Just like fashions change from season to season, there are also fads in language. I know how the clothing changes. There are designers that intend to have millions in skinny jeans for a year even though they told them everyone should wear bootcut the year before. I can tell how it happens in language, but it does. From Twitter to the board room to teacher conventions, there are certain expressions and phrases that are the hot buttons for a while. While anything overused in this way can be annoying, there are some expressions we should just stop using altogether. While I don't believe in resolutions, the new year seems to be a good time to drop these expressions from our vocabulary. These are my top three expressions to abandon.
3. Leverage - I was at an educational workshop in which I swear this word was used as a verb over a hundred times. The workshop was only four hours long. Unless you are talking about the physics of exchanging force for distance by use of a fulcrum, this word just means use. Saying you can leverage an app with your students might make you feel smarter, but it doesn't make you sound smarter. If you mean use, just say use. (On behalf of my friend, Cheryl, you can place the word utilize in the same category.)
2. What doesn't kill you makes you stronger. - Contrary to popular belief, this didn't first appear in a pop song. When you say this crazy sentence, you are quoting atheist German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche. Thanks to the power of pop music, it has resurfaced. It is now used for every situation that involves suffering of any kind. Some well meaning but trite friend will try to make you feel better using this inane sentence. Among other problems, it just isn't true. The pneumonia I had in 6th grade did not kill me, but it absolutely didn't make me stronger. A bullet wound might not kill you, but it certainly will not strengthen you. The only person ever made stronger by overexposure to gamma rays was Bruce Banner; everyone else just gets radiation poisoning. The song may be catchy, but we should stop saying this stupid expression.
1. It is what it is. This is my number one most hated expression in all of modern English, and I can't get through a day without hearing it. What does it mean? If you take it literally, it means nothing. Most people don't mean it literally, so what does it mean in practice? It means I GIVE UP. It implies that a situation can't be changed, so why bother. I've thought about this for a long time, and I cannot think of a historic figure I respect who would use this sentence. John Adams, fighting the Continental Congress for the passage of the Declaration of Independence would never say, "Oh, well. It is what it is." William Wilberforce in England and Frederick Douglas in America would not have used this sentence in their fight against slavery. The Apostles traveled the known world to carry the gospel of Christ, and it wasn't because they were content with the state of the world as it was. Can you imagine Jesus saying it? I can't. Name anyone who has accomplished something with their lives, and you will not find this sentence. Could we please put this expression behind us tonight?
As we head into the new year, let's examine our own speech. Let's say things that are true, helpful, and meaningful.
Thursday, December 31, 2015
Friday, December 18, 2015
Failing vs. Failure
As I have mentioned before on this blog, I listen to the TED Radio Hour on NPR. While I don't agree with the worldview presented by every speaker, I believe we can learn something from everyone. Recently, I was listening to the one by Stanley McChrystal. While you may best remember him from the pseudo-scandal leading to his resignation as the commander of the Joint Special Operations Command, he had a long and distinguished career in the military. His talk is on leadership, a topic on which he is highly qualified to speak.
In my favorite part of this episode, General McChrystal relates a story from the National Training Center. After the operation, every error he made was pointed out at the "after action review." He said, "I walked out feeling as low as a snake's belly in a wagon rut. And I saw my battalion commander, because I had let him down. And I went up to apologize to him, and he said, "Stanley, I thought you did great." And in one sentence, he lifted me, put me back on my feet, and taught me that leaders can let you fail and yet not let you be a failure."
Teachers aren't military leaders, but there is much we can take from this story. Our students will occasionally fail. Failure is part of the learning process. If you never fail, you aren't setting big enough goals for yourself. It is our job as teachers to, not only point out their failures to them, but also to help them learn from those failures. If all we do is point out the mistake, we do not teach; we simply make them failures. If we come along side them, show them where they went wrong, and show them how to avoid that the next time, we lead them.
As I write this, I have just finished grading exams. My students are horrified by the fact that no one got a 100%. They believe that means there is something wrong with the exam. I point out to them that it is unlikely you could make zero mistakes on something that covers all the information you have learned for an entire semester. There are 135 questions on this exam, some of them with very high thinking levels, some with great levels of detail. Of course, a few of students failed the exam outright. That doesn't mean that they cannot still learn from their mistakes, stand back up, and do better on the next exam. Education isn't about content. I suppose I should say that it isn't JUST about content. It is about training the brain to learn. That happens as often from the times we get questions wrong as it does when we get them right, possibly more often. Let's fight the trend from parents, school systems, students, and society at large to view a grade as an indicator of our value. We must put them in the proper perspective, indicators of current performance. In so doing, we can allow them to fail without letting them be failures.
