Don't Fear Classroom Rules - Boundaries Enable Freedom

Freedom!  As Americans, we cling to it, almost to the point of idolatry (I could take the word almost out of that sentence, actually). We write about it. We sing about it. We claim it dramatically on social media. But do we understand it? A quick search of the definition results in answers about lack of restraint or the ability to act without anyone controlling you.

There's got to me more to it than this, right? I mean, I appreciate that no one has put me in restraints, but is that really something to sing about? That's a definition built around a negative - from FROM something. There's got to be a deeper meaning for freedom, doesn't there - something that indicates freedom FOR something? 

Where do you go for meaning beyond the definition? A philosophy site, of course. According to the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, freedom is about acting in a way that allows you to achieve a fundamental purpose. 

Okay, now we are talking, I like this. It allows me to look toward something and act in a way that can get me to that purpose. But, I think there might be some friction with the dictionary definition. If there are no restraints AT ALL, can I really act in a way that will allow me to achieve a purpose? Might the road to that purpose need some guardrails?  I think it does. Let me give a few non-school examples before I get to the classroom implications.

Singing as a group - Imagine a setting in which groups of people sing together. That could be a school choir. It could be New Year's Eve when everyone pretends to know the words to "Auld Lang Syne." It could be church. 

Let's go with that last one. Church is a place where I have a purpose and would like to achieve it without restraint, right? My purpose - worship the Creator. What church would want to restrain that? Well . . . Let's think about what it would be like if every member decided to sing whatever song was in their heart at that moment or even if we all sang the same song but felt unrestrained when it comes to speed and rhythm. The resulting cacophony would not result in ANY of us achieving our purpose of worshiping the Creator. We need the restraints imposed by the musical director to actually achieve freedom in the sense of achieving purpose.

Playgrounds - Have you ever been on a playground without fences? You probably haven't. Maybe if you were Generation X (we were a bit feral), but even then, there was probably some limit - a tree line or some hedges to indicate a boundary. What's the purpose we want kids to achieve on the playground? Obviously, it is playing, freely engaging with other kids in games and physical activities.

For years, I've heard about a sociological study of playgrounds. I tried pretty hard to find the source, but I couldn't. That may be because it is referenced in so many places that those hits rise to the top and overwhelm the actual study. Or it could be because it is apocryphal. Who knows. Feel free to take it with a grain of salt, but as we say in the church, "It'll preach," so I'm going to use it anyway.

According to the story, researchers wanted to compare how kids behave with and without boundaries. So, they put kids on a playground that had no fence or boundary indicating where the playground ended. The kids huddled in the center of the area. They didn't explore or run around. They then erected a fence and put the same kids on the playground. The kids roamed about the space, running from corner to corner and playing throughout the entire space, including right up against the fence. Their conclusion was that the boundaries indicated where safety was. Without them, the kids didn't know where they were safe. With them, they knew they could go right up to a certain line and be fine.

Roadways - Driving was once thought of as the ultimate freedom; it's why teenagers were so keen on getting their license. While that has changed a bit, it's still a rite of passage the first time your parents hand you the keys to the car and you go out on your own or with your friends. My GenX purpose would have been to get to the mall; yours might be different.

Now, imagine you take the car to a place where the road has no rules. No speed limits or lane markings, no stop signs and intersections, and no expectation that all drivers will drive on the right side of the road (or the left if you live in one of those places). Does this imagine scenario make you feel free? "Whoo Hoo! We an get to the mall any way we want at any speed! Why even have a road? We can just go in a straight line from here to there!" Just thinking about it gives me a little anxiety. Far from freely achieving our purpose, we would be in the ultimate traffic jam, all cars pointed in a different direction and getting in each other's way.

So, it seems, complete lack of restraint doesn't lead to the deeper freedom of achieving a purpose, especially in a group setting where everyone's lack of restraint would interfere with that of the others in the group.

And now, we arrive at the education part of this blog. Classrooms are groups of people who want to achieve a purpose. 

Rules: Some of the more hippy-dippy types in education world would have you believe classroom rules stifle creativity and limit learning. But it's actually the opposite. Just like the playground fence, classroom rules show students the area within which they can explore, both physically and academically. The kid who throws things at a classmate isn't being creative and free. He's taking away the freedom of others to achieve the class' purpose. A kid yelling things out in the middle of class may feel unrestrained himself, but he is restraining others. 

