What I Learned About Education From an Aqua Fit Class

I'm in a pretty consistent routine with my workouts at the Y, but occasionally, I change things up when one of my regular instructors is out of town. Given that I swim just well enough to avoid death, I didn't think I would like taking Aqua Fit. But when my Livestrong group had theirs, I joined them and found that it was not the same as swimming (the instructor got into the water with her glasses on) and that it was a pretty good time. But that was a demonstration with only nine people in the water; so I decided to take my regular instructor's absence as an opportunity to see what it was like as an actual class. As usual, I learned some things about myself but also some things that might apply to classrooms.

The influence of others - When I got in the water, I chose a spot with great intention. I didn't want to be in deep water, but I also knew I couldn't remain at waist level. I wanted to be mid-pack, not too close to the instructor but not on the back row. It turns out that it didn't much matter which spot I chose because when twenty-four people started moving, the water started moving, and the water moved me. There were times I was much closer to the person next to me than I intended to be, and at some point without knowing how I got there, I was on the front row. No one was moving me on purpose, but as they affected the water, the water affected me.

It's not hard to see where I'm going with this when it comes to classrooms. I've never experienced peer pressure myself - truly. Even when I was a teenager, I was outspoken enough that my friends knew what I would and would not do and didn't even try to get me to do things they knew I didn't want to. But that doesn't mean I wasn't influenced by "the water." As a girl in the 80s, I had a spiral perm and high bangs and wore a lot of denim. I listened to Michael and Whitney, and I watched Saved By the Bell. It was just part of being in the water in the 80s.

This can be used for good or ill in your classroom. We are creatures who follow social norms. If we feel we belong to a group, we will do what the group does. Watch this hilarious experiment from Brain Games to see it in action. You classroom is like that. Studies have found that attention is contagious. Students seated near someone who is engaged in their work will respond by engaging in theirs (weirdly, even if the initiator is behind them out of their eye line). Classes where the majority of students care about learning will influence the one or two who don't. As teachers, we often make the mistake of highlighting the behavior we want to eliminate rather than the ones we want to reinforce. We say, "I can't believe there are so many of you who didn't turn in your homework." When we do that, we give all of those who didn't turn it in reassurance that they weren't the only one. If we say instead, "Thank you to so many of you for getting your work in on time," we emphasize that the norm is the good behavior.

You know the sign you see in hotel bathrooms that tell you how much water can be saved if you reuse your towel. It doesn't work with very many people. But, in an experiment where they compared messages, signs that said, "Eighty percent of people reuse their towel" did work. People want to believe they belong and will adjust their behavior accordingly. They aren't influenced by the power or popularity of those people, just the number of them; they are affected by "the water."

Lower level but constant tension had results - Most of the time, I take cycle and Body Pump (oh, and Barre with Dana once a week). Body Pump is a class where I work my large muscles with heavy weights. We work one body part at a time. In this particular Aqua Fit class, we used water weights - styrofoam dumbbells that you push down into the water. Depending on the size you chose, you experienced a different amount of resistance from the water. I thought, "I regularly take Body Pump. I'll use the high resistance weights. Thank you." But here's the difference. In Body Pump, there are times when the muscle isn't experiencing tension. In between reps, you are resting your muscle at the top or bottom of the movement. In between sets or during the transition between songs, those muscles are getting a little break. This is not the case in Aqua Fit. Once you have pushed that weight under the water, it is resisted every time in moves in any direction. Even when I was standing still, I was having to push down to keep the weight under the water. I honestly wasn't sure I would get through the entire hour. The next day, I was low key sort from the neck down. I'm used to having very sore big muscles, but the constant tension created soreness in the small muscles I didn't even know I had.

In classrooms, we often focus on big, dramatic learning moments. Exams, high stakes tests, semester projects, etc. Don't get me wrong; those matter. But where does most of the learning happen in your classroom? It happens in the mundane activities you do day to day. It happens when you have students engage in retrieval. It happens when they do practice problems for homework. It happens when they come in after school and have a conversation with you about the things they need help with. The lower level but constant tension is what forms their brains for learning. 

My foot didn't hurt - I have all kinds of problems with my feet. I'd love to blame my age (or perimenopause), but I started wearing orthotics at the age of 24. I stood on concrete floors for 7 hours every day for 25 years. I think I'm finally over plantar fasciitis, but I would honestly take it back to get rid of the metatarsalgia I have now. I've had to stop going up on my toes in Barre and have to readjust my form for several moves in Body Pump (no planks for me). But through an entire hour of Aqua Fit, I didn't even think about my foot. The buoyant nature of water allowed me to put less pressure on my foot and land on it softly.

How are you going to relate this one to education, I hear you asking. Every child has some pain point in their education. For some kids, it's math that makes their "foot hurt." For others, it is English. I loved school, but I just couldn't wrap my head around history. But I had one history teacher, Mr. Watkins, who got me through history classes without "foot pain." Did he show us videos? Not a single one. Did he take us outside and have us throw things at each other to simulate a battle? Nope. He didn't do any of the things that current middle school history teachers do to engage their students. What he did was share his passion. He absolutely loved talking about Winston Churchill, W.E.B. DuBois, and George Washington Carver. He was especially enthralled by the story of Czar Nicholas and Alexandra, and because he was, I was too. In fact, I read the book Nicholas and Alexandra in the 7th grade, which was punching above my weight even for an avid reader like me. In the same way the pool didn't cure my foot problems but gave me some relief from them, Mr. Watkins didn't cure my history problem. I didn't become a great history lover in high school or college, but for the two years I had Mr. Watkins in middle school, I enjoyed learning what he loved. And those topics still intrigue me. If I'm flipping through channels and see Rasputin, I will stop to watch. 

