you want to teach.)  Those you think you have nothing to learn from, you may learn everything from if you have humility

5.  Understanding - the ability to see through others eyes. It requires the other four because there must be openness, acceptance, trust for people to open up to us.  Only when we learn from them will we have the ability to see through their eyes.

Cynthia Tobias - Motivating Students to Take Charge of Their Own Success
This is one of my favorites of the day.  Book:  The Way They Learn

"My first year of teaching, I was so excited that all my students would want to learn and think like me.  After all, I was a living example of how the way I think works."

I can help students figure out for themselves how they work, how they think, and how to be successful.

How to get the most of what you are learning:
1.  Know Your Strengths - Once you know them, you can make a plan for how to use them.

2.  Figure Out What You Need to Succeed - Come up with a plan.

3.  Prove That it Works - If you try your plan and it works, keep doing it.  If it doesn't work, don't do it again.

How Do You concentrate?  If you are physically uncomfortable, it is impossible to pay attention.  Whoever makes school furniture needs to know this.  The brain can only absorb what the seat can endure.  Sometimes it is as easy as changing the temperature of your classroom.  It's not always neurological.  Try some simple things just to make kids more comfortable.

"There are two kinds of people - morning people and those would like to shoot morning people."

How Do You Remember?
Auditory kids remember what they hear, but not necessarily what they hear from others but themselves.  Auditory kids need time to talk.  They will talk about what they are learning, but it will be mixed in with other things.  It doesn't count if you don't say it even if it has been on the board all week.

Visual learners look for minor flaws because they are easily distracted by visual cues.  Visual learners are more literal than most.  They will be focused by the stain on your tie or where you got your shoes.  They have a picture in their mind of everything.  Pause to give them time to picture your instructions.

Kinesthetic learners are born to move.  You need to allow them opportunities to move.  Put in a swivel chair or something they can bounce their feet on.  If you get them to sit still they will not be paying attention.  Adults have learned more subtle ways to move.  It not practical to expect someone to be still (unless they are in an MRI).

If you can do three things in every class, you will increase exponentially their ability to remember.
1.  Give them something to talk about.
2.  Give them something to visualize in their minds.
3.  Give them something to do.

How Do You Process Information?
Analytical thinkers will get their work the second they get back if they didn't call from their sick bed. They pay attention to every detail but miss the big picture.

Global thinkers will ask if you missed them the second they get back.  They pay attention to big picture, plot, and story.  They learn intuitively and are very creative, but they think they are dumb because school are not really designed for them.

School doesn't always bring out the best in us, but you are not at an ordinary school if you are a Christian educator.  You know how important it is to reach out to help every student learn.  Communicating ways they can be successful and confident is not as hard as it sounds.  Nobody likes to be analyzed, but everyone likes to be understood.  You do not have any students in your classroom by accident; God put them their for a purpose.

Jon Bergmann - Taking the Flipped Classroom to the Next Level
Book:  Flipped Learning

We have way too much "sit and give" and not enough active, engaged learning.  Flipping your classroom changes what happens IN the class.  Instead of sending them home to do the difficult cognitive tasks, they can do the lower parts of Bloom's taxonomy at home and do the harder parts while we are there to support them.  This puts the point of need with the right resource.

Turning the Bloom's pyramid upside down is what you do to get a pHD.  If we make the pyramid a diamond, we will spend the majority of our class time on analysis and application.  The students will think the homework is easier, and then they will be excited that they don't have to listen to the teacher at school when they can interact with their friends.

Next steps:
1.  Rethink Classtime - Flipping is NOT about the videos.  It is about what you do in class.  There is a lot more time for guided practice, walking around checking in on your students, peer tutoring, lab time, small group work, debates, small projects.  It gives you class time back.  Trying to have them do something active every day is a mistake.  Use the class time for the best use, not just the fun use.  Don't feel guilty about using it the best way.

2.  Interactive Notebooks - Questions to answer about the video to keep them engaged while they are watching.  Include a link to the video, so they can use them at the same time.  Using a tracking tool (like EduCannon) will hold them accountable and give the teacher formative data.