Procedures and Routines: When everyone is on the same page about how class starts, you can immediately start achieving your purposes for the day. Without standardized procedures, you have kids hanging out in the hall, gathering around one desk to look at that one guy's phone, and asking, "What are we doing today?" If they know the procedure, however, most of them get started. You have to redirect a few, of course, but it is easier than the cat herding experience of getting the all going. 

Assignment Guidelines and Limited Choice: If you just say "Do a project" to students, you won't get creativity. You'll get an overwhelmed child who doesn't know what to do next. Given a choice between three options, they'll choose one and start thinking of ideas for how to execute it. Given a choice of 300 things, they'll spend an entire class period staring at the list. The complete lack of restraint prevents them from achieving purpose rather than enabling creativity. 

Memorized content: I know how many people think having kids memorize things is a horrifying use of their brain, especially in the age of instant access to information, yada yada yada. And of course, there are ways to make memorization torturous. But the truth is that having basic content already embedded in your brain enables creativity because you are able to use the freed up space in your working memory to make new connections within the content. 

This is not just true of academic content. There are examples in fine arts classes as well. Dance allows you to express creative movement, but if you move in ways that are against "the rules" of your body, it will also allow to injure yourself in creative ways. You need to have those body rules memorized so your brain can access them DURING the movement. In a play, everyone needs to have the script memorized. There can then be creativity within that script for vocalization, blocking, facial expressions and body movement, but if everyone is "doing their own script," the purpose of putting on the play will not be achieved. The visual arts are restrained, in part, by the rules of chemistry. Certain paints simply don't mix. Attempting to mix them isn't creative; it's disastrous for your project. 

As the school year starts and you go over your classroom guidelines, don't be afraid to boldly assert your rules. They may not align with the dictionary definition of freedom, but they enable to the deeper, truer definition. They allow students to achieve their purpose. And isn't that what we are there for?

Getting Started Right

How do you start your day? Some people begin with prayer or meditation. Others listen to a song to either hype or calm them On Thursday mornings, I scan in a couple of hundred people at the Y who begin with a workout. Whatever people choose to do sets the tone for their day. As people leave the Y on Thursday mornings at six, I say, "Have a great day. You got it started well."

The same is true of the school year. How you start matters. It sets the tone for your year, so be intentional about it.

What do you do on the first day of school?

Let's look at a few online stereotypes.

• Relationships First - There are the "relationships first" people. They spend the first weeks of school doing icebreakers and team building activities. They play a lot of games before they ever teach the first iota of subject area content. 
• Let's Get Started - Then, there are the teachers who jump into content with barely a moment of introduction. "In this class, we work." is the opening sentence. The kids in this room have homework on the first night of school.
• Procedure Practice - These are the people who came of age in the Harry Wong era. They spend the first days of school going over the syllabus and practicing procedures over and over again until they are tight as a drum.

Like all stereotypes, few real people fit neatly into these categories. Most of us have some blend of setting expectations, trying to learn kids names, and doing something fun that is also related to our content.

I did want to get to content quickly, but I knew procedures mattered to a smoothly functioning classroom, so I tried to get through the rules/syllabus stuff as quickly as was effective and move into a content based introductory activity. 

I'm not here to tell you which kind of person to be. There are many variables involved in what might make the best choice for your class. If you teach art, it probably looks different than if you algebra. If you teach an introductory class, like Spanish I, it might look different than if you teach AP Literature. If you feel like a fraud trying to do an icebreaker than you would hate doing in a faculty meeting, that's going to land like a lead balloon with your students. 

My advice to you as the new school year begins is to be intentional. Realize that the first day will set the tone. If you do not intend to move forward as "the fun teacher," don't set that expectation by doing fun activities. If you expect adherence to procedures for the rest of the year, you will have to teach them on the first day, but it might be wiser to teach them as you do them rather than attempt an isolated "procedures lesson." It is important that you know their names, but there are ways to do that without spending the first 45 minutes of your class time on it (Hint: HW Assignment One can be for them to submit a video on your school LSM in which they introduce themselves and tell you about their goals - which has the added bonus of them pronouncing their own name, eliminating the awkwardness of you mispronouncing it in addition to showing that they are properly enrolled and logged in on the system).

Those first days matter. They matter a lot. And they determine what kids will expect from the rest of their time with you. So sit down and give it a lot of thought. What are you trying to communicate? Make the days activities about that.

Have a great year!