The water stopped being cold - When I first stepped into the pool, I tentatively tested the temperature of the water. It was fine when I was on the first step, but as soon as it hit the skin on my thighs, I was in shock. It felt so cold as I got in up to my chest that I wasn't sure how I could stay for long (By the way, this is heated pool; I'm just a thin blooded Southerner when it comes to temperature). About five minutes into class, I wasn't cold anymore. I might have been sweating, but it's hard to tell in the water. This was partly from exertion (see constant tension above), but it was also because I became accustomed to the temperature of the water.

When we first introduce a new and challenging skill to students, they are sometimes shocked by it. This is not the time to give up or to make it easier. They will grow accustomed to it. I sometimes reminded students that things they find easy now were once difficult for them. As adults, we read signs and notices almost unconsciously, sometimes in our peripheral vision. We forget the work that went into learning how to read. We walk without effort, but it wasn't always that way. Everything that is easy now was once difficult, and the only way through it perseverance. When appropriate, point out to students that they are now doing things they once found difficult. 

Education is sometimes exciting, but most of the time, it is the daily, constant tension of learning, retrieval, and the practice of skills. Keep it up. In time, you will see the results, but it often takes staying in the uncomfortable until it becomes comfortable.

Building Your Professional Judgment

"Every once in a while, every once in a while, there's a day with an absolute right and an absolute wrong, but those days almost always include body counts. Other than that, there aren't very many un--nuanced moments in leading a country that's way too big for ten words."

I am not equating teaching to being the President of the United States, but as I started writing this post, this West Wing quote from the debate episode, "Game On" did come to mind. Why? Because while there are some things in teaching that are THE RIGHT WAY, more often than not, there are multiple ways that each have their own pros and cons. The teacher's job isn't to find the one and only right way. It is to choose between multiple right ways and adapt the method they have chosen to the students in front of them. And they do that hundreds of times every week - on the fly with too little information - in response to what is happening in front of them.

How do they do that? If you are a teacher, how do you do that? 

By building your professional judgment.  

Like any judgment, you build your professional judgment from a combination of experience and listening to the wisdom of others. 

How would you decide, for example, what the best presentation style is for teaching a specific piece of your content? You might start by thinking about how it was taught to you. If you found it beneficial to learn in that way, it might be a good method. If you didn't, you might want to think about other options. You can, of course, search those options out online or brainstorm, but you can also seek out the advice of others who teach the same thing you do. If you are in a medium to large sized school, you probably have a person nearby that can help. If you are in a small school or you teach one of those subjects that there is usually only one teacher for (theater, art, band, yearbook), you may have to seek mentors from other schools. But it is helpful to have someone who can tell you, not only what presentation style they use but also the potential pitfalls you might encounter. You may have to adapt their advice, but it gives you a place to start so you aren't learning from trial and error alone. 

Speaking of trial and error, you are going to be doing that as well. Even with the best advice from the wisest people, you will run into times when something doesn't work. From addressing behavior to giving feedback on student work to a lab experiment that was more trouble than it was worth, you will experiences times when the decision you thought was right didn't work out so well. It's just part of the beautiful mess that is a classroom. Learning from those mistakes will help you make wiser choices the next year. 

When I first attended the Learning and the Brain conference and found out about the science of learning, I was thrilled to have a new way to build my professional judgment - evidence! I'm a science teacher, so digging through a good research study makes me happy and knowing it can give me a way to make decisions is even better. Notice that I didn't say it could tell me what to do. Research doesn't prescribe; it informs. Science, by its nature, is narrowly focused, isolating one variable at a time. School, by its nature, is broad, with dozens of variables playing out together. That means you cannot pick up a research study and say, "I'll do EXACTLY what they did." You will have to use your professional judgment to adapt a method, even an evidence based one, to your context.

When you are making decisions amongst options that each have pros and cons, there is always going to be someone who believes you made the wrong choice. A parent may believe his child shouldn't have to memorize the list of polyatomic ions you gave kids. An administrator may not understand your choice to use explicit instruction rather than discovery. A student may think you should throw out a question they got wrong. But if you have used your professional judgment to make a decision, hold firm (Maybe not with your administrator; you'll want to compromise with them - but to people who don't have education experience). 

Explain your reasoning; they may still not like it but they will at least know you have thought it through.  

Learning is Slow, Social, and Effortful

We increasingly live in a world where less effort is required to do most things. You might not know it considering how much we complain about everything we do, but hear me out. When we do laundry, we throw it in one machine and walk away to do other things before coming back to throw it into a different machine that we are also able to walk away from. We spend a few minutes per load getting laundry clean and dry and a bit longer hanging and folding it. Our great grandparents, by contrast had to remain involved in the entire process, rubbing clothes against a washboard in a tub, hand wringing them, and then pinning them to a line. Apply this to almost any aspect of life (transportation, food preparation, obtaining drinkable water) and you recognize that we live in a time when life is easy unless we choose to make it difficult. We 

So, it is understandable that people believe learning should be easy now too. After all, everything else is. Surely, by taking advantage of modern tools, students can learn quickly, effortlessly, and on their own.

But here's the thing. While culture and tools have changed, the way the brain learns has not. I once heard an interview with a business giant (I can't remember which one, Bezos perhaps?) who was being asked constantly what changes he foresaw. He said he thought it was more valuable to think about the things that would not change because he could plan for those. The same may be true when it comes to teaching. Tools and methods will certainly come and go but what isn't going to change.