3.  Flipping Leads to Mastery - It makes for a bit of chaos because everyone is on different pages at different times, but they are all progressing at their own rate.

4.  Flip Your Instructions - Put your instructions on video.  You won't have to use class time, and they will always have access to it.

5.  Time for student created content in the room.

6.  It gives kids choices.  If they prefer to read the textbook than to watch the video, let them (if the content is the same).  Be careful about giving them TOO many choices, but if they have the power to choose based on their method of learning, they will learn it better.

7.  The station model is like centers for elementary school.  The class is divided into three areas in the room.  It could be writing, research, and project work or whatever fits the lesson your are teaching.   It makes your class kind of a workshop.  Another version of this is the station rotation or In-Flip Model.  If your students can't watch videos at home, one of your stations could be the video.

8.  Choice boards - Give 2-3 choices using activities that cover Bloom's taxonomy in each of a few levels.  Giving them choice, even if it is just the order you do it in, is empowering.  Student Choice boards allow them to choose the input and the output while everyone has the same objective.  Choice days are days the students can choose.  Activity days are the days when everyone does the same thing together.

9.  Explore-Flip-Apply - They start with inquiry until they need help.  Then they get the video when they are ready for it or need it.

Challenging Thought:  The world has changed.  They have access to information like we can't even imagine.  Most of what we teach is on youtube.  We can be doing so much more than content delivery.  "If you could be replaced by a youtube video, you should be."


Kristin Barbour - Walk a Mile in Students’ Shoes: Differentiating Between Low Motivation, Curriculum Casualties, and Learning Disabilities
Science has been studying learning with brain in mind for 20 years.  We understand that learning disabilities are neurological, so they don't get better in a short period of time.  

Phases of the Learning Process
1.  Input:  perception  
2.  Elaboration:  processing, attaching meaning to the input, attaching a priority to it
3.  Output

Give students time and tools to help with identification.

Lots of kindergarten level examples that I am not taking notes on because if my physics students need a letter of the week, there are bigger problems than I have.

This workshop is a reproduction of the FAT City Workshop done decades ago, but she is not giving credit to Rick Lavoie, so I am going to.  I watched this video in 1997 in a college class.



Alan November - The Top Survival Skill for Teachers:  Critical Thinking Using the Web
If you ask kids, "do you know how to use Google," they will say yes.  However, they may not be using it effectively.  They don't know how to get the best quality of information.  

We should be balanced in our discussion of technology and acknowledge what can go wrong as well as what goes right.  Google's algorithm assigns the most points when the search term is in the web address.  It is not because it is the best information.  It is also geographically biased.  It places priority on sources closest to you.  This will keep you from getting information from sources near the source of the topic.  If you google Iran Hostage Crisis and use no sources from Iran, you are getting biased information.

When we teach kids about books. we teach them to understand the design of print; but we don't really do that with the internet.  If you are preparing students for universities, you must prepare them to find content on the web.  We should teach them to compare and contrast information.   They might be manipulated if they don't understand the structure.

If you want to know how Google works, Google the word google and operator.  You can get the google guide.  Not teaching kids to use the google operators is the equivalent of not teaching them the Dewey decimal system in the library.

Ways to understand information.  Use the site operators for searching.  Use easywhois to find out who owns the site.  Use the way back machine to find the original website when it was launched.  Use country codes to limit your search to those countries.  The internet gives the reader more tools to understand information, once you know how.  If you don't know how, it is phenomenally dangerous.  

The most powerful knowledge tool is Wolfram Alpha.  It is only vetted scholarly information.  "It is not like Google, where a twelve year old can give you constitutional law advice."

We should redesign our assignments so they can't look up the answers.  Watch the TED talk from the Wolframs as they discuss what Wolfram Alpha and like tools are going to do to education.  The problems we give kids need to catch up with the power of the information.  Instead of asking kids to compare the nutritional content of two foods, ask them to design a food plan for the space station.  Show kids a picture of a baseball field and ask them to design the perfect bundt because only a human can do that.

