Learning and the Brain Notes Spring 2025 - Friday

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.  

Keynote Address I: The Neurobiology of Learning to Learn: What We Think, We Become by André A. Fenton

I was 12 minutes late because navigating the NYC public transit system is challenging for the uninitiated.

The stuff he is explaining is far too complex with neurology for my notes to make any sense.  So, these will be limited.

Complex systems - Showed a video of a large flock of birds in a big complex flight pattern.  

Three rules: 

• Keep flying.
• Don't bump into anything. 
• Do whatever your seven nearest neighbors are doing.

A good analogy for memory is a large language learning model.  

Deep learning neural networks don't remember things. 

They store processes that make predictions that look like recollection.

We don't see and experience the world the way it actually is.  

We see it the way our neuron's experiences cause us to interpret it. It's based on what we are expecting.

A mouse was exposed to a mild electric shock in a certain area. 

90 minutes teaches it to avoid the area.

Mice with memory training avoided the area 30 days later (which is a long time in a mouse life).

It didn't store information; it changed how its brain was operating during that month.

Reactivating the right set of neurons in some form recreates the experience.

Large language models (AI) are built from the same models as our real neural networks.  John Hopfield and Geoffrey Hinton won the Nobel Prize for the discoveries of memory networks because they are leading to AI networks.

Cognitive control is taxing.  If you try to focus on one thing while ignoring something else (like saying the word "red" when you see this BLUE.  But making it a little more difficult results in longer term learning because the work required changes the neural circuitry.

Keynote Address II: Developing Teen Minds in a Digital Age: Research and Innovation Toward a Future Science of Learning by Patricia K. Kuhl

Children watching videos of people talking don't respond with language development the way that they

do if a person is talking to them.  They need social interaction.

Social experiences shape brain plasticity.  MOOCs don't give you social interaction; teachers do.

Getting information from adult brains into child brains happens explicitly through talk, 

but a lot of it is absorbed implicitly from living in a social culture.  Humans have less innate information

than other species. Humans depend on others to learn. There are pros and cons to this.  It allows depth of

friendship and love, but it is also makes us vulnerable to manipulation.

Sensitive periods in development are times with the brain expect experience from culture to 

shape its circuitry.  From 0-5, our brains are especially sensitive to linguistic information (this is true even

prenatally). They respond to the accent of the mother's accent differently than others.  They'll attend to 

languages other than the mothers because they are curious about language at birth.

The sensitive period for social interaction is 11-15.  This will not be a shock to parents or teachers.

We now have more information about brain function, brain structure, and the interventions that enhance

malleable skills.  People are not necessarily born "good at math" or "good at languages" or "good at music."

They have experiences that enhance their abilities in those areas.

Prior to six months, children of all cultures can make and hear the phonetic sounds of all languages.  We 

are born "citizens of the world."  At 8 months, they get better at attending to the sounds that are happening

in the area in which they live.  (Japanese children learn to ignore the distinction between r and l.  American

children learn to ignore the distinctions in Mandarin.)  Kids' brains are pruning away sounds they won't

need.  At 10-12 months, they exposed American babies to Mandarin speakers. They quickly re-acquired 

those sounds.  They repeated it with equivalent videos, and it had no effect on their acquisition.  

You get perfect learning in a complex live setting, and you get none in a video setting, even if they are

the same exposure.

When they put two babies in the room with the video, there was learning from the video. The social 

interactions of the babies with each other caused them to learn.  The biochemistry is different in a face to

face social interaction than when they are alone.Speech activates auditory and motor-speech areas.

Brain development in the prefrontal cortex (executive function) lags behind the limbic system (emotion), so the teen brain is led more by emotion.  Kids take more risks with others than they do alone.  Teen mental health issues often come from experiences influencing the limbic system.  

March 2020 - Pandemic Lockdown

In the beginning, kids were valiantly interacting with the Zoom screens and were trying to learn well.

A few months in, the lack of social interaction and increased screen time really got to them.

Compared the thickness of the cortex of 9-17 year olds who had been tested in 2018 with subsequent 

tests in 2021 (original plan had been to test in 2020, but the lab was closed).  The increased the rate of

thinning over predicted models, meaning the brain aged faster than it should have (girls even more in all 

lobes of both hemispheres while boys were only in the occipital lobe and at around half the rate).  The

same effect held for white matter pathways.  The rhythms showed accelerated aging in both genders.

The novel stressors of the pandemic have led to increased anxiety and depression.  Some (especially those

with a structured routine,  more time in nature, and adequate sleep) were more resilient.  

What is hopeful about the future? 

• We have better interventions for enhancing learning.
• Parents and teachers better understand the power of socialization in the brain.
• We can use this knowledge to create more flexible learners.
• Human ingenuity rises to the occasion in the face of difficulty.

The social brain is the gateway to cognition, and it drives learning!

Session: How to Ensure Students Not only Know What's True but Understand Why It's True by Daniel Willingham

(Personal Note:  I adore Daniel Willingham.  Possibly to an unhealthy degree.  I have no ability to be objective about this.  I will gush.  You will just have to deal with it.)

It is easier to acquire knowledge than it is to develop understanding. We are even worse at assessing whether or not we understand something.  But why is that so?

If you look for a definition of understanding, you are likely to find one that describes the consequences of understanding, not a definition for the word itself.

Most of the time, action is not driven by reasoning.  There is an automatic association. (You don't reason, "It's raining. What's the best way to go about dealing with this.  Perhaps, I could . . . ."  No, you just get the umbrella.)