There are a few things that have always been true and always will be true due to the nature of the human brain:

Learning is a social activity  

While there are some instances of people who taught themselves with nothing more than a book and a strong will, those are exceptional. For most people, learning requires a teacher, a tutor, or a mentor. We see this both in the animal kingdom and throughout human history. In the middle ages, apprenticeships were the common way to train for a trade as as the experienced craftsman taught and gave feedback to the new hire as he learned. No one was expected to just figure it out for themselves. Wealthy people had libraries in their homes, yet they still hired private teachers for their children. When God wanted Adam to know things, he did not download information directly into his brain. He came to the Garden and walked and talked with him. One obvious reason for this is that the teacher usually has more knowledge, wisdom, and/or experience than the learner. The mentor has made mistakes and can help the learner avoid making the same ones. 

Much has been made of the potential of AI tutors in recent years, but they just aren't capable of that. I have no doubt that they could be programed to say the same words, but it isn't the same as the empathetic experience of someone who has been there. Chatbots can provide objective feedback, but they cannot deliver it with the warmth and understanding a student may need at a specific moment of frustration because the chatbot has never been frustrated. 

Recent studies carried out by Mary Helen Immordino-Yang's team shows that there is more neural activity in teacher's brains as they grade and give feedback on the work of their own students than there is when they perform the same task for students they do not know (in spite of giving them the same grade). Why? Because they are able to view their students as whole people, and they are thinking of them in social and emotional ways even as they grade academic work. I have not searched for studies on student neural activity, but I know from my experience as a student that I was more likely to take on the feedback of a teacher if I believed they were giving it in my best interests. (Note: I am not saying I had to have a warm, fuzzy relationship with a teacher to take their feedback. I am saying that I need to trust the teacher and find the teacher credible.) 

Learning is slow 

We talk so much about learning that I think we take for granted the idea that we all know what it is. What is actually happening when you learn a new vocabulary word, mathematical procedure, scientific concept, or dance movement? There is a change happening in your neurons. I won't take up space and time with the details of dendrites and myelin and all of that, but the connections between your brain cells increase in number and efficiency every time you learn something (whether or not you ever "use it in real life").

You cannot expect this to happen overnight. No one goes to a gym, does one workout, and expects that they will have a beach ready body when they wake up the next morning. Actually, I think there are some people who expect that. Let me try a different analogy. No one goes to the gym and thinks, "I haven't lifted a weight in five years, so I'll make up for lost time by lifting 500 pounds today. Then I'll be able to keep lifting that amount from now on." It seems we have a more common sense understanding of our bodies than we do of our minds. Durable change takes time, and that cannot be sped up with any technology. In fact, one important aspect of learning we often neglect is known as the spacing effect. The brain needs down time to go into "diffuse mode," allowing the newly input information time to transfer from the hippocampus to the neocortex. Sleep makes a difference too; connections that have been formed during the day either get broken or solidified during sleep (so I guess some of this does happen overnight). 

For decades, teachers have told their students cramming and late night sessions don't work. We now understand why that is true from a neurological perspective. Your neurons need time to change, and they cannot do it without stress, followed by rest, followed by rehearsal. Don't teach kids something in the morning and expect them to have it down cold by the afternoon. They need to retrieve it, get feedback, rest, and retrieve it again. 

Learning is effortful

And now, we arrive at my premise. Just because other things in our lives have become effortless doesn't mean that learning will follow suit. 

I've spent decades talking to students about their study habits. When I ask them to tell me what their current methods are, I get some combination of these three answers:

• I look over my notes
• I re-read the chapter
• I underline or highlight important content

When students are surveyed nationally about which study techniques are most effective, 75% of them answer with some combination of these three as well. But the research shows these to be the least effective techniques. Why? Because they are too passive. For your brain to create the conditions that form memories, you have to do enough to send the message, "Hey, she really wants to remember this."

Remember when I said that learning is making a change in your neurons? Well, that takes energy. There are chemical reactions that must happen that reorganize disordered systems into ordered ones. Physics and chemistry tell us that will require an intentional input of energy. Flipping through your notes and recognizing things isn't going to put in that required energy. Re-reading doesn't tell your brain you want to remember it; it makes it think it doesn't need to. And highlighting has been shown to have a negative impact on your memory.

The techniques that are effective, like retrieval practice, don't feel effective in the moment. When I leave Matt's weightlifting class with arm that feel like jello, unsure if I will even be able to hold them up long enough to wash my hair, I do not feel like I have gotten stronger. If anything, I wonder why I have weakened myself like this (same with my noodle-legs after a cycle class). Yet, I know that those are the very conditions that will strengthen my muscles over time.

In the same way, going through a deck of flashcards and getting half of the answers wrong makes students say, "See, this doesn't work." Yet, that reach for the answer (even when they get it wrong) is what creates the conditions for dendrite growth and myelination of neurons. In my role as yearbook advisor, I was once at a play rehearsal on the day the kids call "Crash and Burn Day." It's the first rehearsal they have off-book. It was simultaneously the most entertaining and cringey thing you can imagine. Students who thought they knew their lines found out they did not, and the poor girl with the cue book was working her tail off. I asked them later about how they would learn their lines after that day, and they gave the answer you would expect. They don't re-read the script or skim over their highlighted portions.  They run their lines with a partner - remembering them by trying to remember them. We all know that is the correct way. Yet, somehow, when it comes to academic content, we go back to passive mode and expect it to work.

In spite of what the applause line at conferences implying that education hasn't changed in centuries, those of us on the ground know that many things have changed and continue to change dramatically. The fact that students still sit in desks doesn't mean things have not changed. 

And some things shouldn't change - because the brain hasn't changed, and we need to work with it.

Mind Brain Education Conference Notes - Denver 2026

These are raw notes from the Rocky Mountain Mind Brain Education Conference. It is a mix of speaker notes and my own thoughts. I will try to differentiate, but sometimes I don't do that well. If there is something you find bothersome, blame me and not the speaker.