Why You Should Show Your Work

Note: I promise that I won't make every post about my book from now on, but since it officially comes out next week (August 6), I wanted to explain its title and why I think it is important to let students see behind the curtain of your methods.

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If you were going to write an SNL type skit that included stereotypical teacher/student interactions, at least one would be a teacher telling a student "You didn't show your work. You must show your work." It annoys students who believe that they should get full points if the answer is correct. But, because you can arrive at right answers using wrong methods, teachers insist. 

(Hint to students: It also means that if you get the answer wrong, the teacher can give you credit for what you did right and help you diagnose where you went wrong.)

Yet, for generations, teachers have not reciprocated. We have asked students to go along for the ride on any and every pedagogical flight of fancy we have. Not only is it a little condescending to expect students to just trust us, it is also counterproductive with a generation that values authenticity and transparency. Yesterday, I was having a conversation with a local judge. She said that she had even used it as an example in a speech to other judges at a conference. She said, "Just like a child should show their work on math problems, we need to show ours by explaining the decision making process behind our rulings."

So, when I decided to write a book about how I and other teachers used the science of learning in our classrooms, I could think of no better title than Show Your Work. In a recent podcast interview, Gene Tavernetti asked me if I taught students about the science of learning, and my answer was that I had to hold myself back from oversharing about all of the things I was learning about it. Part of the reason for that is that I share everything I'm learning with everyone everywhere, whether that is students, other teachers, friends, or random people on the street. But it is also because I truly believe that showing kids how their brain learns will help their brains learn more.

So, I want to make a case for why teachers should show their work to students whenever possible.

1. Modeling - As I said earlier, we ask students to show their work, justify their answers, and elaborate on their thinking all of the time. It's our default with them. We need to set the example. If they only see the end result of our thinking, it is the equivalent of our showing them a final answer without showing how we got to it. We should model for them the things we expect from them.
2. Motivation - There's a lot of talk in education circles about motivation. In most discussions, it seems like an elusive thing that will require us finding a magic gemstone in a forest. But, in real life, we know that success breeds motivation which breeds more success, creating an awesome cycle. When we explain the methods that lead to success and the reasons they work, students are more likely to do them and create that cycle.
3. You have a good reason  - If you use something in your classroom that kids and their parents aren't used to, you open the door to criticism. "Other teachers aren't doing that; why is it such a big deal for you?" and "I'm sure you have your reasons, but my son doesn't want to . . ." But you will get much less pushback if you have taken the time to show your work. If you say, "I know this may seem a little weird, but I use mini-whiteboards to make sure everyone's answer is heard instead of the kids with their hands up," they usually understand that. If you say, "Retrieval helps strengthen the neurons that aid in memory formation. I'm happy to send you a link to the study," you establish credibility with both students and parents. Your are no longer the weird teacher doing the thing we don't understand; you are the go to source for questions about learning. We can't give our students a reason for every tiny thing, but when it comes to the big stuff, why wouldn't we want to say, "Yes, I do have a reason, and it's a good one. Let me tell you about it."
4. You have an answer - Early in my career, I got the dreaded question often - "When are we ever going to use this in real life?" No answer I gave was satisfying because I was trying to make it about the content. But, no matter how much we love our content, it's only part of the point. After a few years, I started saying, "It's about learning how to learn, not about the content." I got a little better result from that, but they still weren't really satisfied by it. After I discovered the science of learning, I had an analogy - muscle training. While the brain is not a muscle, there are enough similarities to make it a reasonable analogy to use with students. I would ask them, "When you lift a weight, do you say, 'When am I ever going to put a weigh here in real life?'" Of course, the answer was no. When I asked why they did it, they replied that it was to make their muscles stronger; it wasn't about needing to put a weight on a shelf. "When you learn, you strengthen the brain cells that make it easier to learn the next thing," I said. Eventually, I put this explanation in my first day of school speech, and I stopped getting this question from that point on. I had given the answer. 

Showing your work doesn't take a lot of time. As kids are getting out their markers and whiteboards, you explain why this is a practice you find to be effective. Then, you start asking retrieval questions. Sending an email to parents that explains your practices (especially the ones they might not be expecting) and your reasons will save you time in the long run because you won't have to answer as many of those questons individually. 

As you learn about learning, establish your credibility. Show your enthusiasm, and show your work.

Give them ONE way to do it

Last year, I was talking to a science teacher who was new to the profession. She had been a scientist, so her content knowledge was strong, but had some understandable pedagogy struggles.