The difference between knowing and understanding, but there are also different levels of understanding.  I think I understand my can opener (how the mechanism works) in a way I don't understand my hand vacuum (It's just magic as far as I'm concerned).

Views of Understanding

Interventionist view of causality - "If X changes, Y will happen."  This is often the way we understand science, math, and history because there are responsive systems.  What will happen to my can opener if I do . . .?

Contextual Understanding - Allowing a richer web of connections.  A child's schema for whale includes fish because of all of their similarities.  An adult comes along and tells them that a whale is a mammal, but does the child understand what it means to be a mammal?  The more the child knows about mammals, the more they can infer about whales.  They can ask things like, "Is there something else that I thought was a fish that might be a mammal?"  

We tend to present information hierarchically - Main point, three conclusions, supporting evidence, details. We don't tend to structure as a web.  We present in narratives because kids have a mental template for it already when they reach school.  As things get more complicated, they start to be presented more hierarchically.  But we expect kids to recognize the hierarchy even when some of the connecting things are separated in time.

Deep structure and surface structure can be hard to differentiate.  Seeing past the details of the example (meat, bells, and salivation in Pavlov's dog) to the structure of classical conditioning (pairing 2 stimuli with an involuntary response) can be hard to tease out, especially for novice learners.  

We are born equipped to understand some aspects of the world.  We are also born with a bias to interpret them in certain ways.  Much of what we learn in school is to show that some things go against our natural interpretations.  (Just because something seems true does not mean that's how it actually works.)  

How do we differentiate objects from their attributes?  If a parent and child are standing in a field, and a rabbit hops by and the parents says, "Look a rabbit," how does a child interpret what the word rabbit means?  This can be especially difficult when learning physics, which is why some of the medieval conclusions, like impetus, were wrong even though they kind of made sense.  Children aren't blank slates; they come in with beliefs and biases that will affect what they get out of what you teach them.

Teleological understanding - With minimal stimulus, you think of cause, relationships, goals, and desires.  It's what enables us to have theory of mind.  This can lead to problems: We tend to see purpose where there is none.  We tend to see agency where there is none.

We naturally understand numerosity, but not on a linear scale:  We have understand of things one at a time up until about 5.  Then, we start understanding them in groups of five.  Then we use vague terms like few, several, some, heaps, and tons.  We compare things on a more logarithmic scale where we understanding orders of magnitude more than individual components.  (Example:  The difference between 2 and 6 is huge - One is triple the other.  The difference between 102 and 106 is minimal.  In school, we then teach that the difference between them is the same (4), overcoming a natural bias toward logarithmic thinking.)

Manage your own expectations of student understandings - Since it is hard, figure out what are the core ideas that it is critical they understand and focus heavily on those, looping back around to them.

Help them make connections with your talk and with reading - Preview your organization at the beginning and point back to it during the instruction.  Point to it and say, "I'm moving on to the second point here."  If they are old enough that they are taking notes, encourage them to revisit and re-organize the notes from linear order to hierarchical order. (This will have to be modeled, or they will just think it is busy work.)

To see deep structure, get them to solve a problem and then generate a general solution that type of problem.  Get them to solve a problem, then say, "What if we change this aspect?  How will that change the solution?"  Give two problems that are both about the same deep structure but with very different surface aspects and ask them what the problems have in common.

Good analogies are critical, especially with unnatural learning.  Singapore math is great at this.  They do great spatial modeling to build bridges across ideas.

How can kids know if they understand.  Explicitly explain to them what it means to understand.  It builds from passive to active to expansive.  

1. It means sense to make when it is explained.
2. I can explain it myself. (Have them do a turn and talk when they think you understand but you think they don't.)
3. I can apply it in new contexts.

Keynote Address III:  The Science of Learning: Building a Culture of Cognitive Engagement and Learning by Doug Lemov

In The Curious Case of the Dog in the Night Time, Sherlock solves the case because a dog did not bark.

We will look at The Curious Case of the First Year Teacher Whose Lesson Went Almost Perfectly

Basketball video with the moonwalking bear. - It's easy to miss something you're not looking for.

Attention is fragile

• We are only aware of a amll portion of our visual world at any moment, but we are resistant to believing that.  We insist that we are fully aware when we are not.
• Choosing to pay attention to one thing is inherently choosing to ignore others.  Attention is selective.
• Attention is a pre-requisite to learning.  You can't learn something that you don't pay attention to.
• Attention is contagious.  It's a viral social phenomenon.

(Personal note:  I get why Tracking works for attention, but it would weird me out as both a student and a teacher to have that level of sustained attention from a group. I think it would put me in fight or flight mode.)

"Learning can be defined as a change in long-term memory.  If nothing has changed in long-term memory, nothing has been learned." - Paul Kirschner

Your intention to remember has little effect on your ability to do so.  Your brain doesn't care what you want (I think Dan Willingham said that in the previous session).  You can't just decide to remember something.

When your working memory is overloaded, your perception of the environment is degraded.  This is why distracted driving is so dangerous.

Best ways to deal with working memory - Routines, explicit instruction, retrieval practice, fluency.

Teacher working memory is taxed quickly (especially first year teachers) - Embed routines, habits, and systems to help your own working memory. A visible and predictable routine is also a classroom management strategy because it becomes a social norm.  It has the side effect of creating a sense of belonging.  (Every faith sings or chants or recites together, and it makes them feel more connected to the other members of their faith.)

You can cue a routine with almost no load on your working memory or theirs.