A lot of questions in life are not well organized.  They are messy.  Teachers should write messy problems.  Give them more information than they actually need to solve the problem.  Change the word solve to involve.  Solve means every student gets the same answer.  Involve means the student has to design the problem.  

Follow Jessica Caviness on twitter to see how you can make kids design problems.


Dr. Bill Brown - Effective or Defective?  Equipping Students for Lifelong Vision
All of the things we are learning converge when we think about the context of what we do.

The Bible opens and closes with humanity in close fellowship with God.  In between is the fall and God restoring what was lost.  

If your mission statement doesn't line up with God is doing, let God get in the way of your mission statement.  You are where you are for a reason.  What part is God giving you to play in His movement in whatever area you are in?  You are part of the big plan of God.  Bigger is not better; better is better.  

How can we measure our effectiveness?  You measure it 5, 10, 15 years after they leave.  Are they still walking with Christ?  Ask them if they were prepared for the world they are now facing?  They need to know that you will never become in the future what you are not becoming today.  We must educate for the world as it is becoming.  

Agendas are short sighted activities to accomplish near sighted goals.  Visions are expansive plans to achieve ambitious aspirations.  We should be vision driven, not agenda driven.  The only true vision is the one that God has, and we are part of that.  How are you communicating vision to your students, your community, your faculty, and your staff?  You don't necessarily have a Biblical worldview just because you know the Bible.  You have to learn to think worldviewishly.  Don't fill a bucket; light a fire.  There is no safe place in the world where you aren't going to be bombarded with alternate views.  We must prepare our kids to hold on to their faith in the face of opposition.  

Know God
Know God's Word
Know God's World

Don't let them think being a Christian is knowing how to follow the rules.  We need to equip and mentor them with God's word.

Action Steps:  Be More Intentional
1.  Develop or affirm your mission statement
2.  Make sure everyone knows your vision.
3.  Survey your parent and alumni to see if you are accomplishing your mission and vision.
4.  Your own walk is crucial.  You can't give away what you do not have (It's like measles).

Times are tough.  There is every reason in the world to give up - but no reason in heaven.


A tweet from another conference attender: 
Monica Remer ‏@MonicaRemer  3m

3 minutes ago

#NEXUS15 if you are different in ways that do not matter then you are just weird.

Dr. Venard Gant - Head, Hands, Heart:  Three Dimensional Education
Let's view Christian education in an expanded light.  If we as Christians are the light of the world, shouldn't our education also be light?  Can we take Christian education and expand it from a defensive posture to an offensive posture?  Rather than protect them from the darkness, we should prepare them to make a difference in the darkness.

I always ask the question "why you?" when I go into a classroom.  I always know the answer is I Peter 2:9 - because you are a chosen generation, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a peculiar people.  He called you out so you may show his marvelous light.  Is our posture causing us to underperform.

The buzz word is to provide students with a "world class education."  That's the best they can come up with.  Their best line should be our baseline.  We want to give them a "Kingdom class education."  

Education should be in three dimensions, not just the two that the world focuses on.  The world focuses on the head and the hand, but they don't get a return on their investment if they leave out the heart dimension.

The facts of God's world should be integrated with the truth from God's word.  If you have worldly content devoid of God's context, it will inevitably lead to wrong conclusions.  For that reason, we must be students of the Word because His Word is truth.  We are also empowered by God's Spirit.  What do we do with this power?  Without his power, the best we can be is influential.  With the Spirit of God on your credentials and pedagogy, you can be impactful.  

God isn't limited to working in only favorable circumstances.  He can work with all children.  We don't want to communicate that the best God can do is teaching children who are highly educable.  It would be nice if we had kids who don't need grace and kids who don't sin.  They are not beyond God's ability.

We are equipped with God's love.  The words on the page are powerless to transmit life.  When we take the stuff of the curriculum and make it a living curriculum through your love, you can impart life.  

There are no children or families that are beyond the scope of God's power.  We take the cards no one else wants and give them a kingdom class education so that they will walk out saying, "The Lord - He is God."


