Book Review - The Lockdown Artist by Jay Wamsted

One of the best things I can say about a novel is that I lost sleep over it - not because of the content, but because when it was bed time, I wanted to read one more chapter. This is absolutely the kind of experience I had with The Lockdown Artist by Jay Wamsted.

I have followed Jay on Twitter (currently X) for quite some time and know him to be a fun and engaging school teacher. When I saw that he had written a novel, I wanted to support him, and I knew that the book would be fun.  What I didn't know was what a gripping story it would be - think 1984 in a high school for a general framework, but it is more than that. There are shades of Frankenstein and Hunger Games (and sadly some hints of Project 2025 - although that might have been my addition as I was reading it just after the deaths in Minneapolis).

What I most appreciate about Jay's writing is how much he respects his young adult audience - something actually quite rare in YA literature. So many YA authors feel like they have to over-explain to avoid confusion, but what that really does is avoid excitement. Young readers like to have things revealed after they have thought about them for a while, hence the success of the Harry Potter franchise, where some payoffs came two to three books later.

In The Lockdown Artist, you arrive along with a new student, Liam, in the middle of the school year.  Rather than doesn't spoon feed you an explanation of the school, Jay knows that the reader is capable of figuring things out as the story unfolds and doesn't bore them with a ton of exposition at the beginning. You find out parts of the mystery as the characters do, so there are surprises around every corner (almost literally). There were moments where I sat up straighter and said, "No.  Oh, what are they going to do now?" out loud while I was reading.

Characters can be tricky in YA lit as well because they are often written by adults who either write their teen characters as adults in young bodies or write them as clichéd tropes of pop culture references. Jay's teaching experience means he knows adolescents, and he writes these teenagers as complex, three dimensional characters (salty language and all) rather than stereotypes. I appreciate that, and I think young adult readers will too.

The book didn't end quite the way I envisioned or perhaps even hoped, but it does end in an interesting and thought provoking way. I highly recommend this book to high school, college, and adult readers who enjoy a little dystopian fiction in their lives.

Yes, We Are Like That - And We Should Repent

When Joe Biden was President, and there were shootings or tragic crimes, he often put some variation of the sentence "This is not who we are as Americans" in his response speech. While I know what he meant, each time I thought, "If it's not, then how does it keep happening here?" It would have been more accurate to say, "This is not who we SHOULD be as Americans."

For the past two weeks, as we have witnessed the clash between ICE agents and protestors in Minnesota, there have been similar sentiments online. After Renée Good's death, one tweet read, in part, "We love our neighbors. We aspire to live by the Golden Rule. We are better than this." Another said, "Consider the outlook Jesus would have on you celebrating her death. We are not them. Stop acting like you are."

This isn't a semantic difference. To declare that our actions do not reflect who we are just doesn't make sense. What are we asking people to judge us by if not the things we say and do. If not our actions and our words, what are we?

Statements like this, even when well meaning and aspirational, are a problem. They give cover to the darkest parts of us while allowing us to delude ourselves into believing that our hearts are not dark. You've gotten this non-apology from someone, "I'm sorry I said that, but you know I didn't mean it. That's not who I am." We've seen this from celebrities like Paula Dean, Mel Gibson, and Michael Richards after their very public racist rants. Some jumped to defend them because of the circumstances under which they said it (duress, drunkenness, being pushed to their limits, etc.). 

But here's the thing. Something can't come out of you if it's not in you. No matter how hard you squeeze an orange, you won't get coffee out of it. 

If a tube is unlabeled, the only way to know if it is toothpaste or Preparation H is to put it under pressure. Pressure doesn't create; it reveals. 

We shouldn't apologize for saying something we didn't mean; we should apologize for meaning it. And, we should definitely not minimize things by claiming it to be outside of our character.

Teachers, this matters in our classrooms. If we want to help our students develop good character, we cannot let them get away with "that's not who I am" apologies. And, we can't model them. When we have lost our temper or crossed the line in our speech, true apologies are needed, not evasions of responsibility dressed up as contrition. True apologies include three things: 

1. An admission of the action (I did/said this thing.) 
2. An acceptance of the damage done (This thing I did harmed you.)
3. An attempt to make things right (I will repair what can be repaired, and I will not do this again in the future.)

This is going to take more time than "Say you're sorry," which is what we so often do with little to no regard as to whether or not it is sincere. But the discipling that happens is worth the investment. Most teachers have some kind of paraphernalia (coffee mug, wall hanging, t-shirt) that says we touch the future; well here's how we do it. Imagine a future in which people have been taught, not just to say they are sorry, not even just to express remorse, but to reconcile. What a better future that would be. 

