Stress - Don't Avoid It (Teach Students to Embrace It)

This time of year is often one of the most stressful in schools.  

It's usually a time with projects because you have learned enough to do something with your knowledge and far enough from the end of the school year to have time to grade them.  It's a time with yearbook deadlines, tech weeks, post-season games, and college acceptance/rejection letters.  For some reason, there is a week during this time of year when it seems kids are having a test in every one of their classes.  

Our impulse as adults is to alleviate all this stress in the name of mental health, but I would suggest instead that it is a time to teach coping mechanisms.  Removing stress may seems like it is good for them, but removing stress does not build strength. Coping with stress does.  It's focused on their future mental health.

In biology, we have learned that organism that don't experience stress die. Appropriate amounts of stress stimulate growth.  

Consider weight training.  You intentionally subject your muscles to a higher than normal load. The muscle fibers break down. But that causes them to rebuild with more dense connections. That increase in muscle density makes it less stressful the next time it experiences the same load, reducing future stress through response to current stress.  

Temporary life stress also causes us to respond. We develop coping mechanisms that we can employ in the future. We gain strength, knowledge, and skills that keep the same load in the future from being quite as stressful.

It's important to recognize the difference between stress and trauma.  Stress is an increase in load over your normal state.  Trauma is a load increase that is either high enough or comes on fast enough to break the dams of your coping mechanisms. 

Returning to the weight training metaphor - If you are at point where you normally bench press 50 pounds, and you put 60 pounds on the bar, you will likely struggle a bit, lift it with poor form for a while, and be rather sore at the end of your session. That's a stress that leads to growth and may eventually lead to ability to lift 100 pounds if you add to it incrementally as you adapt over time.  If, however, you put 100 pounds on your bar today, you will likely drop the bar on your chest and break your sternum or crush your lungs.  That's trauma - It's not possible for you to handle it with normal responses.

I'm not suggesting we subject kids to chronic stress all year in order to build strength. I'm suggesting that a week here and there of higher than normal stress need not be avoided.  They may look back at the end of it and recognize they are stronger than they thought.  They'll definitely learn to deal with future stress better.

Change, Loss, and Why Your Brain Hates It

According to recent surveys, the most common sources of stress include divorce, the death of a loved one, job loss, marriage, retirement, having a child, starting a job, losing a job, and moving.  Some of these are obvious.  The death of a loved one and divorce involve irreplaceable loss, which leads to heartbreak as I wrote about earlier.  Others seem inconsistent - losing a job and starting a job produce fairly equal stress.  Getting married, having a child, and moving all seem like they should be good things, and they are, yet they make this list.  

Why?

Because change is stressful.  All change.  Even the best changes in the world.  

Again, why?

Your brain has thousands of functions, from processing sensory information and telling your diaphragm to move regularly to thinking about the sentence coming out of your mouth to planning for dinner.  

While it has thousands of functions, it has only one job.  Keeping you alive.  

As such, your brain really likes the status quo.  Whatever may be going on your life right now, you are alive.  To quote Dr. Deborah Gilboah, in her 2021 Learning and the Brain Conference Keynote speech, "When change happens, even good changes, your brains say, 'Cool. Cool.  Could ya' die, though."  So, moving is stressful, even if you have the money to pay for your dream house, because you brain is wondering why you would move out of your current house when you are alive in it.  You could be standing at the altar, looking at the best thing that has ever happened to you, heart totally full of love, and your brain will be screaming, "But as a single person, you were alive! Why are you messing with that?!?"

There are a few things you can do to help yourself through the stress of change, and it is not to say something like, "The only thing constant in life is change."  It's not even necessarily to think about the good things that could result from the change.  That's not going to help your change-resistant brain because those are changes too.  

• One thing is to minimize how much dwelling you do.  You have to think about the changes sometimes because they require planning, but it is helpful not to persevere on the fearful thoughts that take you down the rabbit hole of what happens six steps down the road.  When that enters your mind, have healthy distractions (music, crossword puzzles, knitting - whatever works for you).  Setting boundaries on what you think about is possible, but it requires discipline.
• Another option is to minimize how much change happens at one time to the extent that you can control it.  If you are buying a house, it might not be the best time to take on a promotion at work, even one that would lead to more money.  Perhaps find out if one of those things could be put off for six months or so.  It's not always possible to prevent some of the changes from happening, but where you can, you should prevent them from piling up.
• Even when a lot of things are changing, a lot of things aren't.  Remind your brain of the things that will remain consistent.  I'm changing careers right now, and much is changing; but I can remind my brain that we will still come to the same house at the end of the day to the same cat we've had for years.  Reminding my brain that much of what I have in the state where I am currently alive will remain.
• The best thing you can do when change is stressful is to remind yourself that the last change you experienced didn't kill you.  That change had a neuroplastic effect on your brain cells, and reinforcing that can help your brain remember that there is a range of variables in which it can and has remained alive.

With all that said, your brain is going to find the change stressful no matter what you do to help it out, so you may just have to grit your teeth and hang on tightly through it, knowing you won't die even when your brain thinks it might.

 

 

This is Your Brain on Change

"Nothing is so painful to the human mind as a great and sudden change." 
- Mary Shelley in Frankenstein

Change is stressful.  All change.  Even good changes are stressful.  Knowing why the brain reacts to change the way it does won't prevent it from being stressful, but it might help you deal with it.

A few years ago, Dr. Deborah Gilboa said this at a Learning and the Brain conference. - "Your brain has many functions but one job, to keep you alive.  Whatever difficulties you may be going through, you are alive.  Any change, no matter how good, might change that.  So you could be ecstatically happy about a marriage proposal, and your brain will respond with, 'Cool, but could you die, though?' That is why change is stressful."  Your brain prefers to keep things the same as much as possible.

And yet, that's not how life works.  The Greek philosopher Heraclitus is credited with the idea that the only constant in life is change.  You change as you learn; so do others. Friends get married and have children, changing both their lives and yours.  Students graduate, and co-workers leave the company. Bosses change, and inflation happens. You get the idea. 

So, if the reason for the stress is that your brain is trying to maintain your current state of "aliveness," it makes sense to trick your brain into thinking of changes as smaller than they are. No matter how irrational it sounds, in terms of your brain, the bigger the change, the more significant the chance of death.  The reason most New Year's Resolutions fail (aside from them being stupid, as I've discussed before on this blog) is that we set goals requiring huge and immediate change. In the misguided belief that dropping a ball in Times Square will renew us overnight, we suddenly take our calorie intake from Christmas level to third-world level; and our brain freaks out.  The popularity and success of smoking cessation helpers like nicotine gum and patches show that stopping cold turkey is expecting too much change too fast.  

Small changes are more doable because they scare your brain less. A smaller change might carry a smaller risk of death with it, so your brain doesn't cause you to fear it as much.  Adding a nutritious item to each day or removing one serving of junk food won't make your brain think you are experiencing a famine, making you crave every calorie you see.  That change is sustainable, so it will soon stop feeling like change.  If you have decided you spend too much time on social, your brain will accept it more if you go down by 15 minutes every day this week and then 15 minutes again every day next week than it will if you go down by 30 minutes overnight.  The less "change-y" it feels, the less anxious your brain will be.  Unless your bad habit is immediately dangerous, stepping down is better than a sudden stop.

I teach a study skills class, and two weeks ago, we talked about the organization of study materials and environments.  Some of them are natural organizers and others are a hot mess.  I told those who were a hot mess that I wasn't asking them to become like "the color-coded matching folder" people; I was just asking them increase by one level - perhaps one folder for things to hand in tomorrow.  This is a small change that can last the rest of the school semester.  Perhaps, then, you can step it up one more level in the future.

Some things, of course, cannot be done in steps.  If you are moving from one house to another, having a baby, or leaving a job, you cannot really do that in small doses.  In those times, it would be most helpful to remind yourself of the things that are not changing, no matter how small or to focus on the ways in which that change will improve your life (to remind your brain that you aren't likely to die).