In a physical science class, she was teaching 8th grade students to write chemical formulas and name compounds. To be fair, this is a challenge now matter how long you have been teaching. It is a complex thing because the rules are different for covalent compounds than they are for ionic, so you have to teach them to identify which one it is first. Then, there are slight differences between binary ionic and polyatomic ionic. It's a lot for an 8th grader to grasp, and the order you teach it is makes a big difference, which a new teacher might not fully appreciate. But the part that stood out most in our conversation was this.

"I gave them so many ways to do it. Why can't they do it?"

I said, "Oh, heavens no. Just give them one good method."

Why are we inclined to give students too many choices, and why is that misguided?

Why do we do it?

1. Let start with this. We're Americans. We think choice is our birthright. If you've been to a grocery store lately, you know we are inundated with lots of choice. No longer do you choose between Heinz or Hunt's ketchup. Now, there are at least 7 brands, but even within one of the brands, there are added features - Want it spicy? You can have it with jalapeño or sriracha. Like to mix it with mayo? You no longer have to do that yourself. Less salt, half the sugar, thicker, made with mushrooms (or even bananas rather than tomatoes) - the choices are endless. 

2. We've bought in to "buy-in." We've been told at many PD training sessions that students will do better if we earn their approval, and choices are the key to that. We were trained to give them assignment bingo cards and let them choose which row to complete. If they choose, we are told, they will be more likely to buy in to the assignment. They never address the fact that there is no evidence that students will perform better or learn more if they are "bought in." We kind of just accept it on vibes. I'm not against some controlled choice. I used to say, "you can express this in a video or as a live presentation."

3. We like choice, so we reason they will like it too. As adults, we usually do prefer to decide how we want to express the knowledge we have. I'll address this later, but adults aren't kids. What we like isn't always what they like.

4. We think it will lead to deeper thinking. Surely, we reason, if kids have multiple methods that lead to the same conclusion, they will have to think deeply about what the best way is to reach that conclusion. 

Why Is it Misguided?  Why Should We Limit Choice?

1. Novice learners cannot discern which choice is best. They just don't know enough about the topic to decide whether solving a math problem by cross multiplying is better than using an algebraic method. Down the road, they might have a favorite method, but when they are first learning it, they don't know which one is easier for them. Often, they don't understand that we have taught multiple methods. They just try to do what they remember the teacher showing them in class and end up blending all methods into one, which definitely does not work. 

2. Kids aren't adults. I know that's surprising, but it's true. Often, educators and those in charge of education policy make decisions based on what works for the adult brain, but kid brains are NOT just smaller versions of ours. They think more concretely than we do, lacking the fine grained ability to discern nuance. Kids often want the security of knowing they are doing the assignment the way the teacher wants it. Choosing what to do or how to do it takes additional time, and they aren't sure if they are choosing the best way. 

3. Choice takes up room in working memory. I buried the lead here, but in my opinion, this is the big one. Working memory (what we are able to hold in conscious processing) is limited. The typical classroom is an assault on working memory. Sights, sounds, other people's conversations, the buzzing of phone alerts, etc. fill up space that we need for thinking deeply, solving problems, and doing the work of learning. Choice may seem appealing, but for the student, it is just one more thing that has to be processed while they are attempting to learn. To decide which method is best for writing a chemical formula, they have to think about both methods (which they JUST learned, so they are not yet in long term memory) simultaneously and compare and contrast them and then must use whichever method they chose. It's just too much.

As a science teacher, the argument I heard most for anyone's favored method of teaching or assessment or anything else in the classroom was that I should be "teaching them to think like scientists." But it's not making them think like scientists. It's preventing them from developing the knowledge and skills necessary to think like scientists later. When current scientists were the age of your students, they did not think like they do now. It took years of knowledge building and practice with fundamental skills before they could begin the work of synthesizing all of that into a way of thinking.

As American, adults we often think choice is always good. We think options lead to deeper thinking. Sometimes?  Maybe. If the learner is already an expert in the discipline and has enough knowledge in their long term memory to lean on that his working memory won't be full. For novice learners? Never.  

Give them the best possible way.  Save nuance for later - much, much later.

Is Explicit Teaching Easier?

Note: This post is an exercise in my meandering thoughts. I usually try to bring these around to something practical, but I'm not sure this is one of those times. You've been warned, but you are also reading a blog called "On the Rabbit Trail," so maybe that is to be expected.