In my favorite part of this episode, General McChrystal relates a story from the National Training Center. After the operation, every error he made was pointed out at the "after action review." He said, "I walked out feeling as low as a snake's belly in a wagon rut. And I saw my battalion commander, because I had let him down. And I went up to apologize to him, and he said, "Stanley, I thought you did great." And in one sentence, he lifted me, put me back on my feet, and taught me that leaders can let you fail and yet not let you be a failure."
Teachers aren't military leaders, but there is much we can take from this story. Our students will occasionally fail. Failure is part of the learning process. If you never fail, you aren't setting big enough goals for yourself. It is our job as teachers to, not only point out their failures to them, but also to help them learn from those failures. If all we do is point out the mistake, we do not teach; we simply make them failures. If we come along side them, show them where they went wrong, and show them how to avoid that the next time, we lead them.
As I write this, I have just finished grading exams. My students are horrified by the fact that no one got a 100%. They believe that means there is something wrong with the exam. I point out to them that it is unlikely you could make zero mistakes on something that covers all the information you have learned for an entire semester. There are 135 questions on this exam, some of them with very high thinking levels, some with great levels of detail. Of course, a few of students failed the exam outright. That doesn't mean that they cannot still learn from their mistakes, stand back up, and do better on the next exam. Education isn't about content. I suppose I should say that it isn't JUST about content. It is about training the brain to learn. That happens as often from the times we get questions wrong as it does when we get them right, possibly more often. Let's fight the trend from parents, school systems, students, and society at large to view a grade as an indicator of our value. We must put them in the proper perspective, indicators of current performance. In so doing, we can allow them to fail without letting them be failures.
Monday, December 14, 2015
Exams Teach More Than You Know
Disclaimer: I am a middle and high school science teacher, not a neurobiologist. I am well aware that the learning process in the brain is far more complex than I am portraying. This is painted with very broad strokes because this is, after all, an educational blog and not a neurology text.
"It's Beginning to Look a Lot Like Exam Week" really should be a song because, for middle and high school teachers and students, it can't be Christmas until midterm exams are over. To see some of my students blogs on the issue, click here.
It happens every year. A middle school student tells me that exams are unnecessary and don't tell you anything because they can't study for all their subjects at once. They are always very proud of their amazing argument, backed up with something their mom said about how they shouldn't be under so much pressure at their age. Much like the "When am I ever going to use this is life?" question, it doesn't actually matter what my answer is. They came in knowing that they were right and nothing will convince them otherwise. Since you read this blog, I will assume that you care what the answer is. Exams are about the pressure.
The initial learning process is a long and complicated brain experience. It involves categorizing new knowledge into categories you established from prior knowledge, blending the old information with the new to give it meaning, and recording that meaning in a biochemical process in your brain. Because the brain's real estate is limited, there is competition for what will remain and what gets tossed. Your brain simply must throw out some things, or you would waste valuable space on remembering what the people in your line at the grocery store last week were wearing. In the simplest of terms, your brain decides to keep the things you revisit and dump the things you don't. That's why songs stay in your mind. That's why review matters. It has even been theorized that one of the purposes of sleep is to give your brain time to decide what it should forget from that day without taking in new input in the process.
What does this have to do with pressure and exams?
First, you are obviously revisiting information that you learned earlier in the semester. This tells your brain that it should hold onto this information next time it is sorting out what you should forget. It tells your brain that this information is more important than the tweet your read yesterday and never looked at again. Second, the pressure of the exam schedule tells your brain that this matters enough to stress over. The brain isn't likely to drop those things you are stressed about when it goes through information triage. It is why you remember the fight you had with your friend long after you forgot the color of the carpet in the conference room. Emotion (even stress) causes your brain to record more permanently. The pressure increases the learning.
Another thing that exams teach you is the ability to plan for the long term and short term simultaneously. This is an important adult life skill. Your parents prepare for the short term (packing lunches for tomorrow) and the medium term (what groceries to buy for this week) and the long term (how much money to budget for food). They do it all the time. They didn't develop the ability to do this the day they turned 21. It is a skill that is built. One of the ways you build this skill is to balance studying for exams (a couple of weeks away) with doing the homework that is due tomorrow. This will keep you from living your life by the "tyranny of the urgent" principle. Many adults live anxious lives because they are only doing what has to be done RIGHT NOW. If you have developed the skill of planning ahead, your life will be less stressful.