Change is inevitable, but you can, as the great Daniel Willingham put it, "Outsmart Your Brain."  So, be realistic in your goal setting, and give your brain time to adjust and remind it that some changes are good.

Don't Cause Your Own Stress

This week, we had our first community-building group of the school year.  My group is 8th graders, and the deans had given us a little activity.  Students were given the outline of a t-shirt that was divided into squares that were meant to be filled in with favorites - favorite color, fruit, song, movie, etc.  For most students, this was what it was meant to be, a fun activity.  

One student stressed over it the whole time. 

• "Do I have to do it?"  Well, yes, this is what we are doing today.  
• "Can I just write words in the square?"  Some of them could be that, but maybe make the words fun.  The example shows how you can do that.
• "I can't draw."  No one is looking for great artwork.  Just have fun with it.

She finally gave it a half-hearted effort and did a pretty good job, but what I noticed was how she turned something that was meant to be relaxing into a stressful experience because she couldn't see how she could enjoy something even if she wasn't awesome at it.  She created her own stress because of her performative way of thinking.

This experience brought to mind a student that I had a few years ago who created her own stress in a different way.  Every day in middle school contains good moments and bad moments, events that make you smile and events you find mildly irritating.  Most students ride the waves of these small ups and downs pretty smoothly because they react to minor things in minor ways (and with some exceptions - they are hormonal after all - save the major reactions for major upsets).  This student, however, turned the little waves of the day into tidal events.  The slightest annoyance, like a student behind her putting their feet on her chair legs, was met with a dramatic response.  One day, I said to her, "I'm going to need you to learn how to level your responses.  You react to everything at a level 9 or 10, and that was a 2 at best."  

When I joined the Y in March, or every new class I took, I approached the instructor and said, "I've never done this before.  What do I need to know?"  Most instructors answered me with information - how to set my bike, what size weights I would need, etc.  These were all important, but the best answer came when I took cardio kickboxing for the first time and approached Matt with that question.  He said, "Well, first of all, don't take yourself too seriously."  This was good advice for someone who was about to execute every move incorrectly.  If I thought I had to be good at everything to enjoy it, I would never have found this source of joy in my life.

Life is stressful in a lot of ways, but we don't have to make it more stressful for ourselves.  Stop thinking everything is bigger than it is, more important than it is.  Enjoy things for the sake of doing them rather than the outcome.  Let the stress you experience come from external sources.  Don't make rules for yourself that cause your more stress.

Teaching Videos - a Weird Coping Mechanism

Note:  This is a very "teacher-y" post.  If you aren't a teacher, feel free to keep reading, but don't expect to get much out of it.

The first time I heard about "flipping the classroom," I thought it seemed like something I might like to do every now and then, particularly if the practice problems for a concept were difficult enough that they needed more guided practice than independent practice.  I made a list of 5-6 topics I thought I might like to do it with, but I never did anything with that list.  That summer, I just could not summon the motivation to make those videos.  Perhaps I was daunted by the idea of recording my voice; perhaps I couldn't envision students watching the videos at home and figured I would have to reteach it anyway.  The bottom line, though, was that I didn't really believe in the concept enough to follow through with it.  That was 2015, and the videos never got made.

Enter the pandemic.  Teachers were challenged in ways we never had been before.  First, was the remote spring.  As a science teacher, the challenge was even more daunting because hands-on experiences were not possible.  I could demonstrate some things from my house, but there were a few that weren't feasible to show across a computer screen (black light demonstrations, lasers bouncing off of mirrors, color mixing, static electricity).  We made it work as well as we could, and I did end up making one video - not for the purpose of flipping the class but because I couldn't get my computer close enough to "the board" when I was live streaming, so I premade a video of the calculations I needed to show in a place where I could put the camera closer to the writing.

Then, came the hybrid year, a time I still don't know how to talk about with anyone who didn't do it.  As we split focus between the students who joined us from home and those in front of us, we exhausted our brain capacity each and every day.  We worked as hard as we could possibly work and made it (sort of) work while praying for the day we wouldn't have to do it anymore.  Then, we found that it was possible that virtual teaching might be part of our post-pandemic future.  Ideas were tossed around about asynchronous learning (which means pre-prepared videos).  I didn't want to even think about the possibility, but I had to adapt to the idea just in case; so I did what I do - I made a list.  I made a list of every topic I teach and what kind of video (document camera over my hand while I worked through a problem, voice-over images, etc.) might be best suited to teach each topic.  When I was done, my list had 118 items.

Thankfully, by the end of that school year, our administration had listened to our feedback and decided not to pursue this virtual plan.  But my list was already made, and I reasoned that it wasn't going to hurt to have a video pool in case I was absent one day or a student had an extended absence.  That summer, I made 63 videos, some of which do double duty because I teach some of the same topics in both 8th grade and physics, making it effectively 78 videos.  I didn't do a lot with them that year, except occasionally send one to someone who was out or asked for extra help.  The following summer, I made 15 or so more.  Last year, I gave everyone access to them on our LMS, and they were used pretty well (more on that in another paragraph), but because I didn't have one for everything, there were still some limitations on how I could use them.  This summer, I set out to finish the rest of the list.  When I left for camp, there were still two left to make, and I finished those the week we got back!  I now how have 118 videos of me teaching concepts (with images) or working example problems. 

So, you may be wondering how they will be used if we don't have a virtual program.  Here are a few ways these videos can be / have been helpful.

1. Mitigating Student Absences - Ask any teacher in America and they will tell you that attendance has become a real problem since the return from the pandemic.  It's not quite as bad at GRACE as other places, but we have certainly seen an upward trend in absences.  Families go on trips more frequently, and more students are on traveling teams that pull them out of class frequently.  When students send me emails informing me that they will be out Thursday and Friday of next week, I am now able to respond with, "Read pages 46-48 and watch the video on Free Fall."  Is it the same as being in class?  Absolutely not; nothing replaces real live teaching with peer interaction and retrieval opportunities with checks for understanding.  But it mitigates the absence.  They aren't coming back with no idea what we did while they were gone, and when they meet with me, it takes less time.
2. Study Help - Some students have used these videos to help them review things as they study.  In particular, the videos with math problems worked out have proved helpful.  They can pause, do step 1, then continue the video to see if they did it correctly.  Instant feedback!  They didn't all use them for this, but I know some of them did because I got an email telling me about an error and a student who thanked me for them in a teacher appreciation week card.
3. Squeezing in Content - At the end of the semester, we are often running out of time to cover everything.  Or sometimes, we are pushing up against a break, and I cut something out in order to end the chapter just before it.  These videos will give me a chance to include some of the less complex things that don't need as much explicit instruction from me by assigning the video as homework.

So, now that I have told you that I'm glad to have these videos at my disposal, let me set your teacher mind at ease.  I am not going to recommend that you do this, and I would actively resist any effort by administrators to push teachers into doing this.  

For one thing, it was something I chose to do with my own time out of fear and chronic stress.  I still don't know if it was a healthy coping mechanism.  I mean, it is certainly healthier than drinking or overeating or compulsive shopping, but anything can be unhealthy.  (I learned that many years ago when I coped with grief by crocheting 28 scarves and giving myself carpal tunnel syndrome in my right wrist until I was in the craft store and said out loud, "Beth, step away from the yarn. You have a problem.").   Second, to do this right takes many, many hours.  I'm not sure people recognize how long it takes to edit video. It can take an hour to get just ten minutes of completed video.  The quickest ones were the math ones because it was just my hand under a document camera while I talked my way through solving the problem, so they required no editing afterward.  If you want to dip your toe in the water, maybe start with videos like that.  Lastly, video teaching is not the future.  I'm going write that again and use something I hate using, all caps.  VIDEO TEACHING IS NOT THE FUTURE.  We should have learned that from the pandemic, but I'm not sure we did.  As I said earlier, these videos mitigate people's absences, but they are not the same as engaging a class of students in real teaching.  Research shows this, and it IS a hill on which I am willing to die.  Do this if it is something you want to do, and enjoy the benefits I described earlier, but do not pressure yourself to do it because you think you should.