No, They Are NOT Astronauts

Well, this isn't the post I thought I would be writing this week, but Gayle and friends keep bringing it back into my newsfeed by insisting they are inspirations, heroes, and "the first all female crew" in space.  Worse, they are claiming gender discrimination by the people who refuse to call them astronauts.  As a child who dreamed of space travel myself and a science teacher who taught kids about space exploration for 25 years, this makes me want to gag.  Since this is the closest thing I have to a "platform," let me address why this matters.

A Little History on Blue Origin

Blue Origin, owned by Amazon CEO and founder Jeff Bezos, has been sending civilians to the edge of space since 2021.  The ride lasts about 11 minutes, following the approximate pattern of Alan Shepard's flight as the first American in space in 1961, so he calls the flights "New Shepard."  Because he knows how to get attention, each flight has had at least one passenger that would make it interesting to the media and the general public, including Michael Strahan and William Shatner.  The flight this week was meant to be notable as it was the first that included only females and included Katy Perry and Gayle King.  While some have criticized the timing of the expensive flight while the economy is in free fall and the environmental impact of burning that much fuel, most of the backlash seems to be from their insistence on being called astronauts and Gayle's tone deaf statement that "everyone should do this" as though everyone has millions of dollars.

A Little History on Women in Space Exploration

During the days of the space race, there were 13 women who did all of the training and psychological testing that the Mercury 7 did. They performed well, even performing better on most of the mental endurance tests than their male counterparts. Yet, they did not fly.  This was partly due to sexism (and racism - LBJ said, "If we let the women fly, we'd have to let the coloreds fly" which I can't help but think about every time he is credited as a hero for signing the Civil Rights Act).  It was also partly due to the logistics of space flight.  They would be living together and sleeping in very tight spaces.  Without gravity, waste elimination is a different kind of challenge, and it requires different equipment for male and female bodies.  And, with limited space, it would require them using this equipment in plain view of each other (which isn't something a woman would want now, much less in the 60s).  

So, it is a little more complicated that simple discrimination, but at the end of the day, these 13 women did not fly.  What they did accomplish was proving that women could complete the training and testing as well as men, laying the groundwork for American women to fly in space, even though it took two more decades for that to happen.  The first Blue Origin flight included one of these thirteen women, Wally Funk, and amid my mixed feelings about the flight, I was happy for her specifically to be part of it.  If you would like to know more about their story, allow me to recommend the book Almost Astronauts by Tanya Lee Stone.

Since the Russians were doing solo missions longer than we were, they didn't have to concern themselves with the mixed-gender mission issue.  (I don't know know enough about Soviet culture to know if there were sexism issues there.) They sent Valentina Tereshkova on a 71 hour, 48 orbit mission in 1963.  She was chosen, not because of her skills as a pilot but as a parachutist.  Since Vostok mission cosmonauts didn't land in water, they ejected from the spacecraft before landing and parachuted to the ground.  So, when we talk about the first all female crew, let's recognize that she flew the rocket on her own and rendezvoused with another mission before reentering the earth's atmosphere to eject and land.  In other words, she had a job.  She accomplished something that few men and no women had previously accomplished.  (Note: My admiration for Ms. Tereshkova is mixed with disdain for her more recent work as she is also the person who created the conditions for Valdimir Putin's dictatorship by introducing the bill in 2020 that removed his term limits.) 

The United States didn't have a female astronaut until 1983 when Sally Ride flew on the space shuttle Challenger. She had a BS, MS, and doctorate degree in Physics.  In addition to being the first American woman to go into space, she was also the youngest at that time.  Returning to space for a second mission in 1984, she spent a total of 353 hours in orbit. She trained extensively, worked at mission control as the Cap Com, and she helped design and build the space shuttle's robotic arm, without which we would not have been able to deploy the Hubble or build the International Space Station.  She accomplished mission objectives as a scientist and paved the way for more women to become astronauts as mission specialists, pilots, and commanders.

The Difference Between Astronauts and Tourists

From the earliest days of science fiction writing, space tourism was predicted.  What doesn't appear, in any novel I've read, anyway, is confusion about the difference between tourists and crew members.  Perhaps it seemed so obvious to the likes of Isaac Asimov that the difference between astronaut (a job) and tourist (a consumer) didn't need to be defined.

NASA, on the other hand, has defined it.  They have outlined the requirements for astronauts on their website.  It reads, in part, "Possess a master’s degree* in a STEM field, including engineering, biological science, physical science, computer science or mathematics, from an accredited institution" and "Have at least two years of related professional experience obtained after degree completion or at least 1,000 hours pilot-in-command time on jet aircraft." It's a career to be taken seriously. So the difference between a crew member and a tourist is that a crew member has job responsibilities for which they have been trained and a tourist has paid or had someone else pay for their voyage.  Gayle and Katy did not have to do so much as push a button, so they were passengers.  They were passengers on a very interesting trip, but they were not astronauts, and it is not sexist to say so.  Neither William Shatner nor Michael Strahan fulfilled the requirements of astronaut, so they were passengers too. 