As I began writing this, I had a strange memory of an episode of Boy Meets World. I know that's weird, but stick with me. Mr. Feeny had made a very difficult exam schedule (because, in TV world, the history teacher is apparently able to make the exam schedule). Anyway, the students revolted against this unfair schedule. They vandalized his house, etc. In the scene below, Corey goes to talk to him about the vandalism and to request that he make things easier. As always, Mr. Feeny's wisdom came through, so I will end with it.
"It's Beginning to Look a Lot Like Exam Week" really should be a song because, for middle and high school teachers and students, it can't be Christmas until midterm exams are over. To see some of my students blogs on the issue, click here.
It happens every year. A middle school student tells me that exams are unnecessary and don't tell you anything because they can't study for all their subjects at once. They are always very proud of their amazing argument, backed up with something their mom said about how they shouldn't be under so much pressure at their age. Much like the "When am I ever going to use this is life?" question, it doesn't actually matter what my answer is. They came in knowing that they were right and nothing will convince them otherwise. Since you read this blog, I will assume that you care what the answer is. Exams are about the pressure.
The initial learning process is a long and complicated brain experience. It involves categorizing new knowledge into categories you established from prior knowledge, blending the old information with the new to give it meaning, and recording that meaning in a biochemical process in your brain. Because the brain's real estate is limited, there is competition for what will remain and what gets tossed. Your brain simply must throw out some things, or you would waste valuable space on remembering what the people in your line at the grocery store last week were wearing. In the simplest of terms, your brain decides to keep the things you revisit and dump the things you don't. That's why songs stay in your mind. That's why review matters. It has even been theorized that one of the purposes of sleep is to give your brain time to decide what it should forget from that day without taking in new input in the process.
What does this have to do with pressure and exams?
First, you are obviously revisiting information that you learned earlier in the semester. This tells your brain that it should hold onto this information next time it is sorting out what you should forget. It tells your brain that this information is more important than the tweet your read yesterday and never looked at again. Second, the pressure of the exam schedule tells your brain that this matters enough to stress over. The brain isn't likely to drop those things you are stressed about when it goes through information triage. It is why you remember the fight you had with your friend long after you forgot the color of the carpet in the conference room. Emotion (even stress) causes your brain to record more permanently. The pressure increases the learning.
Another thing that exams teach you is the ability to plan for the long term and short term simultaneously. This is an important adult life skill. Your parents prepare for the short term (packing lunches for tomorrow) and the medium term (what groceries to buy for this week) and the long term (how much money to budget for food). They do it all the time. They didn't develop the ability to do this the day they turned 21. It is a skill that is built. One of the ways you build this skill is to balance studying for exams (a couple of weeks away) with doing the homework that is due tomorrow. This will keep you from living your life by the "tyranny of the urgent" principle. Many adults live anxious lives because they are only doing what has to be done RIGHT NOW. If you have developed the skill of planning ahead, your life will be less stressful.
As I began writing this, I had a strange memory of an episode of Boy Meets World. I know that's weird, but stick with me. Mr. Feeny had made a very difficult exam schedule (because, in TV world, the history teacher is apparently able to make the exam schedule). Anyway, the students revolted against this unfair schedule. They vandalized his house, etc. In the scene below, Corey goes to talk to him about the vandalism and to request that he make things easier. As always, Mr. Feeny's wisdom came through, so I will end with it.
Saturday, December 5, 2015
Half-Baked
This is the time of year when everyone gets tired. The weather has changed, and the days are getting shorter. The students are no longer in the honeymoon period of behaving well in class. They have gotten to know their teachers well enough to really start pushing the line on what they can get away with. We start seeing what they are like under pressure. It is the time of year when teachers start worrying about some character traits they may or may not be seeing in their students.
Because teachers love their students, we stress over them. If they are making poor decisions in their personal lives, cheating on our tests, or just plain acting foolish, we are concerned about their future. In Christian schools, like the one I teach in, we are concerned about what those behaviors reflect regarding the condition of their hearts. Cheating on a test isn't just a behavior; it is a reflection of something much deeper, self-worship. Bad choices in their personal lives may do damage to their reputation, but we are more concerned about the damage it does to their character. Because of these concerns, teachers do a fair amount of hand-wringing and fretting. We talk a lot about what their issues mean for their future.
