Being a Whole Person

Note: I'm trying really hard not to write about current events, so this is a topic I've kept in the draft folder for a while. I just didn't want y'all to think I was unaware of the crazy in the world right now.

I was getting ready for class to start one day, when our Latin teacher came down to ask a question about math. It might have been about prime numbers, but I don't remember as he often had a math question he lingered over for a few months before finding another one.  As he walked away, I said to my students, "He says he has a 'crush on math' and comes down here to ask questions."  They looked befuddled as they said, "But he's the Latin teacher." I paused for a beat and said, "You should tell him that. After all, they don't let us like things we don't teach." 

I hoped that bit of gentle teasing would reveal the silliness of thinking that someone can only be interested in things that are directly related to their jobs. But that conversation also revealed something about how students view their teachers - as sort of one dimensional content delivery devices.

I'm not sure when it happened, but somewhere between my school days and now, we stopped valuing well-roundedness in students.  When I was a student, that's what colleges were looking for. I wrote many college recommendation letters highlighting that very quality. 

Then, there was a shift; they wanted to see "passion." Don't get me wrong - I'm all about being passionate. But I think their definition of passion and mine are different. In my life, passion looks like throwing myself into whatever I am doing. Whether it is listening to a sermon, making a yearbook, participating in a fitness class at the Y, or attending an exhibit at an art museum, I want to do as much as I can and learn as much as I can. That's how I have always defined passion for myself.

The colleges who were looking for passion seemed to think it meant singularly focused. Have one interest or cause and pursue it with all of your being. This was their expectation of high school students. I don't think I would qualify for scholarships now because they expect students to have built a life around one thing, starting a non-profit or business around that one thing. To them, being well-rounded appears to be unfocused or non-zealous.

I think that's sad, not just because it is the opposite of the way I am built, but because it comes at a cost. Helping student find something they are passionate about is great, but the implicit message is that they can only be passionate about one thing. Students who are passionate about engineering would benefit greatly from enrolling in art or theater. Talented musicians can find additional passions in the study of history or math. People are not ONE thing, and we aren't meant to spend our entire lives caring about ONE thing.

One of the reasons I chose to attend ORU, a school 1200 miles away in a state I'd never set foot in was their philosophy of educating the whole person - spirit, mind, and body. While I often questioned this motive during my graded 3-mile "fun run" each semester, I knew it was good. I liked taking general education classes and choosing to take classes outside my major because it was making me a more complete person. 

When my students balked at the idea of taking classes they "didn't need," I often said, "What if the only thing I could talk to you about was physics?  Would you like me at all? No, I would be insufferable." For that reason, I talked to them about books and art and plays and even what little I knew of sports. GRACE had a math teacher who also taught Irish Dance, a history teacher who also taught anatomy, and a science teacher who was into photography enough to become the yearbook advisor (that one is me). 

Being 3-dimensional whole people makes us more interesting, but those things also inform each other. If your passion is art, you will be better at it by understanding some chemistry. They aren't mutually exclusive. If your great love is history, you will benefit from learning how to analyze literature. If you devote yourself to people, a knowledge world languages and culture will enable you to serve them better. No knowledge is ever wasted. 

Most of the people we admire in history had multiple passions. Mendel, the father of genetics, wasn't a career scientist. He was a monk with a garden. His love for the Lord and his need for sustenance drove his interest in pea plants, and we still benefit from it.  Another monk, St. Francis, knew scripture well because, of course, he was passionate about them. But he was also an animal expert and a poet. Thomas Jefferson not only penned the American Declaration of Independence, he was an architect who played the violin. While we think of George Washington Carver as being solely focused on the peanut, he cared deeply about education and took his traveling classroom to farmers while developing methods of crop rotation because he understood soil chemistry.

Teachers, be passionate about the content you teach. It's important for students to see that.  But if you want to broaden their horizons, you have to broaden yours as well. Talk to them about things you are learning outside of your field. It will help you build relationships with them and will make them view you as more human, but it may also allow them to lead fuller and more joyful lives. 