Keynote: Centering the Human Experience in an Evolving World by Missy Widmann -  There are few notes for the keynote session. There were insane tech issues in the room I will be presenting in later, so I didn't want to leave until we had them figured out. Thus, I missed most of the keynote.

When I came in, she was talking about neuroplasticity (how our brains change as we learn) as the means to transfer (learning how to learn in contexts other than the classroom). This is a human skill and prepares students for life outside of the classroom. 

"In a changing world, how might we design learning spaces that center what makes us human?"

Education is training the mind to think. When students use AI, we lose that training. "You have to deep, effortful thinking to learn something new."

Prioritize human ideas - Brookings Institute says we must start with OUR thinking before we use any tech. The only reason AI even exists is because of human brains.

tinyurl.com/DenverBrain-2026 

Note to self: Look up Ernestine Shepard (world's oldest body builder who didn't start lifting until she was 56)

Session 1 - Changing Minds, Changing Systems: What It Takes for (Adult) Learning to Become Practice / Marnie Choice & Collette Fischer - Started with "trauma informed" care (personal note: this makes me a tad skeptical because the misimplementation of the trauma informed movement did a lot of damage, but the description doesn't indicate it will be about that). Now it is more about systems. They train school psychologists in university training. (They are putting the world adult in front of everything because they are emphasizing adult brains in this presentation. I am going to leave it out in my notes because I believe learning is learning at any age, but I will try to make note of any spot where there seems to be something adult specific.) 

Learning is Interactive 

There are a lot of barriers to systemic change: Time, red-tape, overworked professionals, threat perception from established people, stakeholders who have no expertise but are listened to, lack of trust/relationship, tension between the people on the ground and the decision makers, political pressures that change with each election, lack of training/resources, implementation fatigue, etc.

It takes 7-8 years for a system to see the impact of a change, but we tend to change them more quickly than that because, since we don't see the impact, we assume it didn't work.

Adult specific note:  Adults are internally motivated and self directed - they will resist learning that is imposed on them more than kids will. They want to draw on life experience, are goal and relevance oriented, and practical. 

Knoster's Model for Managing Complex Change. Use this as a diagnostic. If you are seeing frustration, it is likely a lack of resources. If you are seeing confusion, it is likely a lack of vision. If you are seeing anxiety, it is likely a lack of skills. Manage your program based on shoring up what is missing so you aren't solving the wrong problem.

It can take up to 17 years for a change to become routine practice. We bail out too early, implement some other new thing, and spur implementation fatigue. 

• Knowing does not equal doing
• Brains rely on familiar patterns
• Change requires clarity, modeling, and support
• Sustainable implementation takes both time and intention.

Trauma Informed Practices in the Classroom (2020 Dissertation of one of the speakers)

• Relational Trust and Community Culture in Your Classroom
• Accountability with Compassion
• Emotional and Physical Regulation
• System Level Support (Teacher Coaching and Purposeful Implementation)

Move people one step further than where they are - not ten. 

Identifying the missing component really matters. If a person doesn't have the skills to do what you have asked them, it will not matter what incentive you give them. If you give an incentive that means nothing to them, it won't motivate them. If you are missing resources, they can really want to do it and have skills to do it and still not be able to do it. Many organizations think if they just give the vision and the action plan, everyone will just jump on board without considering whether you are missing some of the other pieces.

Session 2 - Who’s Running the Brain? Practical Ways to Foster Autonomy and Student Agency / Adrienne DeBall 

How can all teachers, regardless of subject area, intentionally foster student agency?

We are 2 minutes in, and she has talked about using AI "to sound smart" three times (which is not what the title led me to believe this would be about). I may have to change sessions if this keeps up.

"When students walk into our classrooms, who is actually running their brains." Do they just comply? Are they making their own decisions? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zWdtus2cS2Q 

When an adult says to a kid, "What you were thinking," and they answer, "I don't know," that is often fair.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VyZZQqXFoR0

Think back to middle school. What do you remember about how you felt about your own agency? Then, we had to get in groups and share. I don't think I was aware that agency was a thing when I was in middle school; I just followed rules and then there were people who didn't. I didn't want to be given choices in projects; I wanted the teacher to tell me exactly what they wanted. 

According to Gallup, student boredom is an epidemic. (Personal reflection: First, we overuse the word epidemic. Not everything that happens to a lot of people is an epidemic; sometimes, it is just typical. Second, a piece of data does not reflect its own cause. Assuming that student boredom comes from lack of agency is not reflected by research. It could also be that they have become dopamine addicts. It could also be because teenagers have always had a general sense of ennui, and we are just more hyper about it now.)

Growth mindset - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JfdoJxPjp1k 

Notice and wonder activity about a "Being Successful in School Rubric"

There is a woman near me who is full-on knitting. I don't know if it helps her focus, but I'm finding it distracting.

For learning mindsets for students to reflect on.

1. Growth Mindset
2. Self-Efficacy
3. Sense of Belonging
4. Relevance

Book Recommendation: The Gift of Failure by Jessica Lahey

Six or seven more AI references. Wait . . . two more. 

Session 3 -  Small Changes, Big Results: Evidence-Based Strategies for a Science of Learning-Focused Classroom by Mary Fran Park 

Book recommendation - Neuro Teach by Glenn Whitman and Ian Kelleher, Make it Stick, Critical Pedagogy: Notes from the Real World by Joan Wink, The Brain Targeted Teaching Model by Mariale Hardiman

Processing a lesson - write down:

• Three new things you learned
• Two things you found interesting and would like to learn more about
• One question you still have

Emotional Climate - Mariale Hardiman says that the most important thing that matters to your students' learning is their current emotional state. It's hard to get anything moving if they are not emotionally regulated. You don't have to dive into it with them, but you can acknowledge it and have them take a few deep breaths. 