Then I remember that my students are eighteen when they graduate. We don't send them out into the world as finished products, and we aren't the last influences they will have in their lives. There will be professors and ministers and friends and mentors after us who will continue the process of maturing them into the adults they will one day be.
I remind myself that no one eats a half-baked cake. I love to eat cake batter. I may like it even more than I like the final cake. As much as I like them both, I would never put a cake in the oven for half the time and then complain when I took it out of the oven that it wasn't cake yet and wasn't batter anymore. I would recognize that the oven was only half way through the process of turning batter into cake. This is where my students are. They aren't the squishy little sweet babies they once were, but they aren't fully formed adults yet either. They are in the weird place that cake would be, half-baked. We can't complain that they aren't babies anymore, and we can't complain that they aren't adults yet. They aren't supposed to be. They are in the middle of the process we call growing up.
Teachers will always worry. We know that there are mistakes they can make that will impact the adult they become. Just like a cake would be ruined if we opened the oven door and threw in a handful of dirt, a person can be negatively impacted by what happens in high school. However, we need to keep this time in proper perspective and recognized. They are not yet who they will be.
Because teachers love their students, we stress over them. If they are making poor decisions in their personal lives, cheating on our tests, or just plain acting foolish, we are concerned about their future. In Christian schools, like the one I teach in, we are concerned about what those behaviors reflect regarding the condition of their hearts. Cheating on a test isn't just a behavior; it is a reflection of something much deeper, self-worship. Bad choices in their personal lives may do damage to their reputation, but we are more concerned about the damage it does to their character. Because of these concerns, teachers do a fair amount of hand-wringing and fretting. We talk a lot about what their issues mean for their future.
Then I remember that my students are eighteen when they graduate. We don't send them out into the world as finished products, and we aren't the last influences they will have in their lives. There will be professors and ministers and friends and mentors after us who will continue the process of maturing them into the adults they will one day be.
I remind myself that no one eats a half-baked cake. I love to eat cake batter. I may like it even more than I like the final cake. As much as I like them both, I would never put a cake in the oven for half the time and then complain when I took it out of the oven that it wasn't cake yet and wasn't batter anymore. I would recognize that the oven was only half way through the process of turning batter into cake. This is where my students are. They aren't the squishy little sweet babies they once were, but they aren't fully formed adults yet either. They are in the weird place that cake would be, half-baked. We can't complain that they aren't babies anymore, and we can't complain that they aren't adults yet. They aren't supposed to be. They are in the middle of the process we call growing up.
Teachers will always worry. We know that there are mistakes they can make that will impact the adult they become. Just like a cake would be ruined if we opened the oven door and threw in a handful of dirt, a person can be negatively impacted by what happens in high school. However, we need to keep this time in proper perspective and recognized. They are not yet who they will be.
Tuesday, December 1, 2015
Pragmatism IS NOT an Aspiration
When I was in college, I had an education professor who was fond of saying, "Beware of doing what works." At the time, I was extremely confused. If something worked, why is heaven's name wouldn't I want to use it. I thought she was a little nutty for a lot of reasons, and this just seemed like one more nutty thing to add to the list. Now, I get it. It was a warning against pragmatism.
Seven years ago, I was listening to President Obama staunchly defending himself against the charge that he was an ideologue. He was clearly upset about it and insisted (as did his supporters) that he was a pragmatist. I remember thinking at the time that I would have more respect for him if he were ideological, but this idea seemed upsetting to every spokesman on the talk show circuit. This discussion on all the morning shows fascinated me. When did we reach the point in our society where pragmatism is considered a good thing, something to be aspired to even? No modern politician wants to be considered an ideologue. Why is this the case?
Let's look at the two words. The dictionary definition of pragmatism doesn't sound so bad. It is "dealing with things sensibly and realistically in a way that is based on practical rather than theoretical considerations." That seems like someone who will work with you in order to get things done. Okay, I could probably deal with that. When I look around, however, it seems that the modern application of this is that we only care about what will work, what we can get done, whether or not it fits our philosophy or values. This appears especially true if you are trying to fight off the charge of be an ideologue.
The other end of the spectrum is ideology. The definition of an ideologue is "an adherent of an ideology, especially one who is uncompromising and dogmatic." This is what the politicians don't want to be called? Don't they run their campaigns and ideologues? No one gives a stump speech in which they say, "I have no beliefs, so I will do whatever I can." They run on the basis of you, their supporter, caring about their beliefs and values. They tell you they will fight for those beliefs and hope that will make you want to vote for them.