It won't make the less passionate. On the contrary, it will make them passionate about more things.

Research Ed - Denver 2025 #rEDDenver2025

This is my fourth Research Ed conferences (3rd as a presenter).  One of the wonderful things about this conference is that everyone learns from everyone else.  Since you can't be here, I am taking notes for you to learn from as well.  (I can't provide notes on the first session since I am giving it, but you can go to my website www.thelearninghawk.com if you want the slides.)  Please recognize that these are notes taken in real time with little to no editing. They will be a mix of what the presenters said and my own thoughts. While I try to note the difference between those two things, I don't always keep up.  Please don't hold any presenter responsible for something you read here.

Keynote:  From Routine to Retrieval by Patrice Bain and Amber Haven

In 2006, she had an average classroom with average scores. Research was done in lab settings but not in real classrooms.  She met a couple of researchers who talked to her about memory.  She realized that teachers are taught how to teach, but few are taught how people learn.

Understanding the learning process is essential for making any kind of impact in the classroom.

Research needed to happen in classrooms that have the messiness that lab setting don't (intercom interruptions, fire drills, etc.)

"Knowing how to teach by understanding how students learn is a matter of instructional equity." - Jim Heal and Meg Lee

If we start teaching them how to learn in elementary school, just think how much better their high school lives will be.

"Children are more alike than different in terms of how they think and learn." - Daniel Willingham

(Personal reflection:  Students have been told that they all learn differently and taught to find their "learning style."  The reality is much more empowering because they only have to find out how to learn, not some mystical idea of how THEY learn.)

We have to put information in, but storage won't be robust without retrieval.  Retrieval strengthens storage.

Power Tools:  Retrieval, Spacing, Interleaving, and Metacognition

Retrieval:  Pulling information out

Spacing: Revisiting retrieval over time - It interrupts forgetting, strengthening memory

Interleaving:  Comparing and contrasting similar items

Metacognition: Discriminating what you know from what you don't

Students spend most of their day shoving information into the your brain. It's hard to organize it or reflect on it unless you retrieve it.  It's like organizing your closet by finding an item and putting it on a shelf.

"When students consistently find themselves in a predictable learning environment, they can let their guard down to engage." Mitch Weathers

Routines are the best way to reduce anxiety in all students, but especially those who are prone to high anxiety.  They know what they are supposed to do, and they know what happens next. Transition times become less chaotic. 

Cognitive Load Theory is important because finding the sweet spot where students can process information impacts their learning dramatically. Can you drive smoothly in England where you don't know where you are going, have a car with the wheel on the other side, are on the left side of the road, and have to use roundabouts.  That is cognitive overload.

Don't be afraid to face your desks forward and reduce the amount of stuff on your walls. 

Working memory is limited (4-7 things that require focus) - How can you lessen their cognitive overload?

(Personal Note:  I see the chunking example with letters all of the time.  I would like to see it with actual content at a conference.)

"Background knowledge allows chunking, which makes more room in your working memory, making it easier to do something with that information." - Daniel Willingham

Scaffolds are not meant to be permanent, but they need to know when you are going to remove them so they have a chance to build proficiency in the task.  Everyone should have the same final goal, but scaffolds can be different to meet the needs of students.  "If everyone has a scaffold all of the time, it's not a scaffold. It's your lesson plan."

Atomization - breaking down complex concepts into small pieces.  When teaching weather, break it down into each of the variables that affects the weather before putting it back together.

Direct Instruction is teaching directly, but it is not a lecture. There should be instructions for students to do something (turn and talk, choral response, whiteboard answers, etc.) every two minutes.

Dual coding - provide images alongside verbal information. Have kids "sketch and tell."

Seek evidence. Don't blindly accept.

Rethinking Intrinsic Motivation by Andrew Watson

I was a little bit late to this session because I couldn't find the room.  I may have missed something important.