Edu Twitter is predictable. At certain times of year, you can rely on certain trends or arguments. Some are legitimate discussions about pedagogy (learning styles, discovery, etc.) and classroom practice (deadlines, cold calling) while others are just preferences disguised as debates (when you should and should not answer your email is the teacher equivalent of where to squeeze the toothpaste). In most of these debates, opinions are high and acceptance for the opinions of others is often low. 

Occasionally, there is one that is more intriguing than others. In this case, it isn't about whether something is right or more effective, but about whether it is easier. What I find interesting about that discussion is that it seems like a straightforward question, it more complex than you might think. When the question is about effectiveness, experiments can be set up, and test results can be analyzed. But the question about whether something is easier is largely based on perception and that perception is shaped by multiple factors. 

The question is "Is explicit teaching easier for the teacher than discovery learning?"

Let's define our terms -  Both explicit teaching and discovery are terms loaded with academic jargon and emotional baggage, so let me define what we mean in this discussion.

• Explicit teaching - It is not the same as lecturing, but it is often confused for it because the teacher is standing at the front of the room explaining things. What's the difference, a lecture is all in one direction and has no interaction with the students. Think of it this way: If you could have delivered the same lesson after hitting play on a video of yourself teaching, that's a lecture. Explicity teaching (sometimes called direct instruction with a small d and i because capital DI is specific scripted program) is very interactive, pausing frequently for formative assessment and retrieval practice to make sure students understand and will remember what the teacher is teaching.
• Discovery learning - People on my side of this argument often set up the straw man of assuming a proponent of discovery learning is talking about "pure discovery." Pure discovery would meant the teacher goes in with no preconceived notion of what students will learn and allows them to just freely explore. I say this is a straw man because I have NEVER seen anyone do this in practice. Even the most ardent fans of discovery learning I know go in with a plan for the outcomes and fences around their playground. So, in practice, what we are talking about is "guided discovery," in which the teacher is setting the destination but allowing students to get there is a variety of ways.

When Done Well . . .  This may be the most common (not to mention meaningless) phrase used in the eduTwittersphere. No matter what the discussion, someone will come along and say, "When done well, this is effective."  Well, duh. Anything done well is going to be more effective than the same thing done poorly. For that matter, even a poor practice "done well" will be more effective than a good practice "done poorly." 

In the case of this discussion about what is easier, it's an even dumber phrase. Doing something well requires effort, energy, organization, and time. Doing it poorly usually results from the lack of those inputs. So, either "done well" is harder than the other "done poorly." 

So, let's set that argument aside and assume two classrooms, one employing explicit teaching and the other employing guided discovery, but both being done as well as they can be.  In other words, both being "done well." Let's look at the factors that might make one style of teaching easier than another.

1. Lesson content - Some lessons lend themselves better to discovery than others. If I want students to know what factors influence rate of dissolving, it is not hard to set up an experience that will allow them to time how long it takes to dissolve a cube of sugar in hot water v. cold, while stirring v. keeping it stationary, and keeping the cube whole v. crushing the cube into powder. While I wouldn't say that is easier than explicitly telling them those factors, it might be worth the effort. But if I want them to learn the underlying empirical formulae for ionic compounds, it is going to be difficult to learn through discovery. I'll grant that it was originally learned that way, but that was by scientists who devoted months and years to one substance, not high school students in a class period. So, in instances like this, explicit instruction would be much easier.

2. The students - We all have one class that is, how shall we put this diplomatically, more challenging than the others. It could be the class you have righter after lunch or the one you have the last period of the day. You know the one I'm talking about though. They are the ones that make you want to pull your hair out when there is still 30 minutes of class yet. As a young teacher, I thought they would be the ones to benefit from discovery because the needed to move and talk more. Oh, my! Was I ever wrong?!?! That was the opposite of what should have been happening. My life became so much harder than I ever imagined.

3. Teacher personality - We always find a thing we love to do easier than a thing we don't. We get in a zone and things just seem to flow. If you are a teacher who loves explicit lessons, it is not going to feel hard for you to plan one. You are going to enjoy coming up with metaphors and planning your questions. This will feel easier for you. For my friend, Hannah, planning a purely explicit lesson would be torture. She loves the process of giving her kids something mysterious and pulling the concepts out of them. For her, this will seem easier (even though it objectively takes more energy) because she finds it energizing. For her, discovery teaching is easier.