It seems to me like the ideologue is the person who has values and sticks to them rather than always giving in. This seems to me like a person of character. This is William Wilberforce fighting the slave trade for decades before he accomplished it. He didn't sit down and say, "Well, since the rest of you don't think that works, I guess we won't do it." He battled staunchly in the face of overwhelming opposition from friends and foes alike. He is a hero. We tells stories about people like him, make movies about their fight, and write their names in history books. Is the pragmatist a hero? You can draw your own conclusion, but I don't think he is. I don't think we will make movies about the pragmatists or pass down their stories in history books because they won't really have stories.
I have been told that I am a practical teacher, but I certainly don't want to be a pragmatist. I don't want my students to see me as pragmatic. I hope that I have conveyed to them that I have values and beliefs that I will hold to, no matter what. That doesn't mean that I never compromise on anything, but I will not compromise on the things that are important - integrity, scripture, my beliefs about what is good for their education. Doing "what works" is like a dog chasing its own tail. He may catch it, but what is he going to do with it when he does? He has "caught" something of no value. I hope that my students see a lot of hard work for things that matter and they will aspire to be ideologues themselves. If I send out loads of pragmatic alumni, I have done no favors for the world. If I send out one ideologue, I may have a hand in changing the world.
Seven years ago, I was listening to President Obama staunchly defending himself against the charge that he was an ideologue. He was clearly upset about it and insisted (as did his supporters) that he was a pragmatist. I remember thinking at the time that I would have more respect for him if he were ideological, but this idea seemed upsetting to every spokesman on the talk show circuit. This discussion on all the morning shows fascinated me. When did we reach the point in our society where pragmatism is considered a good thing, something to be aspired to even? No modern politician wants to be considered an ideologue. Why is this the case?
Let's look at the two words. The dictionary definition of pragmatism doesn't sound so bad. It is "dealing with things sensibly and realistically in a way that is based on practical rather than theoretical considerations." That seems like someone who will work with you in order to get things done. Okay, I could probably deal with that. When I look around, however, it seems that the modern application of this is that we only care about what will work, what we can get done, whether or not it fits our philosophy or values. This appears especially true if you are trying to fight off the charge of be an ideologue.
The other end of the spectrum is ideology. The definition of an ideologue is "an adherent of an ideology, especially one who is uncompromising and dogmatic." This is what the politicians don't want to be called? Don't they run their campaigns and ideologues? No one gives a stump speech in which they say, "I have no beliefs, so I will do whatever I can." They run on the basis of you, their supporter, caring about their beliefs and values. They tell you they will fight for those beliefs and hope that will make you want to vote for them.
It seems to me like the ideologue is the person who has values and sticks to them rather than always giving in. This seems to me like a person of character. This is William Wilberforce fighting the slave trade for decades before he accomplished it. He didn't sit down and say, "Well, since the rest of you don't think that works, I guess we won't do it." He battled staunchly in the face of overwhelming opposition from friends and foes alike. He is a hero. We tells stories about people like him, make movies about their fight, and write their names in history books. Is the pragmatist a hero? You can draw your own conclusion, but I don't think he is. I don't think we will make movies about the pragmatists or pass down their stories in history books because they won't really have stories.
I have been told that I am a practical teacher, but I certainly don't want to be a pragmatist. I don't want my students to see me as pragmatic. I hope that I have conveyed to them that I have values and beliefs that I will hold to, no matter what. That doesn't mean that I never compromise on anything, but I will not compromise on the things that are important - integrity, scripture, my beliefs about what is good for their education. Doing "what works" is like a dog chasing its own tail. He may catch it, but what is he going to do with it when he does? He has "caught" something of no value. I hope that my students see a lot of hard work for things that matter and they will aspire to be ideologues themselves. If I send out loads of pragmatic alumni, I have done no favors for the world. If I send out one ideologue, I may have a hand in changing the world.
Tuesday, November 24, 2015
Wake County Workshop - Autism
After the ACSI convention, I realized how helpful it can be to take notes on the blog. I can find it when I need it, but I can also share it with you all. I am sitting in a workshop offered by Wake County Public Schools on High Functioning Autism.
Must have impairment that interferes with life in at least three of these:
- Communication
- Social Interaction
- Sensory Response
- Restricted, repetitive, or stereotypic patterns of behavior interests and/or activities.