Intentionally Provocative Questions: 

Why don't student learn fractions with the same joy that they learn the names of colors or animal sounds. (Why is school demotivating?)

Why do schools teach things that aren't intrinsically motivating?

David Geary's Evolutionary Theory - Our species is unlike others in that we have to learn. Other animals are born ready to go without much teaching. A turtle is born ready to turtle.  

We learn things that help with avoiding predators, getting food, or allow us to successfully reproduce. Those things are biologically primary.  Learning animal sounds are obvious in their benefit to helping us avoid predators. Calculating the area under a curve does not fit into any of those categories, so it is biologically secondary.

Because we want our students to learn biologically secondary things because they are culturally valued, we need social institutions to make sure we teach them these things.

Back to the Intentionally Provocative Questions: 

Why don't student learn fractions with the same joy that they learn the names of colors or animal sounds. (Why is school demotivating?) You are intrinsically motivated to learn biologically primary things but not biologically secondary ones.

Why do schools teach things that aren't intrinsically motivating? The point of a school is to teach things that students are not intrinsically motivated to learn.  If they were naturally motivated to learn it, we wouldn't need to teach it to them.

Teachers are often scolded for not fostering intrinsic motivation, but that you should actually foster realism. 

Self Determination Theory - 

Six motivational states - Amotivation, 4 kinds of extrinsic motivation, intrinsic motivation

Amotivation - Absent

External and Internal Extrinsic Motivations - Internal extrinsic motivation does help students learn more, but external extrinsic motivation does not.  Internal extrinsic motivation is valuable but not enjoyable.

Intrinsic Motivation - Internal - Enjoyable

Example:  Some people truly enjoy exercise (intrinsic motivation). Others do it because they know it is valuable, but they don't enjoy it (internal extrinsic motivation)

You cannot move someone to intrinsic motivation, but you can move them from a motivation or external extrinsic motivation into internal extrinsic motivation (teaching them to value it even if they don't enjoy it) with:

- Autonomy

- Relatedness

- Competence

Any one strategy can had different effects on different students, at different moments, with different content.

Popularizing the 3 Box Memory Model: by Rob McEntarffer

I was late to this one too. I spent too much time talking to Andrew about his topic after his session.

Teachers and administrators must have a learning theory that matches reality. It must predict the outcome of teaching decisions.  No matter how much you believe in it, if it doesn't result in learning, you shouldn't use it.  Operating under an unrealistic learning theory gets in the way of learning.

Are you using this model to help making teaching decisions? Or are you just throwing things at the wall to see what sticks?

Personal Reflection:  To make a model stick at your school, you must have a few teacher "influencers" to keep using the same language with other teachers as well as students. They need to own it, adapt it to your context, and be enthusiastic about it with others.  

The pendulum swings from emphasizing content or skills every few years.

Get the people who know about things and those who are affected by it talking to each other.  In universities, the people in the education department don't ever talk to the people in the psychology department.  Sometimes, there is an educational psychology department, and they don't talk to the other two either.

It's imperative to ask "What is working?  What didn't work?" every time you implement something new. 

Why Students Forget and What You Can Do About It by Marcie Samayoa

I am very excited for this one.  I've been following Ms. Sam on Twitter for years. I'm amazed at how tiny she is.  

You have a great day in class. Everybody is engaged and with you. The next day, you ask them a question, and you just get an empty stare.

Showed the Ebbinghaus forgetting curve. You forget a lot of content quickly.  Even a few minutes shows a high percentage of loss unless there is effortful practice. Each act of spaced retrieval results in less forgetting. 

Retrieval strengthens memory, enhances transfer, and always outperforms re-reading.

When you are doing a review, you should ask students questions that they have to answer without using their notes or book. You can't and shouldn't review everything from the previous lesson; you should figure out what they have learned in a previous lesson that connects to today's lesson and have them retrieve those. (If you are going to teach about isotopes today, you need to have them retrieve things about the periodic table and atomic structure, but you don't need to cover electromagnetic radiation that day.) This automatically works in space and interleaving.  Don't take more than 5-10 minutes of class time to do this.