 

I'm Naming It - Chronic Stress Recovery Syndrome.

I don't respond to things appropriately anymore.  This week, five people were shot and killed four and a half miles from my house, and I have spent very little time thinking about it unless someone else brings it up.  Yet, I overreact to small setbacks during the day and laughed unreasonably hard at a story during this morning's sermon.  It's like the pandemic damaged my barometer.  My colleagues have reported they notice the same thing in themselves.

As it turns out, this is a symptom of dealing with chronic stress, which teachers and other essential workers have definitely been doing since the beginning of the pandemic.  Now that things are returning to somewhat normal, many have been feeling things they had not been during the height of the pandemic. I compare this to getting sick on the first day of Christmas break; your body knows how to power through the time it needs to an allows you to give in when there is a chance to use that energy in other ways.  While most people are calling what we have right now PTSD, I have been searching for another term.  For one thing, I am uncomfortable with the idea of being in the same category as those who have experienced acute trauma, like soldiers who have watched a friend die, kids who have witnessed and/or experienced abuse, or victims of bank robberies.  Our jobs were very hard, but our experience is not an acute high level event; it is a prolonged endurance of physical, mental, and emotional difficulty.  I have spent about a year searching for a name for what we are confronting, and I haven't found it.  Therefore, I have decided to name it myself. I am calling it Chronic Stress Recovery Syndrome.

Let me be clear from the start, I have no expertise or training in psychology.  What I'm good at is learning, so what I am about to talk about comes from reading and listening.  Also, I cannot speak to what this time has been like for doctors, nurses, restraunt employees, or Amazon delivery drivers, all of whom had to reinvent their practice at a time when their services were in the highest demand they had ever experienced.  I can only speak to teaching in my context. For me, that included a spring of remote teaching, a year of hybrid teaching, and year that was supposed to be normal but wasn't (due to the Delta and Omicron variants).  Also, since I have no professional expertise, my intent is to speak to those of us with relatively mild symptoms that we can treat ourselves.  If you are experiencing anything more than that, please seek the help of a qualified professional.

With those disclaimers in mind, here's what I have found.

The symptoms of chronic stress are:

• Fatigue - Teachers all over Twitter are talking about how tired they are.  I've seen things like, "I'm February tired, and it's only October."  (If you aren't an educator, you may not understand the idea of being February tired, but I have written about it before if you are interested.)  Any stress requires physical energy to manage.  During the hybrid year, we were learning so many new things, making decisions without being confident in them, and operating each day using every ounce of energy we had.  Some days, we operated at an energy deficit, and because it was a chronic experience, there wasn't time to refill those stores of depleted energy.  One thing I've learned is that fatigue may present itself differently in some people than others.  In most people, it will feel like exhaustion; in others, it may be muscle aches or soreness.  
• Emotional disregulation - This is what I was talking about at the beginning of the post.  You may overreact to some things and underreact to others.  As teachers, we have to be careful because answering an email from an emotionally dysfunction place can get us in trouble pretty quickly.  I found myself needing to apologize a few times last year for reacting to a student's behavior disproportionately.  
• Frequent headaches, digestive disruptions, and weight changes - Your brain and body are connected, so they tend to influence each other.  Fortunately, this is also part of helping yourself, so keep reading.
• Lowered immune system - Because your energy reserves are being used elsewhere, there isn't energy left for fighting off germs.  This is obviously not ideal in a pandemic.  You may also be more prone to injury and take longer to heal.  

So the news is not good for the chronic stress sufferer.  With time and intention, however, things can get better.  Here are some ways to help yourself, but don't expect it to improve overnight.  Your mind has been through a lot, so in the same way you would give your body time to recover from an injury or surgery, give your brain time to adapt to the new normal.  Here are some things you can do:

• Eat well and exercise - I know you are thinking that you can't possible exercise because you are so tired.  That's the paradox of exercise.  Once you have overcome the inertia, it gives you energy because your body is working the way it should.  If you go outside, you'll also get a much needed hit of vitamin D.  Grab a quick walk during lunch or your planning period, even if it is just five minutes.  Consuming nutrient dense foods will help with your immune deficiency and fatigue as well.
• Breathe well - Have you ever noticed during times of high stress that you take pretty shallow breaths.  You may be tired because you aren't fully oxygenating your blood.  It's posisble you havne't taken a deep breath in two and a half years.  I'm not suggesting that you have to take a yoga class, but a couple of times a day, take a second to notice your breathing and take a few deep breaths in a row.  It will calm you, decrease your heart rate, and help your blood pressure.
• Social interaction - One of the most difficult parts of social distancing was that we were, well, distant.  I went ten and a half weeks without being physically touched by another human being.  Even then, it was hugging my mom about once a week.  Thankfully, I have friends who made the effort to have lunches over Google Meet during that time and who made sure we talked for whatever time we could during the hybrid and depressed year.  We sat far across the room from each other while we ate lunch or after school, but we made each other laugh, which mattered a lot.
• Do things you don't want to - Early last year, when I noticed that I wasn't feeling right, I reached out to our school counselor (speaking of people who are still experiencing chronic stress - they are taking on all of ours - pray for them).  Perhaps the most important piece of advice she gave me was to do things I didn't want to do.  When you aren't mentally healthy, neither are your desires, so what you want to do is probably not what you should do.  You may want to stay home and curl up on the sofa with your cat, but you should do the opposite of that.  Following through on your commitments will help you feel a sense of accomplishment that staying in won't, and you will usually be glad that you participated in the activity once you are there.  Volunteer for something (It doesn't have to be huge, maybe a school activity or a church event that only lasts one day).  Meet a friend for lunch or a card game.  When you feel the pull of the bed or sofa, say out loud, "I should do the opposite of this."  You'll be glad you did.
• Gratitude - It is so easy to slip into cynicism.  It requires no effort at all.  Gratitude takes effort, but it is well worth it.  Unless you are a natural journaler, I'm not suggesting that you start a gratitude journal because you won't keep up with it, and then you'll feel like a failure, which helps nothing.  What I'm suggesting is that each morning or night (or both) that you think of something for which you are grateful.  It could be a small thing, like having enough school supplies when you know other people don't.  It could be a person you love.  It could be the fact that we aren't in masks this year.  It could be the flowers in your front yard or that you have a front yard.  Don't try to force yourself into something with rules (like writing down five things - again, you don't want to set yourself up for failure).  Instead, sit on the edge of the bed and think of something, anything, that you are glad to have in your life.

This will get better, but it isn't going to happen right away.  Every once in a while, notice that you are a little better than you were a week ago or a month ago, and make that one of the things for which you are grateful.  While there is no official diagnosis of Chronic Stress Recovery Syndrome because it is a term I made up, recognize that it includes the word "recovery."  It's not about perfection.  It's about getting better, and you will get better.

Magic of the Mundane

Do you know what a miracle walking on two feet is?  No, you don't.  It's okay that you don't.  You aren't crazy enough to think about things like this while just living your regular life.  I'm the person who thinks about physics all the time and how, while we think of friction, as a negative thing, we could not walk, swallow, or write with a pencil if it didn't exist.

Okay, let's talk about bipedal walking.  First, have you noticed that we are the only species (besides non-flight birds) that use it as a primary form of movement?  I'm not saying nothing else can walk on two legs, but they do it for short periods and then drop back down to four for actual travel.  My cat will get on his back legs to swat at something with his front paws, but he doesn't walk to the kitchen that way.

Why?  Because bipedal motion is inherently unstable.  Most animals keep three points of contact with the ground most of the time (exceptions when running fast or for defensive reasons, but for most regular activity, they keep a tripod on the ground).  Keeping three points of contact means that if the center of gravity shifts a bit, it is still supported (physics, just roll with me).