The brain feels before it thinks. Make eye contact, give a positive greeting, and establish emotional climate for learning.

Just like there are emotional "triggers," there are also emotional "glimmers." Thinking of something that puts you in a better mood can improve your cognition. 

Retrieval Practice - This is critical for moving things from working memory to long term memory. We lose what we do not rehearse. 

Dual Coding - Your brain has two processing systems - verbal and images (This graphic calls it visual, but I avoid that because it makes people think of being visual learners and because a word you read is processed through the verbal channel even though you take it in with your eyes.)

Arts integration is important, and this is a great way to include it. 

But it doesn't have to be great art. What matters is that they have processed the information in an imaging way.

Metacognition - Think about thinking

Have them check in with themselves, their feelings, what strategies they used, how confident those strategies make them feel, etc. 

Blank page retrieval is great for retrieval practice, but it can also be used for metacognition. Take a break after retrieval and then come back with a different colored pen and augment it. They can then see what they missed the first time. 

Session 4 - Me - I don't have any notes for my own presentation, but if you are interested in the slides, you can find them at thelearninghawk.com

The Tragedy of Not Missing What You Never Had

I'm on a couple of weekly email newsletters. I have chosen them carefully to be the ones I will definitely read. One of them is called Evidence Snacks from the great Peps McCrae. 

Teachers, if you don't know Peps, do yourself a favor and look him up. He writes very short books with a lot of punch. This week's snack was special. In this snack, he was talking about how the low friction of the modern world has prevented us from growing resilience and perseverance, leading to more depression and anxiety rather than less. Then, he included a line that broke my heart a little.

Here it is: "The cost of all this is easy to miss. Nobody notices the strength or skill they never built . . . or the confidence they never grew."

I'm not a person who believes everything new is bad and everything old is good. I'm writing this on a laptop, and I am grateful for it (thought I still love handwriting a thank you note). I appreciate that I don't get lost now the way I used to (but I also recognize that I can't read a map and figure out the area the way I could before). I don't think it is awful that kids play video games when their grandparents rode bikes (although kicking the kids outside for some unstructured time wouldn't be terrible). But I think part of the reason that I can use tech while recognizing what it has taken away is that I am a member of Generation X, the one generation that bridges the time of low tech to the time of high tech. Millennials have it a little bit because they had dumb phones and Blockbuster still existed. But Generation Alpha a beyond won't have lived in a world without instantaneous gratification, low friction, and no thinking required. 

I don't use the word tragic very often, but y'all, this is tragic. 

• Because we like quick delivery, we are teaching kids they never have to wait for anything; so the next generation won't know the joy of an anticipated gift or the Aha! moment that happens after trying to remember something for a long time.
• Because we worship convenience, we are surrendering our cognitive abilities to AI; so the next generation won't get the satisfaction of solving a problem for themselves. 
• Because we want everything to be easy and seamless, we make more tools that reduce friction. But God help the helpless child when that tool doens't work because they won't know how to "do it the hard way." They will fall apart.
• Because we want to "save time," we raise the expectations of what can be done in the time we have, so we teach kids that efficiency matters more than depth. They won't want to take the time to read something long, so they'll just have AI summarize it for them. They already have a hard time sitting through a movie, which has millions of dollars of mind engaging, dopamine inducing special effects. So, a class, where learning only happens when it is effortful will seem like torture because they are used to things being effortless.

What is the result of all of this? 

More anxiety - Less strength - Lower resilience - Less mental health - Less physical health

Even worse, people who are born into this won't know that this isn't the way it was meant to be. God designed us to work hard, socialize with loved ones, and enjoy the life we have. Yes, the fall damaged all of this, but none of it stopped being true.

In the same way a fish doens't know that it's wet, kids who grow up in this world won't recognize that it goes against their design.  Kids born this year won't know that they could have been stronger. They won't know that they could have built confidence. They won't know that they could have moved more slowly. They won't know they could have enjoyed the people around them more. 

I'm painting a grim picture, I know. 

But I have good news - We have agency. We have the ability to set boundaries for ourselves and for our children (and students). We can stop doing things the easiest possible way and intentionally live in a world of friction. Some ideas:

• I was talking to a man a few weeks ago that said he had a phones free dinner with friends once per month. They could talk about anything, disagree about anything, decide a fact that another person said was wrong. But there was one rule; they couldn't look it up on their phones. If you thought someone at the table was wrong, you just had to convince the table that you knew what the right answer was. You couldn't "prove it" with Google or Grok or ChatGTP.
• Choose to remain a generation or two behind the latest phone or operating system. And give your kids a phone that only makes calls but has no internet or social media functions.
• Go outside and take a walk or a drive without your phone. If you get lost, stop and ask for directions.
• When on the phone with customer service, just keep saying "speak to a human" over and over until you confuse the bot into transferring you.
• Go to a store and buy something rather than having it delivered. Take the risk of being annoyed by the checkout clerk.
• Choose not to voluntarily engage with generative AI. I promise it's possible; I've never once prompted an AI for anything and changed from Google to Duck Duck Go because DDG would allow me to disable AI results and Google wouldn't. I know people are afraid of being left behind, but it is only inevitable because we believe it is inevitable. It doesn't have to be if we make them lose enough money.

We don't have to have the same boundaries, but we should all have SOME kind of boundary rather than adopting everything that comes along just because it is the next thing. 