I know I haven't answered the question about whether explicit teaching is easier; I didn't intend to. I don't even really know what conclusion I'm trying to draw here. (To be fair, I did warn you that this wasn't going anywhere practical.) I guess I would say that just because something is easier for you doesn't mean it will be easier for someone else. 

So, don't base any decision on whether another teacher finds it easy.  Is that a good ending?

Wait! Don't Tear Down That Fence Yet

 "Don't ever take a fence down until you know the reason it was put up."      
- GK Chesterton

Imagine you are walking through a field and come upon a fence. It looks old, and a few boards are missing. It's blocking your ability to get from one place to another in the field. You think about it for a minute and say, "I don't see any use for this fence. I'm going to help out by tearing it down." As you begin removing boards, you feel very proud of yourself for being smarter than whoever put this fence up and allowed it to remain for so long in this condition. You've made progress, removing a section about 6 feet wide when a bull comes charging through the gap. And, now, you realize why the fence was there. You were well intentioned, but you created a danger because you didn't consider one question. Why did someone take the time to put a fence here?

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We see this frequently in the world around us. Several years ago, the city I live in was kicking around the idea of banning the sale of kitchen garbage disposals. People's opinions on this matter of law inevitably came down to whether or not they used their own. There seemed to be no one amongst the people who did use them that was capable of imagining why anyone else would, and thus, were fine with them being banned. (If you are interested, this ended up not happening because our water sanitation system requires that there be something to feed on, so the city actually needed people to put food scraps in the drain.)

Social media is, of course, the best place to witness this phenomenon. People with little knowledge of any given situation have VERY strong opinions about what should be done and how things should change. There are many, for example, with heated views about the electoral college system, daylight savings time, or car emissions testing. While it is valid to have discussions examining whether or not these things should still be part of our lives in the 21st century, it is worth examining why something like the electoral college was established in the first place. It's not like the writers of our constitution wanted to make things as complicated as possible. They were trying to balance the needs of smaller, less populated states with those containing larger cities. If we are going to discuss eliminating it, we must ask ourselves if those conditions still exist. Only then is it appropriate to discuss potential replacements for the system. Why did we decide to start changing our clocks twice per year? There was some reason. It may no longer be necessary, but it is important to know what problem was being solved by it before we eliminate it.

Any organization where people gather in groups is subject to a well meaning person who wants to change things. They come and see something that doesn't make sense to them and propose changes. This isn't always a bad thing; sometimes we have become so set in our ways that we don't see solutions to problems (or sometimes even the problem itself). But if you are a new person in a place, it is worth listening to those who know the history.

I worked in the same school for 21 years. There are a lot of things that are nice about that, and one of them is that I carried institutional memory. For most things, not all, I knew what the reasoning was behind a policy or a procedure. Sometimes, a new person came in and said, "Why don't we do this?" My reply was often, "We tried that a few years ago. Here's why it didn't work." What the person was suggesting was logical. There was a reason we had tried it in the past. But not everything this logical works in every setting. It's important that we not limit our perspective.

This is a good conversation to have with students. They are, like us, often unaware of their limited perspective. They often have strong opinions about school policies, classroom procedures, or things their parents do. Part of helping them to mature isn't to dismiss them out of hand with a "rules are rules" attitude, but rather to talk through the reasons behind the issues. I remember once having a conversation in which I shared the student's opinion, but it was still important to show support for the administration. Since I am a science teacher, I brought it back to the idea that we draw conclusions based on available data but are open to changing our minds when new data is presented. I said to her, "Is it possible the administration knows something we don't?" Of course that was possible. "Might we think the way they do if we had that information?" This was good for both of us to consider. 

Anytime you find yourself confused by a practice or policy, slow down and have the humility to ask yourself, "Why is this here?"

We Dream in the Dark for the Most Part

One month from tomorrow, my book, Show Your Work: Teaching Smarter With the Science of Learning, comes out. (Here's the obligatory shameless link for pre-ordering it from Bloomsbury and Amazon.) 

If you had told me twenty years ago that I would be publishing a book, a for real book through an actual publisher, I would have thought you were crazy or on drugs. I was a teacher, and a good one, but I didn't think I had anything special to say. I didn't think I was doing anything different from any other good teacher out there. 