Gayle King has adopted the term mission for her Blue Origin trip and is offended by people referring to it as "a ride."  If she were the professional journalist she claims to be, she might be more precise with her language. NASA has clearly defined the term mission.  It is "a specific well-defined endeavor or project, aimed at achieving a particular goal in space exploration, scientific research, or aeronautics."  Sally Ride, Mae Jemison, and Christina Koch didn't go into space to look out the window and take selfies (although they certainly did that too); they fulfilled mission objectives that advanced our understanding of the universe and the laws that govern it. Katy Perry's statement shows how little she understands about the purpose of missions.  She said, "Space is going to finally be glam. If I could take glam up with me, I would do that. We are going to put the 'ass' in astronaut."  And Gayle making a comparison between their flight and Alan Shepard's mission is particularly revealing. The only thing the two have in common is that they both followed a parabolic trajectory known as a spaceshot, although the Mercury mission was twice as high (so he qualified as being in space while Blue Origin missions go to the edge of space).  Shepard had to show that humans could function both physically and mentally in microgravity, describing every part of what was happening during the entirety of the journey from pre-launch to splash down. He had to respond in real time when an indicator light failed to illuminate after the retro boosters were jettisoned from the capsule. If he had been wrong, the heat shield would have failed during re-entry, likely killing him. There's a reason they sent test pilots and not singers, movie stars, and journalists - the mission mattered more than the publicity.  So, no, Gayle didn't follow in the footsteps of Alan Shepard, and she didn't pave the way for women.  People who fulfill actual missions do those things.  

It's not disrespectful to Gayle, as she has claimed, to call her a passenger on a ride; it is an accurate description of her role and her trip.  She is the one being disrespectful.  She and the rest of the Blue Origin ladies could have used their platforms to draw attention to the women who did the real work before them, but they were two busy drawing attention themselves.  That's disrespectful. 

  

I have no issue with them taking the trip; people with money will spend it differently than those who don't.  Just as I have no problem with people taking a cruise around the world.  I have a problem with them diminishing the accomplishments of the men and women who made their trip possible.  If you take a cruise, don't come back pretending to be Magellan.  I have a problem with them being painted as heroic or inspirational; I have a problem with them being called astronauts.  

And it isn't disrespectful or sexist to say so.

Resetting Out Rhythm - A Walk in the Woods

I didn't intend to write a series on finding balance, but this does appear to be the 3rd one in a row.  I don't know if that's a sign that I need this or that you do, but here we are.

On Wednesday, I had an odd little gap of time in my schedule.  I took a class at the Y that ended at 8.  I was subbing that day, but they didn't need me until 9:30.  The night before, I remembered that there is an arboretum between those locations and that it has been a while since I have photographed anything.  

Plan made.

North Carolina being what it is, I woke up to 35 degree weather, but I had already made my plan, so I put Papa's sweater and my camera in the car.  

When I got to the JC Raulston Arboretum, I found more than beautiful blooms to photograph.  I found that I was in a different rhythm.  I don't know if it is a result of the fall, but human schedules are out of step with creation.  

The pace of nature is different than the schedule we create for ourselves. Birds work hard to build their nests, but they don't have a time tabled to-do list. Plants don't feel the need to grow an inch by the end of the day. No matter how hard we try, we cannot contain grass to the places we want it to grow.  It'll pop up through a crack in the sidewalk if it wants to.  Our need to contain, schedule, and organize is unnatural.  

I'm not saying we shouldn't do those things.  We need to be productive and responsible, and some of you are responsible for keeping small people alive. But I am suggesting that, if we are to maintain our sanity, we have to take time to reset.  I'm not talking about self-care. That's just become an excuse for shirking our responsibilities without feeling guilty about it. I'm talking about reconnecting with natural rhythms in creation.  I'm talk about rest.

Most of the world's religions have an ethic of rest, even though we are bad at practicing it.  My friend, Dana Trent, does a fantastic job of describing this in her book For Sabbath's Sake.   Like everything Dana writes, says, or does, it is simultaneously profound, entertaining, and highly relatable. She opens with a story of breaking off a Q-tip in her ear and deciding to wait to address it until after she had taught her class (absolutely what I would do too) and spends a chapter describing her experience at a retreat center in which she found she was "bad at resting."  Ten out of ten recommend this book.

There is a reason that Sabbath had to be a commandment. We don't do it.  Even though it is good for us.  Even though we would be glad if we did.  Even though it is the way were originally designed as image bearers.  We forget that we have to intentionally step out of ourselves to reconnect with things that are bigger than us.  (Even if you are not a person of faith, you must recognize the need for this connection and feel the pull toward something outside of your own schedule.)

Spring provides an important reminder.  Plants that have lain dormant all winter were not dead; they were resting and are now experiencing renewal.  Bears that have hibernated all winter are ready to forage again. Easter reminds us that death does not have the final say.  Birds that have been quiet for months are out there singing again.  Perhaps this is even why we engage in spring cleaning; it's just a natural time for a reset.

Teachers, I know spring is busy.  I know you are in the sprint toward the end of the year.  I know that exams will be due to your administrators soon, and you I'm not suggesting that you go on a retreat.  I'm suggesting that you take half an hour to take a walk in the woods.  I'm well aware of how blessed I am to have an Arboretum right in the heart of my city and that not everyone has that. But you can find something - a tree, a squirrel, a neighborhood dog to pet - lie down on the ground and look at clouds - something.  

Take a few minutes to reset your rhythm.  You'll be glad you did.

Keeping Balance in Unstable Times

Anyone who knows me can tell you that my sense of physical balance is terrible.  I can be standing still and suddenly be off balance.  I can trip over lines in the tile floor.  If I close my eyes, I lose all orientation in space, so I never know what direction I will be facing when my eyes open again.  This is due to two physical factors.  For one thing, my hips, knees, and toes do not align.  The other part is in my brain.  There is some structural issue in my cerebellum that prevents me from processing input correctly, especially if the visual is removed.  When I was 12, I mentioned it to my doctor. She said, "How much does this interfere with your life?"  I said that it wasn't a big problem, usually only noticeable when we prayed while standing at church.  She said, "That's good because it would take brain surgery to fix it."  Oh, okay, it doesn't interfere at all then.