Now, let's look at the way we humans walk.  We stand on two legs, which means there is a much narrower range to how far our center of gravity can move before we lose our balance.  Then, we pick our foot up, shifting all of our weight to one foot and make ourselves fall forward!  The other foot comes down to support our shifting center of gravity and just as soon as it does, we repeat the process with the other foot.  How are we not falling down multiple times a day?  We aren't.  We walk without even thinking about it.  If you aren't amazed by that, adjust your sense of awe.  Even atheist researcher Steven Pinker,  in his book How the Mind Works, calls it miraculous.

Your hand is even more amazing.  It can open a vacuum sealed jar, turn a key in a lock, type, lift a fork, operate a pencil or chopsticks, stroke someone's hair, and pinch.  These are massively different skills involving different sets of muscles.  Have you had this experience?  You are on the way out of the house to get in your car when you realize the trash bag is full and needs to be taken out.  While still holding your car keys, you reach down and hook the bag with two fingers.  When you get outside, you lift the garbage can lid with your one free finger and drop the bag in without letting go of the keys?  What?  Do you realize how many different kinds of muscle maneuvers that involves? 

I could keep going, but here is my point.  We live our lives every day with awe-inspiring incidents all around us that we don't notice because they are so common.

This week is going to be stressful.  We are getting close to Christmas.  For some schools, that means there are exams.  For others, it means kids getting rambunctious.  For all, it means there will be tons of sugar coming into your building.  I haven't even mentioned the non-teacher related stresses of the holidays.

When you need something to destress during this week, look around.  Look at your hand while it holds a pencil or types on your computer.  Be amazed at the quick movement across the keys and how your brain and fingers work together without your even noticing.  Look at the paper you are writing on and think about how incredible it that it was once an actual tree with bark and leaves that there is no way you could write on with a pen.  Marvel at your calculator, which has more power than the computer that took us to the moon.  Be amazed by your stapler, your copy machine, or any of the other astonishing things that surround you in everyday life.  It will make you smile to recognize the magic in the mundane.

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's Turn the Pendulum Into a Spinning Top

I've referenced this many times on this blog, so I figured I should write a full post about it.  We have to stop the swing of the pendulum.

If you work in education for any amount of time, you will find that there is nothing new under the sun.  Any "new" buzzword that comes along can be found in the history of education under a different name.  We swing back and forth from one extreme to another, and every time we come back to an extreme, we think it is something new.

I have addressed the introvert/extrovert swing in a previous post.  For years, school was quiet and catered to introverts only.  Now, we act like introverts are strange and must be taught to be extroverts.  For many years, special needs children were self contained; then they were practically all thrown into the regular classroom.  Then some of them were brought back into their own space for at least part of the day.  After the launch of Sputnik, education became all about lab sciences.  Then, we decided we were leaving out the creatives and decided to prepare everyone for liberal arts degrees.  Now, we are back to insisting all kids must be STEM kids.  When I was in kindergarten, there was a high emphasis on the value of play.  Then, someone decided three-year-olds should start reading, so we sat the kids down.  Now, every time I turn around, there is a blog post on the value of play in Finland or somewhere.

Are you tired of swinging back and forth yet?  To be fair, the intent behind each of these swings to the extreme comes from a good-hearted place.  Research identifies a group of kids that are being neglected, and we feel bad for having ignored their needs.  We over-react, making a giant swing in the other direction.  We don't even realize that we will still be neglecting the needs of a group; it's just the other group.  It's time to jump off the swing!

As you watch the swinging fads come and go, remember that you possess something quite valuable - professional judgement.  You know that you have students in your classroom with a variety of needs, not introverts one year and extroverts the next.  You know that what will work for everyone is to employ a variety of techniques as often as you can.  No one expects you to be all things to all people in every single lesson, but you can spread out techniques throughout a week or a unit.  If you use a song to help with a math formula, you help the musicians.  If you allow students to draw a concept, you give the visual learners and artistic processors a chance to process.  Instead of swinging back and forth, maintain a spin of techniques.  This way you are never far from either of the extremes because you spend much of your time between them.  Let's turn the swing into a spinning top.

The problem with a swing is that you spend as much time traveling away from one student as you do another.  It takes some time to get all the way to the other extreme and a lot of energy to reverse the direction when you realize you have left those students behind.  Then the reversal makes you moving away from an entire set of your students again.  The beauty of a top is that the spin gives it balance.  You are keeping all your students in balance at the same time while quickly spinning around the needs of all your students.

You can give your students choices to show that you acknowledge the differences in their needs.  Perhaps there could be a homework assignment in which students have a choice of drawing or writing.  Maybe, there could be stations in your classroom for different activities on the same topic.  There are thousands of downloadable rubrics on the internet that can be modified to any assignment.  I'm not suggesting that students choose for themselves every day or even that they should because there are some things we all need to do together, but if they get to do so once per chapter, they will feel that you acknowledge their needs.

Teachers, you tell your students not to give in to peer pressure, so you shouldn't either.  When a new fad comes along, don't jump to adopt it.  If you try that, you will wear yourself out, and you will never feel secure.  When a new thing comes along, look at it.  Figure out which aspects, if any, will work in YOUR lessons.  Use the judgement that comes from experience to make decisions for YOUR students.  Have the courage to reject whatever aspect of the latest "thing" does not fit into YOUR classroom.  You don't have to stay on the swing.  Jump off and start spinning for everyone.

They Hate Me Right Now - and That's Good

Some of my 8th-grade students hate me right now, and I am okay with that.  Here's the story.

Every year, I assign my 8th-grade class a five paragraph persuasive essay on whether or not the countries of the world that have space programs should collaborate to put people on Mars.  We have finished the space unit, and most of them have been pretty psyched about the Apollo missions.  We have had a discussion in class about the ways in which a Mars mission would be different.  I bring in the media specialist to teach them about research using more than Google.  I give them a detailed rubric with all the requirements (see it below).  They should be fully prepared to form an intelligent opinion, based in research, and present it persuasively.

Every year, this is an incredibly stressful assignment because they are being asked to move from the thinking level of middle school students to that of "almost freshmen."  They are being asked to examine nuanced arguments from multiple sources and give a comprehensive view of their own opinion.  They are also being asked to discuss their own opinion in the third person, which either stresses them out or makes them angry.  They are being asked to include in-text citations as well as provide correct MLA format for their works cited page.  While I don't grade them at the senior or college level, I do recognize that they cannot improve as they progress toward those years if they don't get penalized for their errors.  

I actually hate grading this paper.  It isn't easy for a teacher to take off points when they know how hard their students worked on something.  I know how upset the overachieving student is going to be when they get back a score that is lower than what they are used to.  It takes forever to grade because I want to give them meaningful feedback that will help them improve, not just score the paper.  Every year, I say to myself, "Self, why do you giving this stinking paper?"

The answer to that question is that this is good and necessary, even if it is not fun.  Students at the 8th-grade level need to have a non-English teacher say, "This is what is wrong with your writing."  They are accustomed to thinking that proper writing only matters in their English classes.  The reality is, however, that they will have to write in every subject for the rest of their academic careers, and most of them will have to write in their adult life.  My father is an engineer.  He complains often about the English classes he was required to take in college, but he also spends most of his work time writing reports, patent applications, or proposals about his engineering work.  I was briefly his typist. While he cannot spell and has atrocious handwriting, he writes well.  No matter how much he may complain about those English classes, they served him well.

The process of improvement is never easy.  The primary reason that it is difficult is that the person must acknowledge they need improvement.  One of my students believes he is always the best at EVERYTHING he does.  He responded with dramatic whines and sighs when he received his graded paper.  He argued with me that it should be allowed to have first person because it is his opinion.  Admitting there is a problem is always the first step.  This isn't easy for anyone.



Because most of us are not self-aware in all areas of our lives, improvement will usually involve the input of others.  For improvement to occur in any of our lives, someone will likely have to point out our faults.  If we are not mature, we may be angry at that person.  Often, we will jump quickly to point out their flaws.  It is a self-defense mechanism, but it results in nothing.   As we mature, we may learn to take on that loving criticism in the spirit intended and react with humility.  It never becomes easy.