If you told me five years ago, I might not have thought you were completely crazy, but I would have, at minimum, asked some diagnostic questions. At that point, we had just survived the hybrid year and were grappling with what would come next in our classrooms (ChatGPT was just barely on our radar and there was some talk of continuing a model that included some virtual components, which scared all of us out of our shoes). But I was becoming a person with something to say to other teachers at that point, so I might have found the idea of writing a book about the science of learning intriguing. 

And, now, it is happening.

What changed during that time? 

• Experience and position in my school. The longer you teach in one place, the more you become a person newer teachers come to for advice. Talking through pedagogy with other teachers is fun and great way to develop professionally as both people think of ideas they might not have otherwise. 
• Blogging - I started this blog at the suggestion of Laura Warmke, our media specialist and technology coach, in 2013 (sort of - there were only 5 posts that year, and then I forgot about it until May of 2014). Laura insisted that I had something to contribute to the wider world of education, and I was willing to do anything to earn a badge in the Level Up program she created for our PD. It turned out to be a great way to work out my thoughts about pedagogy, curriculum, and school life. And it helped me hone communication through writing.
• My classroom textbooks - In 2014, I attended an Apple Apps education workshop and found out that I could write a pretty slick looking digital book in iBooks Author (it sadly doesn't exist anymore) and decided I could write my own textbook for my 8th grade classroom. Two years later, I followed it up with a physics textbook. These were not publishable; they weren't mean to be. They were meant to be a resource for my students and included videos and hyperlinks for anything I thought might interest them. Post pandemic, I processed my trauma through companion videos (118 of them). While none of this ever went outside my classroom, it all contributed to my confidence in writing and its organization.
• Learning and the Brain - In 2018, I attended my first Learning and the Brain conference. Then, the one in 2019 turned my world upside down. Once you learn about cognitive science and the principles of the science of learning, you can't help but evangelize for it. I began giving PD presentations to my colleagues and at one conference. (I also spoke at a fundraising dinner and got to introduce a speaker at a teachers' meeting - while neither of these were about learning science, they made me realize that I could talk to adults, something I had previously said I was not called to.)
• Matt's Class at the YMCA - While Matt is not my entire Y experience and I have several amazing instructors, I do credit him with building something in me that wasn't there before - a confidence to do things I found intimidating. When I first met him, it was in a cardio kickboxing class. I left school that day saying, "Well, I'm about to go be terrible at this" only to find that it was the highlight of my week. A couple of months later, I went to his weightlifting class. That's really the one that did it. I had been avoiding strength classes. When I walked in that night and saw people setting up benches and bars and weight collections, I thought, "If anyone but Matt was teaching this, I would turn around and leave right now." But, it turned out to be something I loved and a way to challenge myself in ways I hadn't before. Now, I take it four times per week and know when to push myself and when to back off. He turned me into a person who says, "Yeah, it's scary, but that's not a reason to say no."

These experiences are not foreseeable from our perspective. Twenty years ago, I was finishing my 3rd year at GRACE and had just finished my first yearbook. I couldn't have seen blogging and digital textbook writing coming; we were still doing our grades with a pencil and calculator. My evaluation that year listed one of my weakness as "does not seek out professional development," so Learning and the Brain  conferences were nowhere near my radar screen. I didn't know I would join the Y 18 years later. The path is in front of us, but our ability to see it is limited. 

God knew that He would create this in me and exactly how He would do it, but I couldn't have planned it. My dreams were smaller than reality because I was in a dimly lit world, only able to see the next few steps, not a mountain it would take 20 years to climb. I couldn't see (and would not want to see) very far. I once heard a sermon on Psalm 119:105. He said, "The Psalmist calls the Word 'a lamp unto my feet,' not a lamp that shines for miles because He wants us to trust Him for the step that is not yet illuminated." God wisely doesn't overwhelm us with knowledge of the future because He knows it would likely paralyze us and because He wants us to walk in faith.

That's the reason we dream in the dark for the most part. In these next few months, as I have a book launch event, do four presentations at three conferences, and guest on two podcasts (a terrifying thing I've never done before), I will be grateful that God built this and revealed this a little at a time. Otherwise, much like the weightlifting class, I might have opted out.

Teachers, you have students with definite plans. Some of them will do that thing, and some of them will end up going in other directions. Let them grow and change and pursue different things than they said when they were in high school without feeling they have disappointed you. You also have some students who are concerned because they do not yet have a plan. Encourage them to explore different classes, a variety of electives, and whatever extracurricular activity seems interesting. You never know what experience will lead them.