When I started working out at the Y, it began to interfere (not enough to make me want brain surgery, but more than it used to).  You can entertain yourself by watching me attempt a lunge because I look like a Picasso painting.  I can't get a decent quad stretch while standing in the middle of a the studio because by the time I get balanced on one foot, it's time to switch feet.  

Now, let's think beyond the physical.  We are living in unstable times.  Things are changing rapidly and often in more than one direction.  It's hard to find a strong footing mentally, emotionally, financially, and spiritually.  Even if you are a supporter who agrees with what they are doing, you must acknowledge that the actions of this administration have moved so quickly that they have thrown some things off balance. The stock ticker alone reflects that.  If it is disorienting for us as adults, imagine what it must be like for high school students getting ready to enter the work world.  

Teachers, what can we do to help our students (and ourself) keep our balance. 

Well, I'm going to return to the things I have learned about physical balance that can serve as metaphors because I think they'll preach.

Hold weights

This may sound counterintuitive, but I have much better balance with a 50lb weight bar on my back than I can without it.  The added weight provides downward force in line with my center of gravity.  Holding dumbbells in a suitcase carry can accomplish the same effect.  The extra weight makes the movements my body does a smaller percentage of the whole when it comes to weight distribution.

In the same way, teaching ourselves and our students balance during difficult times may be about carrying a load.  When we have work to do, there is an external force pointing in one direction. Our minds have something to focus on other than the news.  It's one of the many reasons I was grateful to keep teaching during the pandemic; I had no choice but to think about other things for large parts of the day.  And it did the same for my students.  We provided a continued understanding that big things still mattered and that the pandemic wasn't the only thing happening.  The time I got into a real head spin about the things that are happening right now was on a snow day. Without work to do or recreational activities to engage in, I was left to ruminate on thoughts while doomscrolling.  

If you find you are spiraling, give yourself a responsibility, a project, and activity - and make it large enough to provide the force you need to get out of your own head and keep your balance.

Touch something 

I don't know if you have ever considered how weird it is that we walk on two feet.  You probably haven't because you aren't as weird as I am.  But it is worth noticing that we are the only species (besides non-flight birds) that use bipedal walking 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. 

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.

This is one of the reasons I can't get a decent quad stretch in some of my classes, there is nothing to provide a point of balance when I raise my foot.  I can do it in cycle because I hold tightly to the handlebars.  

In the same way, having more points of contact will help with emotional stability in unstable times.  Have trusted friends or family that you can spend time with.  They will keep it from being just you leaning in one direction or another, recentering you and providing balance.  Notice, I said that these need to be trusted people.  Unstable people will not stabilize each other.

Look at a stationary object 

A few weeks ago, during my Livestrong group, the co-leader told our ladies that they should look at something stationary in the room to help with their balance.  She said, "Don't look at me. If I'm wobbly, you probably will be too."  That had never occurred to me before, but I've been doing it ever since.  When I try to balance at the end of a class, I look at one of the instructor's weights on the floor.  It isn't perfect, but it helps.

When you are feeling out of balance mentally or emotionally, you need to focus your attention on something stable.  While this may be a strong friend, recognize that they are not immune to instability, and they are human; they cannot be your stationary object for long periods of time.  You need something bigger than that.  If you are a person of faith, you know that God "does not change like shifting shadows." He is not just stable as though that is an adjective; He IS stability.  Keep your eyes on Him.

Be okay with a few off days

This Saturday, when it came time to do a hamstring stretch, I looked at the weights on the floor, but I still couldn't stabilize.  I just couldn't find my balance.  It may be because I had other things on my mind or because I was trying too hard, but it just wasn't happening that day.  I was having an off day.

You will have off days mentally and emotionally, and that is okay.  You can wallow for a few hours.  YOu can take a nap or listen to music or eat mac and cheese.  Whatever you need during a temporary period is probably fine as long as it is an off day, not your normal way of life.  If you find these things aren't working for you on a daily basis or for a long period of time, you may be in need of a trained professional to help you find your balance.

How GOOD PD Can Reset Your Equilibrium

"Over ten years ago, I had a simple idea: that education should be informed by evidence whenever

it was possible, rather than hunches and intuition.  Lots of people agreed and we started to hold conference days with a twist: teachers were welcome to present, along with leaders, academics, policy makers, and anyone with a stake in actually helping children to flourish and learn."

- Tom Bennett - Founder of ResearchEd

I was sitting on an airplane Friday.  We had been sitting on the taxiway for a while, and I had fallen asleep.  When we finally began taking off, I experienced the most interesting part of take off. It was likely exaggerated by my having been asleep, but it is weird.  It’s the feeling that you are lying on your back and taking off vertically, in spite of the visual evidence that you are at a fairly low angle.

You have experienced the same feeling if you have ridden a roller coaster with twists or a Graviton ride at a carnival. It is the feeling that “down” has changed direction.  It’s an odd feeling because if there is anything we think we know well, it is gravity.  Gravity points down, and we have been feeling that for our entire lives.

Why does this happen?  Well, since I’m a physics teacher who hasn’t gotten to teach any physics in a while, I’m glad you asked.  

The answer is that acceleration is caused by external force.  When the airplane is taking off, it is accelerating at a rapid rate, both requiring a lot of force and, through the magic of Newton’s 3rd law, exerting a lot of force. The back of the seat you are sitting in is accelerating and placing force against your back in the direction of that acceleration.    

The rest of the effect is psychological.  You are used to the most common force acting on your body pointing down, so when this greater force overcomes it (in a Graviton, they drop the floor out from under you, so you know the other force is much larger), you brain interprets that feeling as a shift in the direction of down.  It’s not permanent.  Once the forces stabilize again, you remember what direction down is, and gravity has not been changed, merely temporarily overcome.