This paper, no matter how difficult it is for me and for them, is part of that maturing process.  They have someone who loves them and has demonstrated a desire for their success pointing out the ways in which they are not living up to the standard.  They will become better as a result, but that doesn't make it easy.  It does make it necessary.

The Week of Too Much

We've all had the week of too much.  We have too much to do and not enough time.  We have to much stress and not enough sleep.  We do a lot of complaining about the week of too much, but we get through it.  We don't die.  The world doesn't stop spinning on its axis, and we realize that we are not as weak as we thought.  That lesson then must be learned again by having another week of too much.

The week before Thanksgiving break is often the week of too much for our students at GRACE.  No teacher wants to ask them to hold information in their heads while their brains turn to mashed potatoes and they slip into a tryptophan coma, so we mostly plan their tests during the week before Thanksgiving.  They worry and complain.  They stress themselves, their teachers, and their parents out.  They feel like they are going to die.   But you know what?  They don't.

Just like we don't die when we have a week of too much, middle and high school students also don't die.  They come out on the other end, realizing that they are stronger than they thought they were.  This is a valuable and important lesson, and it would be wrong for us to rob them of it by giving them what they say they want.  It is important to go through stressful times because they train us for more stressful times down the road.

Last week, my students got to hear a veteran from Iwo Jima speak the day before Veteran's Day.  One of the things he said that stuck out to me was about a time near the end of his training.  He was dropped at an unknown location and given the address of a different location.  He had to get there.  They provided no help and no rescue.  This probably sounded mean to the students who were listening, but I thought about how prepared he was for the same scenario should he encounter it in Japan.  It seems mean that me give our students a lot of tests / projects in one week, but the reality is that they will be better prepared for those times inevitable to adulthood than they would be if we didn't.

No one likes to see their kids stressed, but a certain amount of stress is needed.  It is needed to prepare their brains, their stamina, and their energies for the future.  Chronic stress is bad, but brief periods of acute stress are actually necessary for building strength.  Support your students through the week of too much.  Listen to their complaints and empathize with them; but do not take away the valuable stress they are experiencing.  If you do, they will fail during their adult weeks of too much.

Changing it Up on the Fly

When I was in college, I learned to write detailed lesson plans.  These were multiple page documents with the objective laid out in excruciating detail, every material you might possibly use (right down to paper and pencils), descriptions of each and every activity, and the questions you planned to ask at the end of the lesson.  Absolutely no teacher writes in this level of detail after they get out of college. That doesn't make learning it without value, a point I will return to in a moment.

When I student taught, I was placed with two teachers who were at the opposite ends of the planning spectrum.  Mr. Bell was type A, high strung, sinister man who planned like a Bond villain.  He had plans for his plans, which were written always and only in fine point black ball point pen.  That was the right way to do it, and if you used a medium point, you were just wrong.  My second teacher was a "go with the flow," extroverted, relationship is everything kind of woman who was 9 months pregnant (our last days were the same day).  She would come into the room in the morning and say, "What are we going to do today?  Let's see."  When I had my "defense" of student teaching with the committee, they asked me what I learned from having such varied experiences.  My response was that I didn't think I could be either one of them.  I would probably slide around somewhere in the middle.

I am a planner.  Every personality test says so, and it's not like I needed a test to know it.  I have back up plans for my back up plans and make lists every day which may or may not be cross referenced to other lists.  However, teaching is far too fluid an experience to expect my plans to be completely set in stone.  A good teacher has plans, but a great teacher can make changes to those plans on the fly.

I can anticipate times when I know my plans will have to change, and (wait for it) I plan for them.  However, you won't always be able to expect these times.  You will have the best plan that involves the coolest website, only to find that the filter blocks that site on student computers.  You will have the perfect demonstration, but it requires that you be outside on a day when it rains.  You can't just fall apart in those moments and have students do nothing.  Let me repeat that a different way: There is nothing more dangerous than a group of students who have nothing to do!  When you are making your plans, consider the possibilities and figure out a back up.  Maybe there is a youtube video of that cool demo that you can use if it's not possible to do it live.  With a couple of days notice, your IT people might be able to unblock that website.  If you don't know it is blocked until the kids are in front of you, send an e-mail to IT, and start teaching the follow up first.  Maybe it will be unblocked by the end of class, and you can do the activity tomorrow.  Unless you teach math, there are many ways to change the order of what you are teaching to adapt to surprises.

Let's also remember this.  Our curriculum is important, but we are not the only person who will ever teach them any one topic or skill.  If my 8th grade doesn't learn about the polarity of a water molecule, they will encounter it again in biology as well as high school chemistry.  When you have to change things up, focus on having them learn what is most important, not just what you had planned for that day.  It may be that the lesson your students learn that day is the humility and flexibility modeled by their teacher.

What's So Hard About Being a Good Teacher?

Recently, one of my more outspoken 8th graders said, "I don't get what's so hard about being a good teacher.  I mean, you just do it."  We were in the middle of a lesson on the periodic table, so I didn't have time to go into a soliloquy about the training and experience that brought me to the point where I am today.  I replied, "That's because you only see what happens in these 45 minutes." and of course followed up with, "Read my blog."

His question, however improperly timed, does reflect the thinking of many students (and probably parents and society at large).  It got me thinking about other comments I have heard.  A teacher friend of mine said her husband told her she wouldn't be so tired all the time if she had better boundaries between work and life.  Legislators in most states play political bingo with test scores and teacher pay and school assignment for students because they don't understand what goes into good teaching either.  At the risk of sounding defensive, I'm going to take it upon myself to explain what the big deal is.  What's so hard about being a good teacher?  My dear 8th grader, I'll give you four answers; but they won't even scratch the surface.

Answer one - Let's start with a teacher's education.  I hold a bachelor's degree in secondary science education with an emphasis in physics.  When I was in college I took all the teaching classes an education major has to take as well as two calculus courses, four biology classes and their labs, three chemistry class with two labs, earth science and its lab, and every physics course I could fit into the schedule.  I even pushed some of my general ed into the summer so that I could take Applied Thermodynamics and Modern Physics.  Since graduating from college, I have attended hundreds of hours of workshops, training seminars, and conventions.  I read articles on new educational research and books on neuroscience.  I follow Talks with Teachers on Twitter and participated in their Idea Lab.  I'm not complaining about ANY of this.  I love learning, and it's part of being good.  I wouldn't want a doctor who got his degree in 1998 to have learned none of the medical science that happened since then, and I wouldn't want my teaching to reflect only the information that was available then either.  Professional development is a good and enjoyable thing, but it is part one of the answer to your 8th grader question.  Good teaching is hard because you never stop developing it.

Answer two - All the research says something different.  I was reading an article recently on the importance of homework.  It discussed the part of the brain that is activated when doing work independently after having left the environment in which you learned it.  Then I clicked on the related article, which was about how homework is the worst thing ever invented and why no one should ever be required to do it.  As I have mentioned in the past, I work in a school with a one to one program.  We've read a lot of research about millennial students and technology and the importance of collaboration and are all on board with our program.  Then, in the course of two days, we have read two articles about how technology is messing with our memories and why introverts are being harmed by the focus on collaboration.  What's a good teacher to do?  The research isn't wrong; it is just that we aren't working with widgets.  Every student responds differently to what we do, and only the lazy teacher responds with "teach to the middle."  We have to take in all this conflicting research and figure out a way to turn it into a lesson plan.  This would be like you, my 8th grade friend, trying to write one paper for five different teachers who all believe that good writing is something different.