Dr. Kevin Washburn - Fueling Learning:  Sparking Curiosity in the 21st Century Classroom
This is the speaker I have most been looking forward to hearing.

You don't start from a place of know-how.  You start from a place of curiosity.  Intelligence gets an awful lot of press, but even Albert Einstein put more importance on curiosity than intelligence.

Learning is movement, and movement requires energy.  The same neural network that is active when you take a physical step toward a goal is active when you learn something.  The brain interprets learning a movement.  

Curiosity drives interest, excitement, and exploration.  It is a hunger to know.  It is sad to realize that all children are curious, but most students are not.  What are schools doing to take away their curiosity?  One of the things technology provides us is the opportunity for self directed learning, but they won't do it if they aren't curious.  

Engagement does not equal curiosity.  Looking at cat videos online is engaging, but it isn't sparking the curiosity we are looking for.  How do we make them curious?

Atmosphere - Curiosity thrives in atmospheres of freedom where adults respond positively to student questions.  If your students have a fear of asking questions, they aren't free.  Curiosity is caught through conversation.  Respond to children with questions. This requires attentiveness to every situation to see where you can take advantage of moments.  How adults respond to children influences how curious they become.  Think about what you are communicating to the child by the way you respond to a question.

Model Curiosity - Show them that you are trying to figure out things.  Tell them what you are wondering about.  Show them the process of seeking information for personal interest.  When students are in the midst of learning, model questions with them.  What new questions can we ask now that we have information.

Encourage Curiosity Even When it Goes Off Track - Curiosity is more critical to their development than the material.  Coverage can be the enemy of learning.  Work in time for the questions they may have.  Question and support rather than directing and explaining.  When you start explaining, the child stops thinking.  Be cautious with cautions because we need more freedom to their questions.

Don't Try to Make Your Classroom Foolproof - You can't learn resilience through easy success.  You learn it by regrouping after a setback.  If you are trying to overcome an intelligence deficit, realize that that is only half of the formula.  The other half is a combination of curiosity and resilience.

Question, Guide, Allow the Student to FIND the Answers because it produces more robust learning than explaining things to them.  Prompt and provide opportunities to spark curiosity.  Study how Rod Sterling got you to want to know things.  He raised questions in your minds before going to commercial.  Bring in an element of mystery to your class.  "Why do you think you have a radish?"

Allow students to generate and record questions.  As soon as you've got them asking questions, you've got them.  The quality of the question matters, so help them refine the questions.  It makes a difference in the brain's response if it is too challenging or too easy.  The right level of questions releases dopamine, which makes the brain happy and also makes better connections between brain cells.

Curiosity makes learning and recall stronger.  If the question is too simple, the brain doesn't care.  Keep encouraging the student to ask why questions until you get to an appropriate level.  Keep asking why - just like 4 year olds do.  Why and how questions produce more mystery than where, who, and what questions.
- If it is too simple, ask why.
- If it is too general, open or close it until you get to a good question.
- If it seems like the wrong question, contextualize it.

Curiosity doesn't deserve the bad reputation it gets.  It didn't kill the cat.  Curiosity drove Moses to an encounter with God.  He wondered about the burning bush.  

Eric Metaxas - Miracles
Author of Bonhoeffer -

What you are doing makes a huge difference.  You are probably not half as aware of it as I am.  You probably forget that all the curriculum stuff is periphery to the big questions.  Who am I?  Where do we come from?  Where are we going?  What is the meaning of life?  Only Christian education deals with those types of questions.  Others avoid the questions because the believe life doesn't have meaning, which is bleak.  The difference you are making is beyond belief.

At the heart of our teaching is the understanding that we are made in the image of God.  Others must look at their worldview, which is that we are here completely by accident.  If they really believed that, they would kill themselves or go insane.  The idea of meaning wouldn't even exist.  All your feelings would be meaningless.

Making it explicit is great, but even if you aren't making it explicit, the assumptions that you have impart things to them they won't get anywhere else.