“What does this have to do with an education blog?” I can hear you asking.  Well, this brings me back to the reason I was on this plane.  I was headed to New York to speak at a ResearchEd conference.  ResearchEd is an organization that began in the U.K. but now operates in 19 countries to bring the evidence of educational research to the average teacher. Most of us weren’t exposed to the science of learning in our education degrees; and many still aren’t.  Organizations like ResearchEd and Learning and the Brain exist to help those in the classroom apply techniques that have been shown to work rather than trying to figure it out through trial and error.

As teachers, we are pushed by MANY external forces.  If you have been teaching longer than a week, you have had a fad pushed on you.  Whether it is inquiry learning, catering to individual learning styles, skills-over-content teaching, personalized learning, gamification, Brain Gym, three-cueing, or alternative seating, you have been told a lot of things are “the direction education is headed.”  

And, like the airplane seat pushing in one direction, it becomes easy to lose your understanding of what good instruction looks like.  This is amplified even more if you have an administration or district that wants you to buy into the fads because it makes them look good or makes your school’s website more appealing.  If you are a teacher who cares about doing a good job, you feel guilty every time a new thing appears because you think you have been doing it wrong until now.  Then, you scramble to revamp your lessons, even those that work well already, only to have this experience again a couple of years later when the newest fad comes down the line.

There are a lot of teacher conferences and professional development seminars out there, but what makes Research Ed special is the value you get for a small amount of money.  Registration for a one day event is only $45, making it accessible to a large number of teachers even if they were coming on their own, and they take place on Saturdays, so there is no need to worry about leaving your classroom and creating sub plans (because we all know that is harder than being at school).  You hear from people who truly value research and evidence in education.  When I pitched my session, I had to list the research that supported it. You can't get away with the phrase "research shows;" you have to be explicit about what research shows it.

In October, my friend Meagan and I took a road trip to ResearchEd Delaware and heard from some great people.  Andrew Watson talked about attention; David Daniel on developing a "science of teaching."  Steve Hare shared his Teach Yourself methods, and Kristen Simmers addressed adaptive teaching.  

In November, I had the honor of presenting at their conference in Denver, and this weekend, I presented the same session at ResearchEd New York.  I actually got to meet Tom Bennett, which made me happy because we have been connected on Twitter for several years, and he gave an excellent keynote presentation at the end of the conference.  Dr. Jim Heal of Deans for Impact and Meg Lee gave an amazing opening keynote as well. 

Bad PD can get you all turned around, wondering which way is up and which direction gravity points.  At best, a good teacher leaves feeling guilty.  At worst, a good teacher become overwhelmed enough by the ever-changing initiatives to leave the profession altogether. Being at ResearchEd yesterday reminded me that gravity points down.  Well designed, interactive direct instruction IS good instruction, even if it doesn't sound innovative to your district leaders.  Using mini-whiteboard isn’t sexy, but it works.  Engaging in formative assessment, spaced retrieval practice, cold calling, and working memory management isn’t photographable for your school website or yearbook, but it results in long-term learning and the flourishing of students.  

ResearchEd is not the only organization out there, of course.  Anyone who knows me knows that my heart belongs to Learning and the Brain, and I'll be speaking at their spring conference at the end of April.  If you live near Maryland, the St. Andrew's School hosts Festival of Ed every year, another gem in the world of evidence based education training. 

In general, teachers hate PD, but it's not because they don't want to develop professionally.  It's because they do, and much of what is out there is PD doesn't facilitate that.  The key is finding the good ones, the ones that aren't selling you a product or a fad, the ones that reset your equilibrium when the world seems unbalanced, the ones that give you practical, useful advice from an evidence informed lens.  It exists.  Get in touch with me at beth@thelearninghawk.com, and I'll help you find it.

Raw Notes from ResearchEd New York City

These notes are completely raw, taken in real time with no editing.  They have not yet been processed into usable form.  Please do not judge any speaker based on what I have written here.

“I started ResearchEd as an act of hope. I hoped every student would have a teacher who had been exposed to the science of learning.  I hope you’ll see someone you agree with. I hope you’ll see someone you disagree with. I hope you’ll see someone you’ve been hoping to see for weeks. I hope you’ll see someone you’ve never heard of.”  - Tom Bennett

Keynote:  Dr. Jim Heal and Meg Lee

Meg runs professional learning for a 50000 student school district.

Jim is a founder of Deans for Impact

Wherever there is darkness, there is the promise of new growth. This is what spring teaches us.  The US is at the beginning of a movement for evidence based instruction. Teachers want to know how to take the best evidence about education and turn it into great practice.  If the science of learning in the US was a person, it would be a teenager.  It is trying to figure out what it wants to be, sometimes contentiously, with pendulum swings but the promise of becoming something really great and interesting.

There’s a sweet spot between overgeneralizing and under generalizing, growth mindset v. speaking about gifts,  There are low resolution implementations of practices, but we want real fidelity.

What is the science of learning?

A set of principles representing our best understanding about how people learn, backed by evidence from the field of cognitives science and show to have positive effects on learning.  Applicable to instructional context int he form of demonstrable teacher actions.  Until it is used in a classroom, it is not an applied science, only a theoretical one

“The most important single factor influencing learning is what the learner already knows.” - D.P. Ausubel

As you become more expert at something, everything you learn comes in not only in isolation but in connection with other things you know that are related, it connects ideas and allows innovation.