Teachers, require students to use their brains in whatever way you can. Restrict their usage of tools that reduce friction, including but not limited to AI. Force them into discomfort by doing things in your classroom without access to the tools that make it easier. This goes beyond the curriculum and influences their view of both the world and themselves. 

If you don't do it, they won't complain. You know why? 

"Nobody notices the strength or skill they never built . . . or the confidence they never grew."

But you can notice it. You can prevent it from going unnoticed. And now, more than ever, it is your responsibility to require more of them than they want to give - for their own good.

I hope you will be able to read this. I screenshotted it from facebook, but it was so long that I had to reduce it a lot to make it fit into the screenshot. It's important advice to adults - Don't come along and make it easier.

No Volunteers - A Reflection from Research Ed St Louis

If you picture the average classroom or just remember the classroom of your childhood, you can imagine the interaction with teachers and students. The teacher asks a question. A few hands go up. The teacher calls on one of them. That students answers, and the class moves on. Almost all teachers have taught that way at some point. I did. Many still do. But, if there was one theme of ResearchEd this weekend in St. Louis, from Tom Sherrington's keynote to the way every session I attended was conducted, it was that we should not be answering questions from volunteers.

So, what's the problem with it?

There a few, actually.

1. Allows most to stop thinking - The most obvious reason not to call on a volunteer is that it limits participation. When everyone knows that you will call on one of the kids who is raising his hand, the kids who would rather not do any intellectual work that day just won't. "As long as someone raises their hand," they reason, "the teacher will be satisfied by the lack of silence.  I'll let Wyatt take care of that while I do other things." At that point, there are only two or three mentally active people in the room. Allowing that just because the other alternatives are uncomfortable is not fulfilling our professional duties.
2. Inhibits the Insight of Introverts - I didn't mean for that point to be alliterated, but here we are. Introverts are, by nature, unlikely to volunteer to speak out loud. But they will usually answer if asked directly. When using methods like cold calling, you will hear from them but in ways that make them deeply uncomfortable. I found that giving kids mini-whiteboards allowed the introvert to participate in a way that was not so intimidating for them. (For those of you saying they should just get out of their comfort zone, ask yourself if you ever require that from extroverts.) Introverts are usually thinking about the material more deeply than most, and if you only call on the volunteer, you will prevent the class from the benefit of those thoughts. You will also reinforce the culture narrative that the loudest ideas win. That's not helping anyone.
3. Misleads you in formative assessment - This is the first thing I noticed after I placed a mini-whiteboard on every desk. All of the sudden, misconceptions were revealed that I had not previously known were present. Once, I asked a question in a room with twenty-four students, and six of them had the same wrong answer. One fourth of my class had the same misconception, and I didn't know. The kid who raises his hand usually does so because he confident. If you only get correct answers from confident students, your formative assessment will produce misleading results at best.

There's more than one way to change this habit, but it requires energy and intention. Otherwise, it is so easy to fall back into the trap of calling on volunteers. I had two methods - popsicle sticks and mini-whiteboards. These may not be appropriate for every setting, and there are counterarguments to their use (see Adam Boxer's Twitter feed where he regularly hates on "lolly-sticks"), but I'll give you my reasons for using them.

• Popsicle Sticks - Popsicle sticks were the least expensive and least tech driven method I could find for randomizing participation and making sure I included everyone. Many opponents to this method (including Adam) would advocate for cold-calling instead as it is a more thoughtful way of selecting each student. I agree, but a lot depends on the culture of your school. In many places, parents and students might view cold calling as the teacher targeting a student. As a teacher, I recognize my own bias and ability to slip into calling on the kids I'm most comfortable with. When the kids see you are pulling names at random from a cup, they are more likely to "blame the cup" than me. (Note: I was a bit sneaky, pulling about three sticks up at a time and choosing more selectively from that grouping, but the kids didn't see that.) I'm not saying it is for everyone, but in my particular context, it worked well.
• Mini-whiteboards - This is the change I made after finding the science of learning that I most wish I had made earlier. I had a classroom set of whiteboards in my room, but I pulled them out on review days. Putting one on every desk allowed me to engage in retrieval, formative assessment, and diffuse mode more than any tool I ever used (and the only drawback was that I went through a lot of markers). Mini-whiteboards are adaptable, can be used for many question types, and can be employed on the fly if they are already on their desks. Once I found the power of getting an answer from every single student, it became my go to method. They might not work for everyone. If you have students who will whack each other over the head with them, they may not be for you. But, if you don't have a strong reason not to use them, I couldn't recommend them more highly.

Other methods include digital response boards, clickers, cold-calling, thumbs up/down, multiple choice cards, give me five, choral response, and on and on and on. There is no one right way to do it. Find the one that works for you, gives you the most participation at the least cost to your time. 

But, stop making calling on a volunteer your default.

Research Ed St Louis Conference Notes

These are raw notes taken in real time during the presentations. Some of my own thoughts are blended with those of the presenter. I make an effort to separate them, but I am not always able to. So, if you read something you don't like, don't automatically blame the presenter; it might be me your are upset with.

Research Ed Intro - It is evidence based, collaborative, cultural, practical to classroom the classroom, and for educators. The science of learning becomes an art when you are employing it with 28 8th graders who are running around and not listening to you.

Keynote: Inclusive Teaching: How Do You Teach 30 Students at the same Time? by Tom Sherrington

He has been at 53 ResearchEd conferences, starting with the very first one. 

If you don't understand the problem, you have no chance of being part of the solution. Knowing all of the research doesn't make someone a better teacher unless we can translate it into what it looks like in the classroom. 

We need to be certain that every single student in our classrooms is learning. "We aren't just doing our best with most of them." How do we support vulnerable learners? It's not primarily through taking them out to do special interventions. It starts with the way we teach the things from the very start. If you aren't doing that well, the kids with special challenges will suffer the most. 