Notes from NCAIS Neurodiversity Conference - January 30 2026

NCAIS is the North Carolina Association of Independent Schools.  This conference is focused on meeting the needs of neurodiverse students. The notes below are raw, unedited, and will likely be mixed with my own reactions (I may not agree with what a speaker has said and will process my reaction to it). I will update between sessions.

Keynote: The Neurodiverse Hero's Journey - Become the Strong and Kind Adult in the Room by Peyten Williams, Bowbend Consulting

Every hero's journey begins in the ordinary world as nobody special, before there is a call to adventure. If you have come to a conference because you want to see change in your classroom, that is your call to adventure. 

Neurodiverse people have a wide variety of both strengths and challenges. 

You don't have to be an expert to support these kids. You just have to show up.

Threshold guardians are those who resist or gate keep your efforts to change. What is standing in your way? It could be systems, limitations on resources, or your perception of fairness when it comes to support.

• What in your faith, values, or character made you choose teaching?
• How do you grow your social emotional intelligence?
• Do you need to broaden your perspective? Are you trying to support them or trying to "fix them"? (Lori told me in a book interview, "We didn't view that as a challenge, just a different set of facts we had to deal with.")
• What tools do you need in your toolbox? Do you know how to use them?
• Are you giving yourself grace? Nothing feels easy without practice. Keep practicing until it becomes natural.
• Who are your helpers and mentors as you learn? What research can you rely on? Who is in your community that you can learn with?

Mindsets:  

• What does this learner need to access learning with dignity? Belonging is not a reward fo compliance; it is a prerequisite for learning.
• Ability is context dependent. A difference is not a deficit in all situations. (Dr. David Rose, in a Learning and the Brain keynote, talked about his tone deafness being a benefit when the church organ was out of tune.)

Is there some technique or attitude that isn't working, but you just can't let go of it?

It is hard work. You will have to ask yourself, "Is this worth it?" That's when you have to circle back to your purpose.

Your transformation is not to become perfect; it is to become the strong and kind adult in the room.

You then return to the ordinary world different and able to transform the ordinary world.  What will you bring back?

Session 1 - Building a Neurosupportive Classroom by Kenna Skarda, Ravenscroft School

All students have nervous systems. 

Physical spaces are designed, in part, for neurology. I like to see the door in whatever room I am in. That's a neurological adaptation related to safety. Some students are that way too, and they are typically fidgety and turning around in their desks a lot. They don't like to be trapped in the middle of the room or to be facing their desk directly. Mental unbalance can lead to physical unbalance, and vice versa. People don't always have the ability to verbalize it, so it sometimes shows up in their behavior.

You can see similar effects in grocery store lines. How to people wait? Do they dance around with their feet, rearrange things in the cart, pull out their phone?

Whether you are the strict teacher or the easy going teacher, you will be the exact right thing for some student. Kids who are dysregulated often seek out the highly regimented teacher because they know intuitively that teacher will regulate them. Those kids who are overly contained will seek out the hippie-dippy teacher because they will fill in the gaps of what they need.

What sensory experience are you creating?  Is it good to have bright lights or dim lights? That depends on the time of day or what kind of mood you are trying to create. If you can get variable lighting, it will help you to create the environment you want. Do you have a few blankets or a space where kids can leave sweaters in order to help a kid learn without the distraction of being cold? Might a weighted scarf or a Ravi blanket help with your fidgety kid? 

Naming your adaptive tools will make kids want to use them and take care of them. They don't care if an object goes missing, but if the object is named Carl, they will turn the world upside down to find Carl if he gets lost.  They might not ask for a weighted blanket; but they will ask for Louise.

Your brain is easy to trick. If you tell yourself you are dumb, your brain will believe you and behave that way. Feel free to lie to yourself and tell yourself that you can do anything. 

For the first time in history, we are seeing a reverse of the Flynn effect. This is largely because of constant computer work and lack of physical work. 

Doing the pretzel, curling in and twisting, drawing a figure eight with a laser pointer, or other crossbody moves (or practicing balance by moving back and forth while standing on one foot) will help with regulation during challenging feelings. Offer a few things. Students will naturally gravitate toward what they need.

You have to make your plans while they are calm. If you wait until the limbic system is involved, you aren't getting them back.