Draw two circles.  Draw the rest of the owl.  Doesn’t work if you don’t know any of the steps in between.  Taking students from their current state to the desired state can’t mean putting them in an inquiry state.  That’s a game of guess and check in an area in which they have no knowledge.  Teaching foundations and architecture of your content allows them to reach the desired state more directly.  

Showed a complex paragraph about cricket and asked how much you estimate you will remember.  It’s not about whether you can interpret it. It’s about whether you have enough knowledge of the subject to bring to your interpretation of the text.  If you know about cricket you activate more of what you already know to the learning.  

Baseball, you confusion me video

Don’t expect students to bring new understanding to something they don’t understand at all.  Otherwise, you are presenting them with a redacted view of the world and expecting them to figure out the parts you redacted.  

New knowledge needs a place to live within the knowledge you already have.

The beauty of this is that the more you learn, the more you can learn and the more interesting, sticky, and rich it becomes.  Since the new learning has more ways of hooking to what you already know, you remember it longer and at more depth.  

Understanding is remembering in disguise.  It is your brain responding to new information with “I’ve seen something like this before.”

Hansel and Gretel example - solving a riddle in which a path must be marked is easier to figure out if your grow up with this fairy tale than it is if you didn’t.  

Inquiry learning is inherently inequitable because those who have advantages of prior knowledge will be able to figure things out.  Those who haven’t won’t.  It is our responsibility to give them all prior knowledge.

Every child deserves to be taught by a professional who understands how learning happens.

Teaching is very hard, but we make it harder for teachers when we prevent them from understanding what works for most student most of the time.  Every teacher deserves to understand how teaching happens in order to prioritize and focus the work.

Evidence informed Venn diagram (Scutt, 2018)

Evidence guides us, but it can’t tell us what to do because context matters and requires expertise, experience, and professional judgement to implement. This is using the teacher’s schema to place new understanding about research within their already existing practice.    

Expertise and experience are not the same thing.  Experts see problems differently because they recognize patterns and categories.

Surface prior knowledge, make schema explicit, intercept misconceptions, connect surface feature o underlying conceptual architecture, hang the new knowledge in the right place.

When schema is underdeveloped 

• use examples and analogies
• Provide scaffolds

The science of learning allows for aligned acts of improvement rather than random ones.  Aligning them will be powerful for improvement in your school.

Learning science is not an initiative. It’s a lens for improving our practice. It’s the way we accomplish our goals.

Zach Groshell - Explicit Instruction

Explicit instruction is NOT lecturing.

• A lecture is a continuous monologue.
• Explicit instruction is interactive and responsive, even though the teacher is the one delivering information.

Personal definition:  A lecture might as well have been a video.  Explicit instruction requires an alert human who can adapt.

Working memory is limited

Pairing words with visuals is better than words alone

Stories are psychologically privileged

Examples and analogies help make the material concrete

Generating a response promotes retention and transfer

Lecture is transient.  Working memory limitations prevent you from holding onto it because it passes by too quickly.  

Explicit instruction involves lots of small chunk presentations with a pause to check for understanding, prompts for short interactions, and retrieval. 

Hands up only participation privileges the confident student.  Use choral response, cold call, turn and talk, mini-whiteboards, etc. to hear from more students and make all of them think.  This type of explicit instruction uses methods that recruit all students to think and participate.  

Working memory has two complementary channels, verbal and non-verbal. Pairing them doesn’t overload working memory. It optimizes it.  Don’t make them compete by reading words to them outlaid.  That’s putting two things in the verbal system at once.  Make a diagram, pause to allow students to take it in without listening to you.  Take away extraneous information, point to words and diagram (or add the words as you teach) to orient attention.

Story arc:  Exposition, rising action, falling action, resolution

“Imagine a time when you . . . “  

“Put yourself in the shoes of . . . “

Examples and non-examples have a lot of nuances that allow students to find the boundary of definitions. This is a a covalent bond.  This is a covalent bond.  This is an ionic bond (How is it different).  This is a polar covalent bond (close, but different - we’ve encountered a boundary of the definitions of both ionic and covalent).  Ask a lot of yes and no questions about the examples and use a lot of them.  

Explicit instruction involves a lot of scaffolding.  Removing the scaffold requires them to generate answers. 

8 Generative Strategien

Summarizing

Explaining

Testing

Drawing

Concept Mapping

Imagining

Enacting

Teaching

Adina Lopatin - Examples and Non-examples

Most teacher prep programs pair you with a highly regarded teacher and say, “Do everything she does.  Now.”

Can beginning teachers have things broken down into pieces?

Brilliance is equally distributed, but quality teaching is not.

Students should think about meaning when they encounter key ideas.  How do we make that happen?

• Draw attention to meaning
• Prompt effortful thinking
• Use examples and non-examples

Examples and non-example help build student schema.

• Contrasting similar things clarifies what is included in a concept and excluded from it, helping the brain to organize concepts in long term memory.
• It frees up working memory and allows transfer across contexts.

Varied examples
- Don’t just show one.  Show several that have the defining feature in common but a lot 
              of other differences. (Three triangles of different angles and colors)
Contrasting non-examples
- Show something with defining differences while keeping everything else the same. (A 
              blue triangle and a blue square, a bat and a bird)
Prompts to elaborate
- Ask how the things are the same and how they are different, so they can bring it back 
              to the defining qualities (If bats, birds, and airplanes all have wings, are wings the 
              defining characteristics of birds?  Then, what is?)

Cult of Pedagogy video - How to t Teach a Concept Attainment Lesson

Panel Discussion

Q:  If you could design an AI tool that would actually be helpful for teachers and education, what would you want it to do?  (Personal note: Everyone knows that I refuse to participate voluntarily in AI, so take the summary of these answers with a grain of salt.)