The stuff that works isn't new and groundbreaking. We don't need to do new stuff. We need to do the stuff we know really, really well. Explicit instruction improves learning outcomes for everyone, especially for those with additional needs. Show them what to do. Don't ask kids who haven't learned yet to guess. Don't be afraid to give the answer to kids who don't know; don't just say, "Have a think about it." Most kids (but especially vulnerable learners) don't have the background knowledge it takes to make that work.

• Break complex things into simpler steps. 
• Use clear and unambiguous language. 
• Explicitly teach vocabulary. 
• Deliberately involve EVERYBODY in answering questions and checking for understanding. 
• Don't just call on the kid with his hand up or make kids compete to answer - plan in a way that you get an answer from the full spectrum - from the shyest child to the most confident child. The quiet kid's ideas don't matter less. The loudest kids ideas aren't always the best ideas.
• You can't say you believe in equity if you are reinforcing the culture of dominance.

An opinion doesn't matter if you don't have enough background knowledge to explain the thing you have an opinion about. We need to know things because it affects our understanding of the planet (Personal note: This is different from "using this in real life."). Knowledge matters to being informed citizens. 

Dan Willingham is the Godfather of evidence informed education and the most quoted at conferences. In Why Don't Students Like School, there is a chapter called "Why do students forget everything I say?" It's where he provides the model of the learning mind. 

Think Pair Share - If you want kids to talk about their learning, assign them a talk partner. It is the most efficient way; three is possible but requires additional structure. You also must have an accountability structure ("I will select people to respond, and it might be you."). Don't skip the "think" step. You choose which partner will go first. Ask them to generate. All students must practice, not just complete. Whatever method you use, always ask everybody rather than asking for volunteers.

In behavior management, communicate, "I love you dearly, but don't mess with me." Signal. Pause. Insist on compliance before moving on. 

Kids don't have poor attention spans; they have human brains. "Some of you, since we started today, have thought about other things. Outrageous." It is your job as a teacher to redirect their attention.

• Is everyone thinking? 
• Is everyone making sense of this?
• How do I know?

The ways NOT to do it - the veneer of learning

• Did that make sense?
• Any questions?
• Everyone good?
• Yeah? Yeah.
• Getting a response from only one student
• Asking them to think when there is nothing to think with (If they don't have the base knowledge, it doesn't matter how long you give them to think.) You can't think with knowledge you don't have.

You may have to create an experience for students who don't have prior knowledge to activate. If they have never seen coastal erosion, you may need to show a video. If they have never seen a curveball, you might need to have a baseball player throw one. Build from concrete to abstract deliberately.

You don't need them to practice getting it wrong (which is what happens when you ask them to speculate). You want them to practice getting it right after you have given them correct information to practice with. You cannot retrieve what you have not encoded.

Session 1 (103) Making Good Activities Even Better: The Power of Cognitive Alignment by Elida Laski 

Number Comparison: Give two numbers and ask which is more?

Number line estimation: Give them a blank number line and ask them to estimate where the number would be. When you give them a new number they cannot use their others for reference. 

Kids who do well on the comparison task do not necessarily do well on the number line task. Yet, a preschooler's performance on a number line estimation is predictive of their math performance for the future. The number line task has more context and more relationship. A preschooler's relational reasoning maps out to their algebra performance later.

When we plan a task, we need to :

1. Identify the desire mental representation. (e.g. Build a mental number line)
2. Select material that provide instances of the properties of that desired representation. (e.g. 0-10 board game rather than two number card game) Make sure you materials more closely align with the mental representation (e.g. a spiral game board doesn't match as well as a square with lines)
3. Structure the instruction and procedures to promote the processing of the key features of the materials. (e.g. Is the way they play the game forcing them to process the numbers? If they spin 3 while they are on 15 and they just count 1,2,3 to move, it won't develop their number sense as much as if they have to count from where they are 16, 17, 18. It leads to more encoding because it requires more thinking about meaning.)

Learning materials will be most effective if their format, procedures, etc. are aligned with the mental model and the learning goal. The teacher's comments should also align. In the case of comparing numbers Don't say, "You are on 87 now." It's not comparative. Instead, say, "You are two rows ahead of me. You are 5 squares behind her." These are comparative statements. The more aligned the whole experience is to the learning goal, the more likely the goal will be achieved. 

How do you go from concrete to abstract in a task?

• In a pattern, rather than saying colors in a pattern (red, green, green), abstract it in a way that will fit any pattern (A, B, B)
• Teacher gestures support equivalence. It aligns abstract processing to concrete behavior.

None of this requires no resources or monetary investment. It's about thinking deeply and intentionally about how to represent what is happening in their minds while learning. 

Session 2 (100) - Routine, Retrieval, and Relationships by Amber Haven

STEM teacher 5th-8th graders

Intentionally minimize distractions to prepare young minds for learning - Don't make your welcome slide distracting with extraneous information. Make your agenda slide show your agenda. What is the purpose of a welcome slide? To draw attention to the objective or agenda or give an instruction. Making it busy just strains their working memory. There are already so many distractions you cannot control; for the ones you can, don't compete with yourself.

Audit your opening routine. Do you have your desks facing you? Is your decor a distraction or an aid to learning? Do kids know where to sit? Do they have some things that should be automatic by the end of week one?

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

1. Identify the learning objective (the What)
2. Call upon what they have already learned (Retrieval)
3. Plan the lesson (the How)
4. Gesture where appropriate and have students gesture too.
5. Repeat the same activity with a variety of examples.
6. Remove scaffolds as it becomes appropriate
7. Change context as it becomes appropriate

End your lesson in a way that you can confirm students have met the learning objective.