Make sure students know retrievals are not quizzes or tests.  They aren't being graded on them; this is purely for the benefit of their memory.

I want to be in Ms. Sam's chemistry class.

Science or Snake Oil? How to Tell the Difference by Holly Lane

It is lamentable that graduates from schools of education are not trained in how to find education research or how to evaluate it for themselves.  

We are bombarded with snake oil in the field of education. There is a lot of garbage, and if you don't have the tools do distinguish good from bad, you will end up using a lot of garbage because there is just so much more of it out there.

We don't have an FDA in education. You can sell anything you want and claim that it is based on science.

Every program currently sold that is related to reading claims that it is based on "the science of reading." Social media makes it even worse by amplifying popular but non-scientific programs. 

Because there is so much misinformation, there is still a huge gap between research and practice.

The scale of evaluating evidence (1 is the lowest quality)

1. Anecdotal
2. Expert opinion
3. Case study 
4. Correlational study
5. Quasi-experimental design
6. Randomized control trials
7. Systematic review
8. Meta-analysis

Indicators of effectiveness

• Statistical significance
• Effect size - How many standard deviations above the mean is the experimental group compared to the control group

Indicators of trustworthiness

• Publication source
• Research Journals
• Practitioner Journals
• Magazines and blog (no vetting)
• Books 
• Commissioned reviews usually go through substantial vetting.
• Research handbooks usually have knowledgeable editors
• Commercially published - some are gold, and some are garbage

Teach How Students Learn by Gene Tavernetti

This is the third conference I've been to with Gene, and I have had breakfast with him twice, but this is the first time I've gotten to attend his session, so I've been looking forward to it all day.  His book Teach Fast has been referenced by three other presenters today.

The instructional paradox:  Learning is complex! But we must simplify instruction.

FAST Framework:

Focused Adaptable Structured Teaching

Focused - Eliminating extraneous load

Adaptable - One lesson structure for all content areas

Structured - Follows the same order for each lesson

Preview - accessing prior knowledge from long term memory and/or provide relevance (relevance doesn't mean "to their lives." It means relevant to the lesson.

Learning Objective - deconstruct the standard into learner friendly language that is still academic, what is the new learning today? (Have students read it as a choral response)

Review - Sub skills necessary for the lesson in the same way they are about to use the information

Explain the Key Ideas - Definitions embedded in the context of the concepts, procedures, etc. This is the "what" of the lesson.

At this point, the fire alarm went off in the museum. We didn't leave, but it slowed us down significantly.

Explain Expert Thinking - This is the "how" of the lesson. (You should model two times. If there is only one, there is no pattern.)

Gradual Release of Responsibility - I do, we do, you do - You have already modeled 2 times. Then, they do it with your guidance and questions. Then, they can practice.

Closure 

Independent Practice

We remember best what we learn first and last. The bulk of instruction should be first.  Then, do inline practice in the middle of the lesson. Do a closure at the end to engage in retrieval practice at the end of the lesson. 

Use Techniques Thoughtfully

I know it has been a while since it was on TV, but recently, I decided to re-watch Project Runway on Amazon Prime.  I have one general takeaway and one that is relevant to education.

1.  Tim Gunn is a national treasure. Protect him at all cost.

2.  In every challenge, the designers had to make clothing, but models obviously needed shoes, bags, and jewelry to go with the outfit while they walked down the runway. Somewhere in each challenge, Tim Gunn said the following line, "Use the accessories wall thoughtfully." 

If they used the wall but not "thoughtfully," they were usually called out by the judges for styling errors.  "The dress is cute, but these shoes made her look like a mom on her way to lunch." or "That bag just took all the youth out of your design."  They had used the resources that were provided to them, but they had not chosen them well or used them in beneficial ways.

Because your mind probably works like a normal person's, you are likely saying, "I thought you said this would be relevant to education."  Okay, here it is.