A:  It would help with administrative tools, like lesson plans.  If it could recognize the BS in our lesson plans, we could make more effective plans.

A.  Focus on augmentation, not automation.  Make it do something that is impossible for a human today (like a crane), not replace a human (like a loom).

A. If it could help students better see and understand all of their students by facilitating communication between them.

A. Design it to norm rubric based grading.

Q. What would it look like for teachers to learn together and have that inform the practice of the entire school?

A:  Teachers volunteer to host observations after implementing something they learned through PD.

A:  Trust and camaraderie is required for transparent sharing and allowing people to watch each other.

A:  Principal programs teachers in the same room because it requires them to watch each other teach.

Q:  Is there a gap between what students and teachers need and what systems prioritize? How can research address that?

A:  Obviously, there is a gap. The people who make decisions about what go on in classrooms are not in classrooms enough. The administrator should come in curious and interested in why the teacher has made the decisions they have made.  There is currently no feedback loop about products and initiative implementation.

A:   We should explain why policy decisions are made and give time to adapt. If a teacher isn't doing it, we should care about find out the reason, not just being upset that they didn't do it.

A:  Meet with stakeholder groups regularly and frequently to ask questions about priorities before making decisions.

Q:  How do we get more teacher voice and involvement in decision making without overloading them?

A:  Build time into their schedules.

A:  Every teacher should be part of some team.  Allow them to choose which conversation they want to be a part of.  They all want to be part of at least one of them if given the opportunity.

A:  Partner teachers with researchers, so the researcher can observe the expertise and try to translate it into something explainable and transferrable to others.

Tom Sherrington - Evidence Informed Teaching -What Does it Look Like in Practice

You can't think about the research while you are in the flow of running the room, but you have to be thinking about something as you make decisions about what do.  How do we take the enormous wealth of learning and turn it into a model of teaching and learning that we can implement.

Ausubel's Meaningful Learning talks about how to connect new material to prior knowledge.  That's where meaning is made.

Ask yourself what prior knowledge they might be missing.  (If you use Rome as a synonym for the power of the Pope while teaching about Henry the 8th, do your students know that's what it means?)

Students struggle because of 

- lack of prior knowledge

- attention deficits

- poor fluency of recall

- working memory overload

- task completion as a proxy (a poor one) for learning

Is everyone thinking?  Making meaning?  Practicing?  Building schema?

Dylan Wiliam's Formative Assessment Strategies:

Rosenshine's Principles

Scaffolding:

- Map out components of the task

- Provide supports at a detailed level

- Provide supports at a generalized level

- Practice explaining with the support to check

- Remove supports as they practice.

Short feedback loops - Give a couple of examples.  Then ask students to generate one.  Once you have developed a pattern, you can play with it by making small changes to the pattern.

You don't get better at a sport by endlessly playing a sport. You break it down and drill the components before putting it back together.  

Richard Wheadon - Teaching Learning Habits - How to Develop Independent and Successful Learners

Teachers are becoming more evidence informed, but we have forgotten to tell the students.

Kids leave you. Have you instilled enough knowledge of the science of learning in them that they can learn without you?  They are sitting in a college lecture where all the things you did in middle and high school aren't present, can your former students help themselves?  Understanding cognitive science gives them the freedom to make better decisions.

Learning - Working memory is limited.  Knowing that should change how you teach.  If they know that, it should change how they study.  Explain chunking to them so they can chunk things themselves when they need to.  Teach them why retrieval and rehearsal work.

Thinking - "Memory is the residue of thought." - Daniel Willingham. If you don't spend time thinking about something, you will not remember it.  You lose your phone or your keys when you think about something else because it has left your working memory.  That's why we retrace our steps when we are looking for something.  Listening and thinking are two different things.  Do things that require them to think.  Teach them that for studying as well.  Could you draw a dollar bill accurately?  Probably not, because when you are holding it, you are thinking about what you want to buy, not what the bill looks like.

Fast and slow thinking - Daniel Kahneman - When you do things automatically (habits, frequent things), you forget them quickly.  You don't remember a normal drive home.  If you encounter a detour, you remember more of it because you had to slow down to navigate new challenges.  Fast thinking is important for saving our mental energies day to day, but it is bad in learning new material because it is loaded with bias and reinforces logical fallacies.  

Substitution Bias - Instead of answering the question they are asked, students answer a simpler question.  A bat and ball together cost $1.10. That bat costs $1 more than the ball.  How much does the ball cost?  A child will answer 10 cents, but it can't be.  The ball has to cost 5 cents, but they just look at two numbers and subtract them.

Sunk Cost Fallacy - They keep doing things that don't work because they don't want to admit that it they have been doing it wrong for a long time.

Structure things and create rules that slow down thinking.  Train in statistical thinking.  Remind people why you are doing what you are doing (Nudge theory).  "Hey, there is a trick question in here, so try to find it."

Habits - Habits are formed through self gratification, motivation, and routines.  As a teacher, you have more control over routines than the internal processes of the other two.  Our brains are wired to prioritize immediate pleasure over future rewards.  Habits can help you overcome that impulse and overcome procrastination.

The law of effect - Success breeds success.  If something leads to a desired outcome, it is reinforced.  

Atomic Habits - Cue, Craving, Response, Reward - Breaking the cycle is required to change the habit. 

Tom Bennet - Addressing the Behavior Crisis

I didn't take notes in real time because I enjoy Tom and really wanted to just listen.  I'll summarize later.