You can turn on your parasympathetic nervous system with breath work. Slow breathing or breathing through your left nostril only calms you down. You can also have them count backwards by 7s (or something that requires thought). You can have them tap or hold themselves tightly or rub their earlobe.

You can pump them up by activating the sympathetic nervous system.  Fast breathing thought the nose, jumping jacks, fast tapping, or going upside down.

Cognitive self reflection - have them identify what went well and what they could do differently next time

Session 2 - Ten (ish) Quick Tips to Incorporate Neurodiverse Support Into Your Teaching by Alli King and Michelle Hernandez, Carolina Day School

We are teachers who try our best to figure things out through trying and failing and trying again. Have grace with yourself as you make mistakes because they will happen.

Tip zero:  Be conscious of font choices. Are you making things harder to read by going too cute?

1. When giving directions, get attention from all fits. Be explicit and clear. Provide checklists.
2. Explain the why for an expectation. Give specific and immediate feedback.
3. Have your schedule displayed. Announce any changes to the routine.
4. Have a calming plan
5. Have visual cues - timers, graphic organizers, color codes, anchor charts, models
6. Built in movement - as part of the plan
7. Using peers - turn and talk, etc. (I disagree that this helps the neurodivergent student, but I didn't want to disrespect their presentation by leaving it out. The people behind me have not stopped talking since we sat down, and it is driving me cray - I can't imagine that increasing that would help me if I had ADHD.)
8. Check ins - Formal or informal, make sure you follow through. Allow check ins before and after submitting their work.
9. Flexible seating
10. Metacognition - help kids reflect.

Session 3 - I presented during this one - no notes 

 

But you could go to my website www.thelearninghawk.com for the slides

Another Kind of Differentiation: Supporting Teachers Who are Diverse Learners

Do you have a teacher who won't sit in a faculty meeting?  They stand in the back corner or pace at the back of the room. It may seem like he doesn't care, but he is better able to focus and contribute if he is moving. 

If we are going to ask teachers to respect the neurodiversity of students and accommodate for them , we should recognize that adults have them too and accommodate for them.

Gave a case study of a teacher with poor executive function skills and asked questions about how they can help without shaming the teacher or losing out on her strengths. And a second case study about a teacher with anxiety. 

The Taylor Swift Effect - Have a vision, appreciate differences, and be steady in the face of uncertainty. Have people who you can melt down with and then pull yourself back together so you can be strong for others.

Expect competence, not sameness

Establish psychological safety

Be careful of bias - teachers are allowed to disclose their differences

Find support that helps ALL employees succeed

Accentuate strengths and positive attributes rather than focusing on deficits

Prepare meetings that accommodate for movement

Chunk large tasks into smaller deadlines

Provide information with a choice of format

Focus on quality of content - offer editing support with format

Create predictability and clarify expectations

Making Things Clearer - Not as Straightforward as it Seems

In the publishing of the book Show Your Work: Teaching Smarter With the Science of Learning, I'm learning a lot about the writing and publishing processes. I'm learning even more about the re-writing process. Two weeks ago, I got back all of my copyedited pages and had to accept or reject them and answer questions.

Copy editors do not play, y'all. The form they sent me said it had had a "medium" amount of editing. Then, each chapter I opened had anywhere between 75 and 175 changes or queries, leaving me to wonder what a heavy amount of editing would look like. Most of the edits were small - removing a space, adding a comma, or changing a capital letter to a lowercase one.  Some were citations I had forgotten to include or changes made to fit their publishing style (the MLA I learned in high school is less useful than I was led to believe).

The edits that made me laugh the most were the ones that asked if I would like to "use the expanded version for clarity." This was the automatic note any time there was an acronym.  For the most part, that makes sense. Jargon isn't accessible to most people, so if you are referencing a study done at the NIH or by the APA, it is obviously better to spell out National Institute of Health and American Psychological Association. It helps people determine the credibility of the source.

But, there are exceptions. When I was asked if I wanted to use the expanded version of SAT, I had to respond that I didn't think it would be clearer if I said Scholastic Aptitude Test as most people walk around with a vision of the SAT easily accessible in their minds and would actually have to take a beat to translate the expanded version back into the acronym for it to make sense to them. So we left that one alone. The same went for an interview I did with a biology teacher in which he talked about a question he asks students about ATP, the energy carrying molecules produced during cellular respiration.  If you remember this from biology at all, you definitely only remember it as ATP. So, when asked if I wanted to use the expanded version for clarity, I had to reply, "No, I think referring to it as adenosine triphosphate will make it less clear, so let's leave that one."