Answer three - Your school community has specific expectations.  I won't re-hash my post on my school's mission statement.  You can find that by scrolling down to last week.  When I was in public school, spiritual inspiration was not an expectation.  It is here.  Some schools focus heavily on citizenship or service, and others are all about test scores.  Some care about getting grades posted within 24 hours while others want you to take the time to give deep and meaningful feedback.  Learning the expectations of your specific school community isn't easy; most don't post a list or anything.  You learn them at faculty meetings (meetings could be its own answer because there are so many of them).  The expectations of parents are also quite different than they were even a decade ago.  We live in an instant results, consumer driven, Yelp review kind of world.  So, my inquisitive 8th grade student, ask yourself if it would be hard to do well in my class if I had four conflicting expectations of you and graded you on all of them and posted your grades on twitter.

Answer four - All students are different.  I mentioned in answer two that every student responds differently to what we do.  Introverts need quiet time to think while extroverts need verbal processing.  Auditory learners find your diagrams distracting while visual learners can't learn without them.  The student with auditory processing disorder needs you to have lots of bright informational posters in the room while the ADHD student finds the same posters make it difficult to listen to you.  One student needs you to make constant eye contact while another would be riddled with anxiety if you looked in their direction.  All these students are in the same period and are expected to accomplish the same objectives.  Again, I hope you will not read this as a complaint.  I do not want Stepford Students.  It is a wonderful thing to have such a diverse group of people.  We all learn from each other's differences, and it is one of the things that makes my job so wonderful.  It is also one of the things that makes it hard to be good at.

Well, my 8th grade student, have you figured it out yet?  You see me standing in front of you talking as though I am coming up with things on the spot.  I've worked long and hard to make it look that way.  You see me answer your questions as though it didn't take years of training to have those answers and years of experience to learn how to put those answer on an 8th grade level for you.  You see me put a score on a test without any understanding of the years it has taken to build professional judgement about which error is worth 1 point off and which is worth only half a point off.  You see a test as though there is a printed book of tests I am copying.  (By the way, that book does exist, but you wouldn't be happy if I used it).  You don't know this, but you complimented me and all your teachers with your question because you implied that we make it look easy.  I hope this post helps answer your question.  Being a good teacher isn't easy, but as Tom Hanks says in the movie A League of Their Own, "It's the hard that makes it great."

Study is a Verb - Do Something

My kids are taking chapter tests today, so I thought I would take this opportunity to share some study habits that I have gleaned from 17 years of being a pretty good student and 17 years of teaching all kinds of students.  I just read that sentence and realized that I have been teaching for the same number of years I was a students.  That makes me feel really old.  Yikes.

1.  Study is a verb - I have watched students "study" and wondered what benefit they could possibly be getting from it.  Here's how it works.  They take out their notes.  They stare at the page.  Their eyes get blurry, and they can't see any more.  This changes nothing.  To study effectively means you have to DO something.  Highlighting, flashcards, asking yourself questions - These are ways of interacting with the material.  Staring at it is not.  All my other advice comes from this.

2.  Organize Your Time and Space - Some people are natural organizers.  They love folders and tabs and calendars.  Office Depot is their happy place and color coded is their favorite phrase in the English language.  Others are a hot mess when it comes to organization.  They have to turn their backpack upside down and shake it to find a pencil.  Then, there are the ADHD kids, who tell me that  they shouldn't have to be organized.  "Oh, no," I tell them.  "It's far more important that you be organized than anyone else."  The natural organizers are already there in their minds.  If your mind isn't naturally organized, you really need to organize your environment to compensate for that.  If your homework is always in the same spot, you won't have to remember where you put it.

It is also important to organize your time.  This is harder for students than organizing their space.  You can see the space, and it is always in the same place.  Time is so fluid and so easily filled with whatever comes along that organizing it can be difficult.  I suggest having an ideal plan at the beginning of each week but to leave in a little flex time.  Things are going to come up that mess with the ideal.  This is only a problem if there is nowhere to put the new activity.  It may also require reorganizing as time goes on.

3.  Study in Blocks - Remember when your teachers told you not to wait to study until the night before the test.  You ignored them; everyone does.  It turns out that they knew what they were talking about.  Research shows that you remember best the things you study at the beginning and the end of a study session.  Studying in one long block means there is only one beginning and end.  Breaking that up over several nights makes multiple beginnings and endings.  If it is too late for that and you only have one night.  Take a 2 minute break every 30 minutes.  It is enough time for your brain to think you have begun a new session.  The strange result of one study showed that studying in different places might help as well (although no one is sure why), so studying one night in the kitchen and another in the living room may actually help.

4.  Take a Moment to Acknowledge Anxiety - Being nervous about tests is normal, but does it affect your performance on the test.  It does if you just try to pretend it isn't there.  An experiment was done in which two similar classes took tests.  In one classroom, students were given three minutes before the test started to write about how they felt going into the tests.  The other just began taking it as normal.  The group that was given a chance to share their frustrations and fears scored an average of 5% higher on the test than the others did.  The thinking is that putting it on paper frees your mind from focusing on it during the test, allowing you to shut off the internal dialogue.

5.  Allow Minimal Distraction - The world is filled with distractions.  We cannot eliminate them entirely - and we shouldn't.  The mind actually needs some stimulation, or it will create its own.  However, distractions that interfere with your ability to focus should be reduced as much as possible. That might mean muting the computer, so it doesn't beep every time a message is sent.  My students believe it is rude not to respond immediately to a chat message.  I tell them to make their google chat status "I'm studying for the next hour."  Then, it is rude for someone to chat them but not rude for them to wait to reply.  The phone can be put in another room.

A note about music.  Some people do benefit from playing music while they are studying.  It helps block out the little sounds, like buzzing lights and ticking clocks.  Before you says, "See, mom!  I told you music helps," be aware that not all types of music helps.  It is unlikely that your favorite song is helping you focus.  Be aware of when it is helping and when it is hurting.  If you are singing along, you are not studying.  If you are dancing around, you are probably not studying (Some people do need to move in order to think, so you will be aware if that is you).  I keep a TV on with the volume low, but I make sure it is a rerun of something I've seen before.  That keeps my brain from attending to it.

6.  Teach to Learn - If you are explaining something to someone else, you will know whether or not you understand it.  If you are an auditory learner, hearing yourself say it out loud will be like sitting in class again.  If you are verbal processor, saying it out loud will make it more real to you.  You can teach another person, but if one is not available, you can teach a stuffed animal, a doll, or a chair.  The key is to do it out loud.  It forces focus in a way silent studying doesn't.

7.  MAKE Flashcards - We are a one to one school.  We do a lot of things with technology, and I know there are online flashcard sites.  Those are great and should be used, but I want to make a plea for the good old fashioned flashcard.  Your senses are the pathways by which information enters your brain.  Using an online card site uses only one - sight.  When you hand make a flash card and then use it properly, you use sight (to get the information), muscle memory (from writing), sight again (from look at the card), speech (by saying it out loud), and hearing (by saying it out loud).  You also get a little bit of tactile because holding the card is different from not holding one.  I've got my doubts that scented markers would help, but they certainly could not hurt.  The more pathways the information has to get into your brain, the better you will remember it.

8.  Pray - I asked my students a few weeks ago if they prayed before a test.  Many of them said yes (or at least that they prayed during the test if it was getting hard).  When I asked if they prayed before they studied, no one said yes.  God cares about your learning and talks much of wisdom and knowledge in scripture.  He even says in James, "If anyone lacks wisdom, he should ask."  Why wouldn't we ask for help in making our study time efficient and effective?

Be Nice to Teachers in May

There are a few times of year when teaching is more difficult than others.  What times of year those are may depend on where and what you teach, but May is difficult for all teachers.

First of all, the kids are at the height of squirelliness in May.  The weather has gotten warm, so they have spring fever.  They got a small taste of freedom during spring break and then had to return to the grind.  Middle school boy testosterone levels are peaking, and they don't know what to do with it.  This results in them shoving each other into lockers.  For the serious student, their brains are just fried.   They are preparing for exams while still trying to finish up their regular work.  For high school students, there are two weeks of AP tests, so they spend all their mental energies on that.