The Iceberg Effect - You can only see the behavior "above the surface," but there may be a lot more going on underneath that contributes to that behavior.
Cognition
You may see that a student:
- takes everything literally
- struggles with abstract thinking
- can't seem to keep up
- is difficult to motivate
- doesn't understand another person's point of view
- struggles with change in routine
But you may not know the reason you see it is:
- disorganized thinking skills
- dependence on routines for understanding expectations
- need for visual information in order to process
You should try:
- organizing tasks for the student, so they can think about tasks rather than organization
- provide visual cues
- provide demonstrations
- display materials in the order they will be used
- use checklists
- decrease writing demands where possible
Social Interaction with Peers
You may see that a student:
Must have impairment that interferes with life in at least three of these:
- Communication
- Social Interaction
- Sensory Response
- Restricted, repetitive, or stereotypic patterns of behavior interests and/or activities.
The Iceberg Effect - You can only see the behavior "above the surface," but there may be a lot more going on underneath that contributes to that behavior.
Cognition
You may see that a student:
- takes everything literally
- struggles with abstract thinking
- can't seem to keep up
- is difficult to motivate
- doesn't understand another person's point of view
- struggles with change in routine
But you may not know the reason you see it is:
- disorganized thinking skills
- dependence on routines for understanding expectations
- need for visual information in order to process
You should try:
- organizing tasks for the student, so they can think about tasks rather than organization
- provide visual cues
- provide demonstrations
- display materials in the order they will be used
- use checklists
- decrease writing demands where possible
Social Interaction with Peers
You may see that a student:
- butts into conversations
- talks during instruction
- shows little empathy
- won't participate
But you may not know the reason you see it is:
- confusion when more than two people are present
- confusion caused by unpredictability
- misinterprets mannerisms, facial expressions, or comments
- doesn't get metaphors
You should try:
- teaching coping strategies
- provide a safe place to get away
- structure as many social interactions as possible.
Language and Communication
You may see that a student:
- always wants to talk on is agenda
- talks without directing comments to anyone in particular
- can remember isolated details without the ability to identify relevance
- doesn't establish eye contact
But you may not know the reason you see it is:
- difficulty processing verbal information
- don't know what is important to focus on
You should try:
- Chunk directions
- Get attention before giving directions
- label things for them
Sensory Input
You may see that a student:
- twiddling
- no sense of personal space
- inspects things
But you may not know the reason you see it is:
- immature neurological system
- heightened senses or dulled senses
- perceives sensory input differently
You should try:
- schedule times for input
- provide a place for minimized input
- cover sections of reading with numbered sticky notes so that they can read in proper sequence without being overwhelmed
Use a First --> Then --> Next chart to give instructions.
Older students can use a flow chart for more complex instructions.
Color coded folders for each step can help them know what comes next.
Answer four questions ahead of work:
1. What work?
2. How much work?
3. When is it finished?
4. What happens next?
Talking to them will not calm them down. Visual cues are more helpful.
Book The Incredible Five Point Scale shows ways to allow students to take ownership of how to identify their feelings and then deal with them. Teach it in isolation. Then use it in the classroom.
Comic Conversations allows students to draw themselves telling a story of how they feel.
Break tasks down into smaller steps. If you know the student gets anxious about, break that part down even more.
Provide prompts using
- verbal
- physical
- physical assistance
- modeling
- gesturing
- using an object to get attention
Work Worth Doing
Teddy Roosevelt, the 26th President of the United States, was known for doing hard work to overcome great obstacles. He was born rather sickly, battling asthma by adopting a "strenuous lifestyle." He attended Harvard, wrote books, served as the Secretary of the Navy, fought in the War in Cuba, became governor of New York, and became President in the Wake of the assassination of President McKinley. He busted monopolies, established the National Parks system, built the Panama Canal, and won the Nobel Peace Prize. This was an accomplished man who knew the value of hard work.
In a campaign speech to the farmers of upstate New York, another group of people who knew the value of hard work, Roosevelt said, "Far and away the best prize that life has to offer is the chance to work hard at work worth doing." He believed that work was the thing that gave life meaning. It was how you rebounded from the difficulties of life; it was good for the spirit. When his wife died, he threw himself into his work. In that same speech to the farmers of New York, he said, "There is no room in our healthy American life for the mere idler."