My point is not about publishing or acronyms. It's about making things clear. Our jobs as teachers is to take something that isn't easy to grasp and put it within reach. When a student first looks at the periodic table, it is just a jumble of letters and numbers arranged into a strange shape, but when they leave my 8th grade classroom, they should be able to interpret things like number of protons and number of neutrons from the numbers in the square as well as things like number of energy levels and number of valence electrons from the location on the table. My teaching about the periodic table should make the information clearer.

But much like the publishing discussion, there is often a way that seems right but ultimately is not. Explicit teaching vs. discovery learning gives us as an example of that. The theory behind discovery learning seems logical - students will remember things better if they figure it out themselves. And wouldn't it be lovely if that was how our brains actually worked? But they don't. Asking a student to compare the causes of the French and American revolutions when they haven't learned anything about them yet (but have access to Google) doesn't result in deeper learning about either revolution or the larger concept of revolutionary causes. Our working memories are too limited for that. (I'm not saying you shouldn't have projects or labs; I am a science teacher and had many of both - but it should come after students have learned a concept, not as a replacement for it.)

One of the things that makes teaching hard is that we often can't have one way of doing things. Some material will be clearer if reveal it one step at a time while other material may be clearer if we first show an entire worked example, giving students the broad view before the details. We cannot just choose one method and hope all content will fit that method. 

Even trickier, it is not always immediately evident when you have chosen correctly.  Sometimes, it is immediately obvious if you have chosen incorrectly. I once thought it would be good for my students to see the broad picture of bond types before we began learning about them.  I drew a spectrum on the board with "small electronegativity difference" on one left and "large electronegativity difference" on the right. I then proceeded to place covalent bonds, ionic bonds on the right, and polar covalent bonds in the middle along with their broad definitions and some examples. My students left that day completely overwhelmed and totally lost. The next day, I reassured them that I was going to teach each type individually and not to worry. But my hope that seeing the big picture would help them understand how the pieces fit together was not realized. The next year, I taught each type on its own and used my little spectrum drawing as a review/retrieval tool. "Where would covalent bonds go?" I asked, and they correctly answered that they would be where the electronegativity difference was small.  This way was obviously clearer, but I might not have known that if I hadn't tried it the other way.

So, sometimes, we are dealing with a process of trial and error. Sometimes, you can benefit from another teacher's experience.  And sometimes, you just have to use your best professional judgment and hope to be right. 

Give yourself a break. The best way to make things clear is often not clear itself.

Things (and People) Will Fail - What's Your Plan?

This week, a member at the Y came in talking about how much they had just spent repairing the top floor of their house. In their home, as in many newer constructions, the water heater was in the attic. As dozens of gallons of water flowed over the pan and down the walls of her house, the drywall buckled and the paint swelled, resulting in tens of thousands of dollars in damages.

The logic of putting it there has always eluded me, and it was a deal breaker when I was looking for my house. You water heater WILL fail. It's not a matter of if, but a matter of when. It needs to be in a place where damage can be minimized. There needs to be a plan for failure. And the pan is only a good plan if you catch it right away, which is unlikely if it is in the attic.

On Wednesday of this week, the Verizon network was down for over 8 hours. For many, this was a simple inconvenience, with the phone screen saying SOS for most of the day. For a few, it may have meant an inability to call for emergency services or run their business properly. But the issue I found the most interesting was experienced by some people whose cars were apparently tied to the Verizon network. Several Y members who owned Teslas were left unable to start their car. Having your car paired with your phone seems convenient until a failure occurs. Then, it is important to have a manual work-around (and I honestly have a hard time believing one doesn't exist).

The same is true of students. They will fail. It's not a matter of if, but when. 

I don't mean that every student will experience a failing grade, although some will. Failure means something different to everyone. But they will fail in some way, and it will vary among different students. There are students for whom a D is no big deal, but they feel morose if they lose a basketball game. There are students for whom a C+ is a slap in the face. I even had a student once who stood in my classroom screaming, "I failed. I failed!" if she made anything below a 96%. While she obviously had deeper issues that would interest a team of Viennese specialists, I had to be prepared to deal with fallout whenever I put in a grade. Otherwise, I would lose all of my class time to the inevitable melt down.