Teachers don't have a lot of mental energy left either because they are also experiencing all of these things while writing exams and making sure they are fair.  We are figuring out how to un-decorate the room without feeding their end of year mentality.  We are trying to discipline kids behavior even while understanding why they are behaving this way.  Outside of school life doesn't really exist at this time of year, except it has to because someone decided Mother's Day should be in May.  Whoever decided that was NOT a teacher.

May is also an emotional time of year.  All the "lasts" start happening.  It is the last chapel or the last chorus concert or the last time the band will play.  At my school, the yearbook goes out at this time of year.  While that is exciting, it is extremely emotional.  Some of these people are not returning, so you are trying to sign their yearbook with everything you want to say to them.   We have awards assemblies, which can be emotional.  No matter how nice we are to the seniors, they leave every year.  Our school has a dinner for seniors, which are the three most emotional hours of the entire year.

This is also the time when teachers who won't return start announcing it.  I am at a point where I don't want to attend a faculty meeting for the rest of the year because I feel like every meeting has some sad announcement.  In this blog, I have talked a lot about our awesome IT people.  As of Monday's faculty meeting, three of the four of them have announced their departure.  Everyone has a good reason; they aren't leaving out of anger, but that doesn't change the sense of loss.  I'm not sure this happens on this scale in other professions.  Most businesses don't have discreet "years" that are stopping and starting points in what they do.  People leave businesses, but I don't think there is a one month time period in which you lose all of them at the same time.   When you love your school as much as I do, losing the people that make up that school means losing part of your heart.  Don't get me wrong; new people are fine.  We were all new people once, but the loss of some is felt very deeply by the entire school.  They just can't be replaced.  This school, in particular, has a very close faculty.  It just makes this time of year very difficult.


Teacher appreciation week takes place in May.  If you are a student or the parent of one, know this.  Teachers don't need stuff, but they do need appreciation.  A note of appreciation written from your heart will mean more to your teacher this time of year than any chocolate or gift card possibly could.  You teachers are people who are experiencing a highly emotional time, so be nice to them like you would if you had a friend going through an emotional time.  Be nice to teachers in May.

Reflections on Four Years of Teaching With Technology - Plateau and Progress

This is part three of a series on my school's one to one MacBook program.  It can be read on its own, but if you want to know the history, read the other two.

As always happens, the first year of a program is when people are the most excited and, therefore, the most invested in doing new things.  The increase you see from year zero to year one cannot be the level of increase you expect every year.  In order to keep increasing at all, there must be continued cheerleading, support, and training to keep the ideas new.  Most of us were really happy with how the first year went, but we didn't bring that same level of enthusiasm to the second year (maybe because we were just tired).  We also implemented a much needed Learning Management System that year, which was frustrating at first because there were some glitches in it.  Because of these issues, the second year was a plateau for us as far as using the technology as more than a replacement for what we had done previously.

Our wonderful tech team had read articles about schools that gave up on one to one programs after one or two years due to lack of real growth and were determined not to let that happen here.  Around the same time, we also hired a new media specialist, Laura (the wonderful) Warmke.  She is not only highly versed in what seems like every book ever written; she is also super with technology tools and driven to help you find out how to use them in your class.

Laura and Diane developed a great program for teacher to use as professional development.  It is called Level Up, and it is awesome.  Diane and Laura write "missions" for us to accomplish.  Some of them are as simple as watch a TED talk about education and comment on it in our discussion board.  Others are as complex as classroom flipping, instituting a badge system in your class, or having a skype session.  All the missions are counted as done when you have responded on a discussion board. 

Let me tell you some of the reasons this program is awesome:
1.  You can choose your own professional development.   We aren't all sitting in the same room learning the same tool.  We look at the available missions and choose the ones that will work best for our style and our classroom.  It enables people to be developed at their point of comfort with where they currently are.
2.  You are being cheered on rather than put upon.  The tech team gives you a badge in the teacher's lounge for every mission you complete.  They love talking to you about your missions.  You get great ideas from reading other people's uses on the discussion board, which allows you to incorporate the same tools in your class in more than one way.
3.  It is modeling.  They aren't just telling us to use something.  They are using it to deliver the message.  It makes me want to have missions in my own classes (next year perhaps).
4.  There are prizes.  Prizes are always motivating, no matter how old you get.  At the end of the quarter, we have drawing for gift cards.  The more missions you have done, the more times you name is in the hat.
5.  It introduces you to tools you had never heard of before.  One mission we had this year was to use a tool called Canva - a very cool graphic design tool.  I've had kids use it for projects, and I will never make another bulletin board without it.  I would never have heard of it without this program.
6.  It encourages teacher input.  Many times during the year, a teacher will stumble upon a new tool and say, "Hey, you should have a mission for that.

This program has gotten us off our year two flatline graph and put us back on the upward slope.  Another thing Laura does is meet with every teacher every quarter to discuss how she can help you take your tech integration to the next level.  Because of these discussions, my 8th graders have begun creating a website (which future 8th graders will finish), and next year, my 8th graders will be blogging for the world to see.

I've said it before.  I couldn't go back to teaching the old way.  Now that I see what kids are capable of doing with the world of knowledge at their fingertips, I would never again feel like I was doing my job as a teacher if I didn't give them that opportunity.  Every new tool we teach them i just another way they can be academically and spiritually equipped, challenged, and inspired to impact their world for Christ (which is our school's mission statement).

There will be one more post in this series - what I wish I had known when this all started.

Reflections on Four Years of Teaching With Technology - The First Year

My last post was about the lead up to GRACE Christian School's implementation of E4 - our one to on MacBook program.  Now, I want to tell you about our first year with it because that is obviously where our learning curve was the steepest.

Our tech team and administrators were the most amazing cheerleaders through this process.  When we originally talked about accountability in the committee, it had been suggested that we require a certain percentage of the lesson be tech related.  I am SOOOOO glad we did not go that route.  Instead of presenting this as a required duty, it was presented as an exciting opportunity.  Sean, Diane, Mandy, and Kathie (our principals) were so ready to help in any way you needed that it was unbelievable.  If you had an idea, you could go to one of them, and they would help you figure it out.  We were trained in big groups about some things, but if there were things that only applied to one department or teacher or lesson, one of them stopped by our room to chat about the tool or e-mailed us a link.

In some ways it was like being a first year teacher all over again.  We weren't exactly relearning how to teach, but in some ways we were.  When writing lesson plans, we were constantly thinking of ways we could do the same differently with technology. (Keep in mind, this was our first year; so we were on level one of the SAMR model.  We are reaching for higher levels now).  One of the best things we did was have story time at faculty meetings.  We shared projects the kids had done and tools we had found.  We shared frustrations as well and tried to problem solve together.  I'll post more about that later.

Our students immediately took on a new paradigm.  They began e-mailing teachers all the time.  They could have sent us e-mail from home before, but they hadn't very much.  Suddenly, we were getting e-mail from them at all times of day.  I got e-mail questions from shy kids who would never ask them in class.  I got kids sharing links with me if there was something they thought would be cool class.  I had kids sending science memes.  Our volleyball team went to the state finals that year.  A small group of kids, our basketball game announcer, and Sean traveled down with them and streamed the game with commentary.  We got to watch it during lunch and had a watch party for the final game in the evening.  Our students began making videos for chapel.  All of this was in addition to the "on purpose" things we were giving them to do for class.  On Grandparents' Day, we had a family skype their Grandparents into class from England.  We stream the Grandparents' Day performance as well.

I think my favorite story from that year was the streaming of the conference basketball tournament.  Whenever we stream a game, we send the link to the athletic director of the opposing team, so their families can watch too.  For one game of this tournament, we were playing a team out of Fayetteville, a school with a large number of military families.  Because of the stream, some of their dads were able to watch them play even though those dads were in Iraq and Afghanistan.   I didn't even mind that we lost that game because those dads got to watch their boys win.

We all learned a lot that year.  We learned from each other.  We learned from every resource we could find.  It was difficult and crazy and amazing all at the same time.

In my next post, I will talk about the three years since.  We hit a plateau, which our awesome tech team helped us overcome.  More on that in a few days.