When I was a kid, I was a little afraid of growing up. It seemed like every adult I knew hated their job. At least, they talked about it like they did. When I was a teenager, I did a little survey as my fellow choir members arrived at church. I asked each of them about their job. I got a wide range of sighs and groans until Ron Butler came in. When I asked him about his job, he grinned and talked about living with "spizerinctum," a word he made up for how energized he felt by his work. It was greatly encouraging to hear an adult talk with such joy about the work he was doing, and it was clear that he loved it because he believed it mattered.
I don't know if the work I do would be deemed working hard by President Roosevelt. After all, I am not working a plow or building a building. I do like to think, however, that he would consider it work worth doing. Teaching is not simply the delivery of information from 8 to 3 as many believe. It is teaching students to think, to evaluate, to analyze, and to create new work. It is showing them good citizenship, good relationships with other teachers, and good submission to authority (even with rules you don't like). It is putting your own character up as a model every minute of every day. A former principal used to say that we should be so sure of the steps we take that we have no problem with the idea that our students will put their feet in the same steps. Imagine that is your job every day, and you know why teachers need summer.
Adam and Eve were put into the Garden of Eden to work. That was before the fall. After the fall, work became difficult; but they didn't sit around doing nothing before the fall. Work is an important part of human nature when it is productive. When it is not productive, it is punitive. Tedious work (like digging a hole one day just to fill it the next) has been used as a form of torture for centuries. The psychology of the human mind is such that we must believe work is worth doing in order to work hard at it. That's why you hear kids complain about "busy work" and why you get a lot more out of them if you tell them why they are doing it. I am sitting here writing this on a teacher work day. I have graded, worked on curriculum, uploaded photos to Jostens, dealt with e-mails, and written this blog. I am not drained and exhausted because I feel this is valuable work - work worth doing. When my students come in next Monday, I will be ready to do more work. Am I tired at the end of the day? You bet. But it is a very different kind of tired than that experienced by those who view their job as drudgery.
Social psychologist Matt Wallaert set out to explore why so many are unemployed when jobs are available. He found that many are not finding jobs that live up to their own expectations of what they thought they would make after college. Not realizing the value of paying their dues and comparing themselves only to their expectations, they simply opt out of the job market because it makes them feel as if they haven't really lost anything - read this article to make sense of that line. They are also being diagnosed with depression at massive rates because they are not getting the feeling of meaning that comes from doing work worth doing.
It has been over 100 years since President Roosevelt commended those farmers for their work, and I fear that the world they built has made us soft, made us fear difficult work, and made us believe that life owes us comfort for no other reason than that fact that we were born. The students I teach are wonderful, but it is difficult to battle this cultural idea that we might be rich and famous without doing anything. Commercials tell us what we deserve (money for a car accident, phone plans, tires, and contact lenses). What have we done to earn those things? Being alive. If I believe pop culture, the simple act of being born has apparently endowed me with the right to stuff, to happiness, and to not ever feeling shamed or offended. This isn't the way God made us.God made us to work. Work, like all things, was distorted by the fall. Work became more difficult with less result. Work became tedious. Work did not stop being important. It has continued to be part of the human experience. To quote Leslie Knope at the end of the series finale of Parks and Recreation, "Go find your team, and get to work."
In a campaign speech to the farmers of upstate New York, another group of people who knew the value of hard work, Roosevelt said, "Far and away the best prize that life has to offer is the chance to work hard at work worth doing." He believed that work was the thing that gave life meaning. It was how you rebounded from the difficulties of life; it was good for the spirit. When his wife died, he threw himself into his work. In that same speech to the farmers of New York, he said, "There is no room in our healthy American life for the mere idler."
When I was a kid, I was a little afraid of growing up. It seemed like every adult I knew hated their job. At least, they talked about it like they did. When I was a teenager, I did a little survey as my fellow choir members arrived at church. I asked each of them about their job. I got a wide range of sighs and groans until Ron Butler came in. When I asked him about his job, he grinned and talked about living with "spizerinctum," a word he made up for how energized he felt by his work. It was greatly encouraging to hear an adult talk with such joy about the work he was doing, and it was clear that he loved it because he believed it mattered.
I don't know if the work I do would be deemed working hard by President Roosevelt. After all, I am not working a plow or building a building. I do like to think, however, that he would consider it work worth doing. Teaching is not simply the delivery of information from 8 to 3 as many believe. It is teaching students to think, to evaluate, to analyze, and to create new work. It is showing them good citizenship, good relationships with other teachers, and good submission to authority (even with rules you don't like). It is putting your own character up as a model every minute of every day. A former principal used to say that we should be so sure of the steps we take that we have no problem with the idea that our students will put their feet in the same steps. Imagine that is your job every day, and you know why teachers need summer.