So, teachers, here's my advice. Put some thought now into how you will handle failure with your students. You can't possibly anticipate everything, but there are some pretty common ones you can expect. Do you teach juniors and seniors? Some will not get into their first choice college, and at least a couple won't even make it into their safety school. They are going to be understandably sad; but you can't turn your class into a therapy session. What will you do?  Do you teach freshmen? The homecoming dance may be their first experience of rejection from a romantic interest. You might remember how devastating that is. How do you plan to keep it from derailing everything you have planned for your students that day? 

The bad news is there is no way to avoid this. Students will fail at something. And, to be honest, that is a good and healthy thing. You want them to experience failure and learn coping skills when the stakes are low. Kids build resilience for adulthood by taking acceptable risks and learning to bounce back when things go sideways. 

The good news is that you are not the sole source of help for them. You have have resources. As you make a plan, think through which members of your school community might be helpful. You might have a great relationship with that child's parents and make a quick call. You might have a school counselor who can help. Your special needs teachers can teach you some tricks. Most schools have some "Barbara Howard" type teacher that just has the touch for calming kids down. Think about those resources as you anticipate the issues you might encounter with students. 

You will handle different situations and different students in different ways, of course. Just don't let the fact that failure happens take you by surprise. If you do, you will react rather than act, and you won't react in the most effective ways (which will then make a vicious circle because you will feel like you have failed. 

Can Prior Knowledge Interfere with New Learning?

This is not one of those posts where I ask a rhetorical question and then answer it. I won't be wrapping this one up with advice to teachers.  I am genuinely just musing here based on something I noticed last week that caused curiosity.

In my part of education land, we talk a lot about connecting new learning to prior knowledge. Out knowledge base is our already existing schema, and new learning finds a place to fit within it.  As Daniel Willingham tells us, we can only learn in relationship to what we already know. Prior knowledge enhances reading comprehension and problem solving; you can only think critically about things you know well.  This is all well established and backed by solid education research.  

Here's what I'm wondering, can new learning and old learning interfere with each other? In particular, I am thinking of things with a high degree of similarity. 

Let me explain what got me started thinking about this.

I attend a liturgical church. If you aren't familiar with that, it involves a fair amount of congregational participation during the service - prayers we say together, call and response, and recitation of the creed and the Lord's prayer - stuff like that, individual churches will vary). 

While all of it is printed in the bulletin, making it easy to read along, I decided that I wanted to memorize the things that are consistent every week. This includes, in my church, the: 

• Collect for Purity (easy to learn with a little retrieval practice)
• Lord's Prayer (I've known that one since I was in kindergarten)
• Confession of Sin (a little more retrieval - got it)
• Doxology (been singing that most of my life - check) 
• Nicene Creed (aye, there's the rub)

So, the Nicene Creed is the one that got me thinking about this.  I grew up reciting the Apostle's Creed, which is a lot shorter. But I don't think the length of the Nicene Creed made it difficult; I think it was that there are some similarities to the Apostles' Creed. Where they were similar, my brain wanted to race straight through the one I knew better.

For example:  The Apostle's Creed begins, "I believe in God, the Father almighty, maker of heaven and earth; and in Jesus Christ, his only Son, our Lord." The Nicene creed takes a little more time with the Father before moving on to the Son, so it begins, "We believe in one God, the Father, the almighty, maker of heaven and earth, of all that is, seen and unseen. We believe in one Lord, Jesus Christ, the only Son of God . . ." 

So, I did my retrieval practice work, and I had it down reasonably well.  By reasonably well, I mean I was slightly halting as I thought about whether the next line is "eternally begotten of the Father" or "of one being with the Father." But, I knew it well enough to say in a group without looking down to check the bulletin.

That is, until last week. On the final week every month, we use a different liturgy, known as a Morning Prayers service. That one uses the Apostles' Creed, the one I know so well I could probably rattle it off if you shook me awake in the morning and asked me to say it. Last week, the first week of the month, when we started the Nicene Creed, I completely fumbled it. 

So, my musing is this. Did one week of reverting back to the well known creed interfere with my ability to retrieve the one I know less well?  Will this change once I know it better? Is my already existing schema preventing attachment because they are too similar and trying to occupy the same cognitive space? Is there research on this, or is it too weirdly specific for an adequate experiment? 

So help me, Daniel Willingham, I don't know the answer to any of these questions, but I am going to spend some time this week retrieving the Nicene Creed so I don't feel so lost again this Sunday.