As teachers, we have access to an overwhelming number of techniques.  I can teach any point of curriculum with direct instruction, video resources, websites, lab experiments, projects, and on and on and on.  I have many ways to "style" my lesson.  Because there are so many options, it is important that I choose my techniques thoughtfully.  

I must sit down with my objectives and ask myself, "What is the best way to teach this? How will the content make the most change in their long term memories?"  It may be that having students create a video in which they act as reporters who are telling people about a historical event or scientific discovery is the best way for them to learn about that event, but it might not be the best way to have them learn about Newton's first law of motion or a geometry proof. In that case, the "accessory" is getting in the way of the "garment." 

Teachers, if we are honest with ourselves, we will admit that we are pretty excitable people.  We like the shiny new things that come our way, and we want to use them. I'll never forget the spring we learned about Kahoot.  Every teacher used it for every test review.  By the time we got to May, kids would groan if I said to login to Kahoot because they were so tired of using it (even shiny new things get tiresome if we overuse them).  

I'm glad we are excited, it's a profession where excitement is contagious.  But we must also be thoughtful.  We must ask ourselves, "Is this technique the best way to teach this content or do I just want to use it?" If so, save it for next week or next month or next semester. Using where it fits best will elevate your lesson; using it for the sake of using it will confuse your students.

I am reminded of an episode of Craig Barton's podcast "Tips for Teachers."  Guests on his show bring 5 tips to share, and one said, "My first tip is, only look for tips if you need them."  In other words, if something is working, don't go looking for ways to change it.  If you are struggling to teach a specific concept, it might be time to seek out a new technique.  If the method you are currently using works, don't just change for the sake of change.

Now, I just can't help but circle back to Tim Gunn and say: "Teachers, make it work."

What You Think You See

Seeing is Believing.  Is it?  Is what we see always representative of reality?

In my day job, I sometimes stand at a desk where people are expected to scan their membership card as they enter the building. If you forgot your card, we can enter you another way; but everyone must be admitted through the system.  

One morning, I was at the desk when a woman was digging through her bag for her keychain (didn't she just get out of her car with her keys in her hand?) while someone else walked by me on her way to her yoga class.  While the first woman didn't say anything out loud, I could see her facial expression, wondering why she had to dig for her card while this woman walked on by.  What she didn't know was that this woman had, in fact, scanned in a few minutes earlier. She had gone down the stairs and realized she had left her water bottle in the car. Since we both knew she had already scanned, it wasn't necessary for her to do it again.  But without that piece of knowledge, the card searcher had only what she saw to inform her attitude and incorrectly interpreted what she saw using incomplete data.

This is more common in your life than breathing.  I'm not being hyperbolic.  You only breathe about 20 times per minute, but you interpret incoming sensory data hundreds of times per second. Literally everything that happens in your mind is an interpretation made by your brain.  As I used to tell my science students, eyes and ears are data collectors, but seeing and hearing only happen when your brains interpret that data. 

• This is why you can perceive the room spinning when you are dizzy even though that is obviously not the input your eyes are receiving. It comes from the brain trying to put together inconsistent data from two different sources - the still spinning fluid in your ear's semicircular canals and the input from the eyes.  The brain trusts the ear more and tells the brain to see something that the eyes are not seeing.
• This is why people can hallucinate voices that are not actually present. Their brain is making an interpretation of something that is not consistent with reality. Their ears are not actually hearing anything, but their brain is.

Yet, we all put great faith in our own interpretation of things. That's a feature, not a bug.  We have to do it. If we doubted everything we were seeing and hearing every minute of the day, we would crack up.  For the brain to perfectly process everything would take more time and energy than makes sense for it to use.  So, it takes short cuts.  It fills in gaps in data through interpolation and extends interpretation beyond the data through extrapolation.  

So, we can't stop to question ALL interpretations.  But we should question some of them.