Reflections on Four Years of Teaching With Technology - The History

GRACE Christian School is wrapping up its fourth year in a one to one laptop program, so I thought it was time for a bit of reflection. 

It all about this time started five years ago.  At that point, we had a lot of teachers who were incorporating technology with their own devices and buying projectors as we could.  We had about twelve SMART boards in our school, which we were using to the best of our ability (although we didn’t really know the best way to use them). 

I was asked to serve on a technology planning committee, where I found out that we were seriously considering changing everything.  We discussed device options, budgeting, vision statements for the program, and what kind of accountability should be involved.  My role was mostly to insist on training.  The board members on our committee rightly felt that the SMART boards had not been used as well as they could have been in the classroom and didn’t want to make this investment to have it fail.  I reminded them that the teachers who had SMART boards had been given one day of training on the function of the boards and none on how to incorporate them into our lesson plans.  When we talked about devices, I said, “Without training, it might as well be a stone and chisel.”  When we discussed the budget, I said, “There has to be budget set aside for training.”  When we talked about the vision statement, I reminded them that none of that vision could be accomplished if teachers were told HOW to carry it out.  When we discussed accountability, I reminded them that they couldn’t be expected to use it well without training.  I’m sure they got tired of hearing the word training from me, but I felt it was my role as the representative of the teachers. 

The members of the committee were sworn to silence until the plan was unveiled.  In the mean time, projectors and MacBook Pros were purchased for every teacher.  They were made ready by our wonderful tech team (which at that time only consisted of Sean and Diane) in an empty classroom that had new locks and paper over the windows.  You practically needed a secret password to enter that room.  As the day of the unveiling approached, we all got a little excited and nervous.  Diane was going to be chaperoning our 8th grade DC field trip, so Sean would be on his own that day for training.  He was nervous about whether or not people would like the idea.  Including myself, there were about three faculty meetings that were long term Mac users; so we were asked to help people during the training.  All the teachers knew when they came in that morning was that the day would be about technology and that Sean would be leading it.  Sean talked about the importance of increasing our technology usage in 21st century education, showed a prezi about the importance of changing education from the industrial model, and talked about how critical it was that we lead in this area.  Then, I was scripted to ask, “So, how do we do this if we don’t all have the tools?”  Sean announced that everyone would be getting a projector, which was met with minor enthusiasm.  Then, he said, “You may be asking what good a projector will do if you don’t have your own laptop.  Well . . .”  The laptops were hidden in a closet, and I got to help roll them out.  It was super exciting.

We spent that entire day of training, learning how the Mac works, looking at each type of application, and brainstorming ideas.  We got a video message from Diane since she couldn’t get to us from DC.  We obviously had teachers with a wide range of experience and comfort with the tool (one person asked me what it meant to click), but everyone was super on board and willing to learn.  At the end of the day, I hugged Sean and told him how well he did and how excited everyone was.  We knew we were at the beginning of something awesome.

Since that day, we have learned so much.  Our kids have done so much.  Our tech team has supported us so much.  It is too much to put in this post, which is already long.  Read all about our first year with tech in my next post.

Not Helping is Often Helpful

I am writing this blog post specifically to avoid helping students.  I know that sounds horrible, but it serves a critical purpose.  When adults jump in to help students all the time, they never learn to problem solve for themselves.  This produces adults who don't know how to trouble shoot, think critically, or problem solve bigger issues.

I am experimenting with a CBL (Challenge Based Learning) assignment.  Here's the gist.  The students are supposed to imagine that we live in a place with inconsistent access to electricity and figure out what they would do at their home to keep refrigerators and small electrical appliances going.  I brought in a guest speaker who lived in Haiti for several years to discuss the problem and some of what they did to solve it.  I thought the problem was clearly presented until they started giving their solutions.  They included going to war with Cuba to steal their electricity, using an electric eel tank, and using a local volcano.  Then another teacher told me that a student had said I was trying to get them to solve the energy crises. 

We re-booted.  I presented the problem all over again.  I made it clear that we were only talking about something that we (the ten of us in this room) could do.  We have had several work days since then, and they are still having some difficulty being on the same page.  There are nine students, and there has still been so little communication that one students had potatoes, lemons, and pennies while other students were talking about lawn mower motors and solar panels.  I have had to sit here biting my tongue because it is important for them to have this conversation themselves and make a plan. 

It is a tough thing as a teacher to NOT help.  We so often want to teach them what to do.  We so often want to rescue them from themselves.  I actually had to focus on this blog post to keep myself from doing that.

You Are Going to Use This in Life - Just Not the Way You Think You Are

If I had to choose the number one, big daddy, most annoying question any teacher ever gets asked, it is the following:  "When am I ever going to use this in life?"

Insert B-movie scream here!

I hate this question.  Hate it.  Hate. It.  It's not for the reason you think. 

It isn't because I don't have an answer.  I have one - a long, well thought out, complex and beautiful answer you never listen to.  It isn't because you are insulting my curriculum; I totally know you don't all fall down with joy, hoping I'll talk more about the periodic table today.  It isn't because I'm part of a vast conspiracy to fill your head with knowledge you will never, ever need (and I know some of you believe that).  The reason I hate this question is because it reflects a fundamentally flawed belief about why you learn.  You think it is about getting a job.

You think elementary school is about middle school, and middle school is about high school, and high school is about college, and college is about the job you will have for forty years, (and then you will play golf or knit or something for a couple of decades).  If you unpack this thinking, it means that you think kindergarten is about the job you will have in your forties.  Do you see now how absurd your teachers find this thinking?

You learn because you were created to learn.  God put curiosity in the heart of every human being.  From the moment you are born, you look as far as you can look (which at that time is 18" - about the distance to from your eyes to the eyes of the person holding you).  You study that face and learn what a face is.  Eventually, you find your own hands and feet and start learning about those.  When you begin to crawl, you become a Magellan level explorer, and you never once ask how that thing on the other side of the room is going to influence your career.  You just want to learn about it.  You learn color theory by experimentation (mixing crayons).  By the time you are four years old, you are asking why or how something works an average of 400 times per day.  At no point in those 400 questions do you think about the utility of that information.  When you ask your dad why the sky is blue, it is absolutely not because you think one day you will have a job in which that information might be useful.  You ask because you want to know.

Then, you go to school.  The minute you put your butt in a desk, your parents start thinking of everything you learn as a career related.  Worse, they start talking to you that way.  They start using phrases like "use this is the real world" and "use this in life."  I have heard parents of fifth graders ask how the project their child just did will affect college acceptance.  No wonder we have so many kids with anxiety issues.  If I really believed one project would fundamentally change the course of my life, I would be stressed too.

Before I address teacher responsibility in this problem, allow me to rabbit trail for a second on "the real world."  There is no part of the world that is imaginary!  Life does not start at 22.  School is just as real a part of the world as any other part.  It is the part where your child spends many hours of his day and puts a lot of his energy.  Stop making it sound like it doesn't matter at all because it isn't real.

Teachers a part of the problem.  We use the idea of career as motivation to make students learn, and then we are confused when it backfires on us while we teach music to a kid who is going to be an engineer or science to a kid who is going to be a musician.  Teachers, let's model curiosity for our students.  Let's not blow off spelling words correctly because we aren't English teachers.  Let's not make kids think that only math teachers need to know math or that art only matters to artists.

One of my favorite things at GRACE is that our teachers are incredibly well rounded.  We have had teachers who taught math and dance in the same day.  We have a history/science teacher.  I teach both science and yearbook.  One of our English teachers decided on her own to read The Disappearing Spoon, a book about the periodic table of elements.  Our Latin teacher is reading a book about the mathematical history of tracking time.  Our students see teachers across every discipline asking each other questions, not because we have to use it in our job, but because it is interesting. 

Learning is about worship.  It brings us closer to God when we learn about the world and how he created it.  That's kind of standard science teacher answer because it is clear we study creation, but math, art, music, and language are also creations of God.  Let's glorify Him better by learning about His work.