• Exit ticket (WITH verification to prevent encoding whatever they did even if it was wrong)

Relationships are not built before instruction; they are built THROUGH instruction.

Consistent success through well designed instruction will increase your credibility with the student, making them have a relationship with you. Playing hacky sack with them is not relationship building. Doing your job with them leads to success, trust, engagement, feeling good about progress, and then relationship.

Session 3 (107) - Masterful Modeling: Making Thinking Visible by AJ Pettway

Showed a video from Schitt's Creek of trying to follow a recipe with no knowledge of the what the term "fold in the cheese" means.

Albert Bandura - "Learning would be exceedingly laborious and hazardous if they had to rely solely on the effects of their own actions. Fortunately, most human behavior is learned observationally through modeling . . . later , this coded information serves as a guide for action."

Don't be afraid to show students how to do things rather than having them figure it out for themselves (my note: and encoding all of the misconceptions they have along the way).

Mondeling conditions

• Attention - Are student attending to the salient features of the model?
• Retention - Is the model understandable and memorable?
• Reproduction - Students need an opportunity to make the model for themselves.
• Motivation - Are students willing to take the action? Do they see its purpose? Are they seeing that their actions lead to their success?
• Trust - Are you a credible source for your students?

Strong modeling - an expert demonstrating something to novices

• Unpacks expert thinking
• Makes the abstract concrete
• Sets the bar for quality work
• Provides cognitive support that prepares students for independence

Four ways to use models

1. Worked examples - a completed or partially completed example, showing the steps involved
2. Live modeling - reveals expert thinking while demonstrating in front of students
3. Comparing models - Show students multiple model responses and have them compare and evaluate which is better
4. Student models - displaying student work to show how it meets success criteria

Preparing to model

• Clearly define success criteria
• Carefully select CLEAR examples/non-examples
• Anticipate common mistakes
• Script your thinking "The first thing I do is . . . I make sure I have considered . . . I don't want to forget to . . ."

Delivering a model

• Communicate broader context
• Signpost what to notice - direct attention
• Talk through your thinking out loud "I know I'm on the right track when . . . I used to find this part challenging, but I overcame that by . . . "
• Link to success criteria

Faded example - Start with a fully worked problem on the first one. Leave the final step out on the second one (the same type of problem). Leave out a couple of more steps on the third one (same type of problem). Students solve the fourth problem (same type of problem) on their own.

Using student models helps build efficacy because students see themselves represented in their peers. "Someone like me can do this" is a powerful motivator.

One of the challenges of student modeling is building a culture of error - Make sure you are creating conditions where mistakes are honored, considerate behavior is primed and sharing how the student's example succeeds.

Session 4 (213) - Behaviour by Design: Designing Scaffolds to Improve Student Decision-Making by Richard Wheadon 

Sometimes, even when we know better, we just make stupid decisions. How do we get them to make better ones.

Judges make more lenient decisions early in the morning or just after a food break. They are harsher when they are hungry (a study of 1000 parole hearings). Conclusion: External factors influence our behavior and decision making.

There is a gap between knowing and doing. Insights matter, but there needs to be more to produce effective change. Srah Cottinghatt wrote about the Adaptive Expertise Framework. 

Understand. Do. Decide. Improve

Behavior Question - Why did they do that?

Behaviorism -  (Positive reinforcement) - based on Skinner's work with rats - Pressing a lever produced a food pellet reward, reinforcing the behavior of pressing the lever. A consequence is an event hat occurs after a behavior and affects the likelihood that the behavior will happen again. (We associate the word consequence with negative penalty, but it is actually about efficacy.) 

Punishments stop behaviors, but they don't start new behaviors. You need a reinforcer for that.

What should teacher action look like if we want to change behavior? Often, calling out poor behavior reinforces poor behavior by giving it attention. Calling out good behavior reinforces good behavior. (Note: This is not the same as the advice we used to get about ignoring poor behavior; it is about drawing the attention of the misbehaving student to the right thing to do, not ignoring them.)

• Student is talking. Teacher shouts students name - Student stops talking but doesn't engage in task. 
• Student is talking. Teacher praises the engagement of the student near them. Student returns to task.

Evolutionary Biology - Animals that were trained using Skinner's method resulted in some animals not behaving as expected. Conclusion was the reinforcement doesn't always override innate, biological behaviors. This is even more complex with humans because they will have their own values and concerns. In 2003, an experiment was done in which a game was played between two computers and human (the human didn't know they weren't playing against other humans). The computer was programmed to exclude the human after a few minutes. The social exclusion activated the part of the brain that is associated with physical pain. 

Getting praise from other students is more likely to reinforce behavior than anything a teacher does. If a student doesn't turn in homework, gets praised by peers and punished by teacher, they are still more likely to neglect homework again. The peer acceptance is more powerful than the teacher punishment because it is more biologically driven. 

Observing a veteran teacher with great behavior management is likely to be ineffective because there is so much that is invisible making strategies work. 

Engagement - Kids see someone else do something; they are likely to do it too if they believe they can do it. Modeling matters.

Kids saw adults smash a doll. They put the kids in the room with the same doll, and they smashed it too.

If the kids don't think they can do it (efficacy), they won't even start. You must provide the sweet spot of giving them a reasonable chance of success. 

• Mastery - Start with an easy win and build difficulty. 
• Vicarious - Seeing someone similar to you doing it makes yo ubelieve you can do it
• Social persuasion - Everyone else is doing it

Sessions 5 and 6 (103) were my presentations, so I have no notes for the here. However, if you would like the slides, you can find them in pdf form at my website thelearninghawk.com