Positively Realistic

I fought the dryer, and the dryer won. I'm gutted. I really believed I could repair the broken belt. I found a YouTube video, and everything worked exactly like his until I got to putting the belt around the pulley.  I fought and and fought. I cut my thumb and had a massive bruise on one forearm and the other shoulder. I tried it with mom pressing on a crowbar to get the wheel into position. I tried tipping the machine on its back for easier access to the parts, but that just made it more difficult because the belt placement was no longer benefitted by gravity but rather falling behind the drum because of gravity. Tipping it over also meant that I had disconnected it from the vent, and you have to be a master yogi to fold yourself over to attach that and then climb out overtop of the dryer. (Note to the people who make these: Why do they need to be two inches from the floor? And can the tube be about six inches longer?) Anyway, after trying for weeks and using different methods, my mom stopped me while I was trapped in the space between the dryer and the wall and said, "Will you let us buy you a dryer." I said yes, but I hate that what should have been a $20 job became a replacement. I don't like admitting defeat. 

But, at some point, we all have to admit defeat. We have to recognize that there are things we cannot do. In spite of the messaging we got from children's television in the 80s and the proliferation of athletic clothing with Philippians 4:13 printed on it, we have limitations. It's part of our design as human beings. There are certain attributes that belong only to God. Omniscience, omnipotence, omnipresence and the like are not something we can achieve. We tried at the tower of Babel, and we seem to be trying again with AI, but no matter how far we advance technologically, we will remain limited.

Why am I talking about this on an education blog?  Well, partly because I needed to work through the hit to my pride from not being able to repair the dryer, but more importantly, we need to be realistic with students.

People who enter the education field tend to be idealistic. And, in an effort to support kids and their dreams, we get even more idealistic with them. That seems loving, but there reaches a point where it isn't. When we support things that cannot happen, we set kids up for disappointment and failure. There's a commercial on television where kids are asked what they want to be when they grow up. Most say doctors or lawyers, but one sweet little girls says she wants to be a unicorn. Now, she's about 4 in this commercial, so I think playing along with the understanding that it is make-believe is totally fine. But, as she gets older, telling her "if you can dream it, youe can be it" is not. 

It's totally fine to have dreams that are long shots. I'm not saying to crush the dreams of a kid whose ambition it to be a professional athlete. There are people who achieve that goal, and they were all at one point, children with a dream. I am saying that it is good to encourage that child to have a back up plan because the percentage of talented athletes that become professionals is small, and some of them sustain career ending injuries. People with back up plans are resilient. People without back up plans often wander aimlessly for years. 

My childhood dream was to pilot the space shuttle. I paid attention in math and science; I went to Space Camp; I somehow got my hands on an application for the Air Force Academy and started filling it out in the 4th grade. When I was 13, it became clear that this was not going to happen. First, I was taller than NASA's heigh limit (yes, at 13). Second, I have both eyesight and equilibrium issues.  While the eyesight could have been corrected, the balance and the height were insurmountable problems. Well meaning adults in my life told me not to give up on this dream. Some said, "You'll be so good that they'll change the height rules for you." Apparently, they didn't understand the constrictive nature of spacecraft. Several went as far as to say that God would not let me want something this much if it weren't His plan for me (Now, that's dangerous counsel if ever I heard it). Thankfully, I had other, more realistic, adults around me that said, "Well, you obviously love science. What kinds of jobs might allow you to use that?" I kicked around veterinary medicine, pharmaceuticals, and physical therapy until I walked into Mr. Barbara's physics class and decided I basically wanted to be him, a person who made people love subjects most were afraid of. After 25 years of science teaching, I achieved a lot of things, but my favorite was always when a kid came into the meet and greet saying that they didn't like science leave at the end of the year excited to learn more science.

I'm not advocating for pessimism. I'm not suggesting that negativity is best. I'm advocating for realism with a positive tone.  When a student shares their dream, you can be positive and say "What's your plan for making that happen?" As they tell you their plan, you can layer in nuances and back up plans without being a dream crusher. If a student has come to the realization that they can't be the thing they thought they could, be sympathetic. "I know how hard it must be to realize that, but you have a purpose. What did you love about . . .? How might you still have a job that utilizes that part?"  

Whether a glass is half empty or half full doesn't depend on your mindset. It depends on what direction you are pouring the water. If you are drinking from it, the last thing you did was remove water, so you made it half empty. If you are pouring water into it, the last thing you did was add water, so you made it half full.  Helping kids pour water back into their cup after a setback doesn't happen by being blindly positive. But it can happen by helping them find an achievable dream that still incorporates their "why" from their prior goals. It's both realistic and positive.

I don't believe in resolutions, but since it is January, let's make one. Let's resolve to be positively realistic with students.