This is an education blog, so let's take it to the classroom.  Is it possible that we sometimes misinterpret student behavior?  When that student who is always out of his seat without permission, do we take the mental shortcut of assuming that EVERY shift he makes in his chair is about to be a rule violation? Do we hear the first half a question and assume we know what the student is asking?  Do we see a kid in the hallway and assume she is skipping class because she has done so in the past? Kids who have been trouble makers in the past have often complained that they don't feel like teachers will let them grow and change because of their past behavior.  Do they have a point?  Do we over-interpret their actions because our brains are taking a totally normal mental shortcut?

How about your colleagues.  Do you make assumptions, not just about the action you see them doing but about their internal life?  Do you assign motive based on your past history with them?  Do you assume they are short tempered because you see them snap at a student without knowing the week long history that led up to that moment?  Do you know the whole story, or do you tell yourself a story?

I had this conversation recently about a man who was very irritated with his boss.  He was using some strong terms, like "bait and switch" during our conversation.  I had to say, "Okay, slow down" and walked him through this way of thinking.  There are three things happening here.

1. Facts
2. Feelings about facts
3. The interpretation of the facts as they are processed through your feelings.

The facts were real. He was accurately relaying the story of WHAT had happened.  His feelings were real.  He was rightly irritated by WHAT his boss had done. It's that third part where things get fictional. His brain was going beyond what he knew to be true in order to construct a story. It was filling in the gaps of what happened with WHY they happened, leading him to assign motive that was almost certainly not accurate. His boss is not a manipulator or a liar, so the term bait and switch was unfair. If he were processing the facts through a different set of feelings, the story he was telling himself would be far different.

Part of what makes teaching difficult is how many pieces of data we have to interpret and how little time we have to reflect properly.  We often react quickly to our rapid interoperation simply because there isn't time to slow down.  My encouragement to you would be to slow down as much as you are able to, knowing it might not be much.  

• That extra second before responding to a child might make a difference in your relationship with them because it might give you just enough distance to assume the best rather than the worst.
• That extra minute it takes to remind yourself of what you know for sure about your colleague might prevent weeks of awkward interactions with them.
• Taking a few class periods before answering a parent email will allow you to answer in a more tactful way. It is much better for them to experience a delay in your response than for them to experience the response you would give while your blood pressure was still high.

I've strayed a bit from the point here, so let me close the circle.  What you think you see isn't always representative of reality.  It's worth asking if you know the whole story. If not, hold your own certainty in check, and be open to changing your story after you know more.

The Power of Habit

There's a popular saying that says, "When you know better, you do better." 

Do you?  I mean, is that always true?

I remember saying to students, "You know better than that" an awful lot.

And it's not just kids.  I'm guessing you have had experiences where you knew a better way, but you kept doing something the way you had always done it.  I have a couple of recent examples.

I have been going to the same YMCA for over two years.  I had been turning on the same street for a long time.  A month ago, I realized that I could avoid an awkward and potentially dangerous intersection if I turned one street earlier and met up with the other street farther west.  I tried it, and it is objectively easier and safer.  Yet, I still find myself sailing right past that street if I am not making a conscious effort to remember. 

When I learned to set up memberships during training for my job, I must have missed a small step on the first screen where other family members are entered on the membership.  I didn't even know it was there as I have been regularly scrolling down to the "Continue to Order Entry" button for 12 months.  That meant going to the order after it was completed and adding a spouse and/or children after the fact.  I thought it was strange, but because I didn't know another way, I assumed it was the only way to do it.  I just thought the system was a little wonky.  A few weeks ago, I saw a co-worker doing it as a step of the set up and said, "Wait, you can do that before you place the order?"  She showed me where it is on the first screen, and I said, "Well, you've just saved me a ton of time."  At some point, that knowledge will save me a ton of time, but it hasn't yet.  I've processed quite a multi-person memberships since then, and I've only used the better way for about half of them.  I usually realize it just after I've hit the button and can't go back and think, "Crud, now I've got to do it the hard way!"