The heroic is a concept missing from secular education but is central to Christian education.  God gives us examples throughout scripture.  Faith is not about principles or rules, even though those things are important.  It's about Jesus, who was a person who came to live among us.  We transmit what we believe through life with the people around us.  You draw people to Jesus by being like Jesus.  We are potentially a hero to those around us, whether we know it or not, which is why we should know it.

When we read biographies of inspiring people, we realize the power of what they did.  Those things are forgotten in our culture because we aren't being taught them any more.  

Without a Christian worldview, you have no basis for believing that racism is wrong or any other moral standard.  With a Christian worldview, the answer is the Imago Dei.  We've got to be able to call evil evil rather than letting things go, calling it culture.  Slavery was wrong even though it was culturally accepted.  Boys being raped in Afghanistan is evil whether or not it is their culture.  This is why moral relativism cannot work.  Truth is not relative; it is not a cultural construct.  WE HAVE TO COMMUNICATE THIS TO OUR STUDENTS.  

William Wilberforce is a hero we must know.  Dietrich Bonhoeffer is another one.  He said, "Silence in the face of evil is evil."  He stood up to the Nazi's.  The fact that his story ended badly doesn't mean he isn't a hero.  We must tell the stories of these people for others to be inspired by them. n't

Who are you affecting today?  What you do matters.  When you give young people stories of heroes and heroines, you are giving them something others do not have because we are so scared in our culture to say someone is better than others.  We are so afraid of offending people that we are afraid to give them heroes.  

God doesn't give you blessings for yourself.  He gives them to you so that you can bless others.  Greatness doesn't belong to a gender or a race.  IT ONLY BELONGS TO GOD.  

God calls us into all kinds of things because we need them all.


David Kinnaman - Why Our Students are Leaving the Church and What You Can Do About It as a Teacher
We want to understand through the lens of research what we can do about the trend of young people leaving the church.  

The top reasons of young people leaving the church is that the church is overprotective, sexually repressive, anti-science, exclusive, appeared to be doubtless, and provided shallow experiences.  

The world young people live in today is more complicated and complex than ever before.  Are we meeting the challenge of helping students deal with that complexity?  We have to be honest with ourselves about the students we have that are taking a journey away from faith.  Christians are viewed as irrelevant and extremist today.  

The way young people leave the faith fall into three categories
- Nomads - These are individuals who say they are still Christian, but they are not involved in any way with a church or Christian activities.  They got to church on Christmas and Easter only.
- Exiles - Faith doesn't fit with the place where they are in culture.
- Prodigals - These are individuals who say they are NO LONGER Christians.

We live in a complicated, accelerated culture.
The best human inventions in history are in our pockets.  Students spend 7 hours a day on some kind of media.  We have become hyperlinked, multi-careered.  Pop culture is our religion, but we crave meaning.  We are lonely participants who are addicted to media and grazing information.  

When Daniel lived in Babylon, he had be faithful in a different context.  We are living in digital Babylon.  Our students are living in a culture in which people are skeptical of scripture.  We must teach them that the Bible has a countercultural narrative.  Teach Ecclesiastes to a fame obsessed culture because it shows that the end of all their ambition is vanity.  The idol of our time is fitting in and being up to speed.  

Christian school students struggle with doubt more than public school students.  They are more likely to remain active in the church.  They seem to want more from their churches and to have a more integrated experience.  Within this context, effective Christian education will provide meaningful relationships, cultural discernment, leadership development, vocational discipleship, and a firsthand experience of Jesus.  

Millennials have been marketed to so much that they are skeptical.  They think of our outreach as something we are paid to do in order to get them on our side, not as a genuine effort at relationship.  

Be a learner.  Emphasize purity within culture while having proximity to culture.  Educate with young people.  Teach a right theology of sexuality, work, and influence.  Show how the Bible intersections with vocation and changes us as people.  Model discipleship in our lives.  Pray like we are exiles.

As much as we try not to be, we are part of the spirit of the age; so we have to work hard to examine our own hearts for the ways we are absorbing the culture of the age.  What traditions are we keeping that need to be rethought?