Why? Because the habitual way of doing it has a well-myelinated pathway of neurons (you will sometimes hear it called "muscle memory.")  The new way has some weak connections being made, but I have to do it that way a lot more times before those pathways are stronger.  Until turning the new way becomes automated, I will likely still find myself mindlessly passing the better street and the better button sometimes.

That's the power of habit. We engage in habits so often that we often aren't conscious of the fact that we are doing them.  Smokers who are trying to quit must actively try not to light up at certain times, not because they have a burning desire for a cigarette but because they are in the habit of having one at that time.  If you drive a car with the gear shift in the center console, you will find your hand going there even when driving a rental or borrowing a car from a friend. And, I can't count how many times I have walked into a room and hit the light switch during a power outage.  It's not that I am dumb enough to think the light is going to come on; it is that habit is automated, taking less energy than logic.

Teachers, harness the power of habit.  All over America, the school year has either already started or is soon to start.  Start instilling habits today!  Do the same thing over and over with them on day one. Make "This is how we do this in here" the norm. 

• Walking in and looking at the board for bellwork or announcements should be second nature by next week.
• Capping the marker immediately after writing an answer on their mini-whiteboard should be done without thinking within a day or two.
• You have to overcome their impulse to hop up as soon as the bell rings now, or you will be fighting it for the rest of the year (because that one is already habit, it's gonna take a minute).

Once something becomes a habit, they almost can't help themselves. It's going to feel annoying during the first two weeks, but it will save you all kinds of energy for the rest of the year.  Invest that time. You will be glad you did.

Just Share Your Peaches

This time of year, Matt, my weightlifting instructor at the Y, comes into every class for several weeks with a bucket full of small peaches and offers them to everyone who will stand still.  He and Steven have quite a garden, yielding not only peaches, but okra, blackberries, peppers, and a variety of other produce.  They eat and freeze and preserve, but they have more than they can use, so they give what they have to friends, spreading joy and nutrition to those around them.

As usual, I hear you saying to your screen, "What in the world does this have to do with education?"  

Legitimate question. Peaches are being used here as a metaphor for the things you have "grown" in your career.  If you are an experienced teacher (at least in the U.S. - I'm not sure what the lesson planning is like elsewhere), you have created a ton of things during your career.  From a simple but well-crafted physics problem to a complex project, you have produce, and you likely have more than you can use.

In the school where I taught for 21 years, sharing was the norm.  If someone was going to teach the same thing you were, you did some planning together and shared some resources in common.  When Jenny, our chemistry and AP physics teacher went part-time after having a baby, and we hired another chemistry teacher, Jenny handed over a flash drive with her entire folder and invited her to use it at will. 

Because it was the norm at GRACE, I thought it was standard practice everywhere.

Like all naive takes, a little time on Twitter disabused me of that notion. There are teachers all over that platform who are proudly selfish about how they won't share the resources they created unless they are paid for them. They are the same teachers who talk about "quiet quitting" and never doing anything out of contract hours, so it isn't super surprising that they would hoard their resources too.  What is surprising is the number of "You go, girl. Stand your ground." responses they get from others. We've turned selfishness into a virtue, apparently.

Listen, I'm not saying you have to give away absolutely everything.  You can be on Teachers Pay Teachers.  I am too. 

There are sometimes good reasons not to share.  I once asked a seventh grade teacher to please not do the same demonstration I was going to do with them in 8th grade. There were two reasons for that: 1. She was only doing it because it was fun; it didn't actually demonstrate any of her content.  2. The value it had in my content was the mystery because it was counterintuitive, and it would lose that if they had already seen it.  If the demonstration had fit her content better than mine, I would have let her have it, and I would have come up with something else.  You may have a truly good reason not to share some things.  But, if your reason is just, "I made it, so you can't have it unless you buy it," you might be in the wrong profession.

Experienced teachers, there are new people in your building this year.  They need what you have.  Remember what that was like?  They need peaches.  They need okra.  They need blackberries.  They need resources, and you have more than you can use.  

Remember that the goal is student learning.

And share your dang peaches.

Embracing Weirdness in Students

When I was a kid, the bed time routine usually involved my mom giving my stuffed animals voices.  At some point on most nights, I would say, "Mom, you are so weird." She would respond, "That's okay, you like weird."  This was a statement, not a question.  It was like she decreed that I like weird.

And, so, I do.

Which is a good thing.  Because the plan for me for 25 years was teaching middle school.  Not only do you have to be a little weird for that, you also have to like the weirdness you see in others.  You are going to have a boy who sits with one foot up in the desk and leans over until you think he'll fall out of the chair. You are going to have a girl who draws cartoons of animals with human legs (which looks more disturbing than it sounds). You are going to have students who burst into song in the middle of class and those who can't be cajoled to speak with any kind of incentive.  

When we think of school stereotypes, we typically think of the categories from The Breakfast Club - athlete, princess, nerd, bad boy, and weirdo. But the truth is, most kids are a category of one.  

And that's because we are individuals, not types.  For all of the money and air time that is dropped on personality testing, from Myers Briggs to Enneagram, they have little more validity than horoscopes and Buzz Feed quizzes. People in the same generation do not think the same way.  All members of a race or gender are not identical. I can tell from sitting in faculty meetings that not all teachers have the same view of things.  We are each individuals, born with certain gifts, raised in different environments, encouraged to develop different skills, taught to value different qualities.

In short, we are all weird.

And that is a good thing. God uses whatever makes you weird to fulfill His purposes in the world. He put you where you are with the strengths and weaknesses you have because there is someone who needs that aspect of your character to build them up. When you look at Scripture, every person God used in a significant way was unusual. Noah was a drunk. Abraham and Sarah were far too old. Moses stuttered. David was the family runt. And I'm convinced the apostle Peter had ADHD. 

Even if you aren't a person of faith, you have to be able to see that the world has only ever been changed by those who are willing to go against the flow and change the way things are done.  Suffragettes stood against the status quo, often putting themselves in grave danger, to get us the right to vote. The Civil Rights movement was built entirely by those who insisted on doing the unexpected, from sitting at the lunch counter to marching across a bridge to kneeling at the beginning of an athletic event. Nikola Tesla stood in opposition to the smartest men in his field, including the powerful force that was Thomas Edison. Galileo stood against the norm as did Malala Yousafzai. William Wilberforce worked himself to death opposing what was to make the world better. You can bet he would never have uttered the words, "It is what it is." 

Weird is good.  Weird brings change. We must embrace the weird in each other and in ourselves.  

I am not advocating that we all develop into people so strange that we can't operate in culture. We won't have influence that way because there are systems in which things get done and rules that have to be followed. Wilberforce was only successful in the abolition of the slave trade because he worked within the legal system. Civil Rights activists did more than create spectacles; they worked to make slow changes in the law. Tesla made connections with financial backers by proving his ideas weren't as crazy as they sounded. While weird is good, it is only useful if you can function in society.  So balance matters.

I've been thinking a lot about my Granny for the last couple of days.  She was delightfully quirky, and the stories told at her funeral reflected it. She played practical jokes on her family and called friends on their birthdays just to sing to them (and let's just admit that she wasn't going to join the choir). She often called the pastor in the middle of the week to tell him he should get a tape of his sermon and listen to it because it would bless his heart. People cried at her funeral, but they laughed a lot too. Dear God, please let me be weird like that.

Teachers, school is getting ready to start. You are about to meet some weird students, weird parents (maybe even weird colleagues).  Some of them want to hide their weirdness while other will put it on full display. Take the time to recognize what aspect of their character is unusual and useful and help them develop and mature those qualities. Help them to pursue those gifts that will make them influential, not in spite of their differences but  because of them. But also teach them the value of social norms and show them that living within the rules of society is possible while still maintaining their quirkiness. If they combine those things, they will have influence on those around them (and for some, even farther) and have great joy while doing so.