Adam and Eve were put into the Garden of Eden to work. That was before the fall. After the fall, work became difficult; but they didn't sit around doing nothing before the fall. Work is an important part of human nature when it is productive. When it is not productive, it is punitive. Tedious work (like digging a hole one day just to fill it the next) has been used as a form of torture for centuries. The psychology of the human mind is such that we must believe work is worth doing in order to work hard at it. That's why you hear kids complain about "busy work" and why you get a lot more out of them if you tell them why they are doing it. I am sitting here writing this on a teacher work day. I have graded, worked on curriculum, uploaded photos to Jostens, dealt with e-mails, and written this blog. I am not drained and exhausted because I feel this is valuable work - work worth doing. When my students come in next Monday, I will be ready to do more work. Am I tired at the end of the day? You bet. But it is a very different kind of tired than that experienced by those who view their job as drudgery.
Social psychologist Matt Wallaert set out to explore why so many are unemployed when jobs are available. He found that many are not finding jobs that live up to their own expectations of what they thought they would make after college. Not realizing the value of paying their dues and comparing themselves only to their expectations, they simply opt out of the job market because it makes them feel as if they haven't really lost anything - read this article to make sense of that line. They are also being diagnosed with depression at massive rates because they are not getting the feeling of meaning that comes from doing work worth doing.
It has been over 100 years since President Roosevelt commended those farmers for their work, and I fear that the world they built has made us soft, made us fear difficult work, and made us believe that life owes us comfort for no other reason than that fact that we were born. The students I teach are wonderful, but it is difficult to battle this cultural idea that we might be rich and famous without doing anything. Commercials tell us what we deserve (money for a car accident, phone plans, tires, and contact lenses). What have we done to earn those things? Being alive. If I believe pop culture, the simple act of being born has apparently endowed me with the right to stuff, to happiness, and to not ever feeling shamed or offended. This isn't the way God made us.God made us to work. Work, like all things, was distorted by the fall. Work became more difficult with less result. Work became tedious. Work did not stop being important. It has continued to be part of the human experience. To quote Leslie Knope at the end of the series finale of Parks and Recreation, "Go find your team, and get to work."
Monday, November 16, 2015
The Week of Too Much
We've all had the week of too much. We have too much to do and not enough time. We have to much stress and not enough sleep. We do a lot of complaining about the week of too much, but we get through it. We don't die. The world doesn't stop spinning on its axis, and we realize that we are not as weak as we thought. That lesson then must be learned again by having another week of too much.
The week before Thanksgiving break is often the week of too much for our students at GRACE. No teacher wants to ask them to hold information in their heads while their brains turn to mashed potatoes and they slip into a tryptophan coma, so we mostly plan their tests during the week before Thanksgiving. They worry and complain. They stress themselves, their teachers, and their parents out. They feel like they are going to die. But you know what? They don't.
Just like we don't die when we have a week of too much, middle and high school students also don't die. They come out on the other end, realizing that they are stronger than they thought they were. This is a valuable and important lesson, and it would be wrong for us to rob them of it by giving them what they say they want. It is important to go through stressful times because they train us for more stressful times down the road.
Last week, my students got to hear a veteran from Iwo Jima speak the day before Veteran's Day. One of the things he said that stuck out to me was about a time near the end of his training. He was dropped at an unknown location and given the address of a different location. He had to get there. They provided no help and no rescue. This probably sounded mean to the students who were listening, but I thought about how prepared he was for the same scenario should he encounter it in Japan. It seems mean that me give our students a lot of tests / projects in one week, but the reality is that they will be better prepared for those times inevitable to adulthood than they would be if we didn't.
No one likes to see their kids stressed, but a certain amount of stress is needed. It is needed to prepare their brains, their stamina, and their energies for the future. Chronic stress is bad, but brief periods of acute stress are actually necessary for building strength. Support your students through the week of too much. Listen to their complaints and empathize with them; but do not take away the valuable stress they are experiencing. If you do, they will fail during their adult weeks of too much.
The week before Thanksgiving break is often the week of too much for our students at GRACE. No teacher wants to ask them to hold information in their heads while their brains turn to mashed potatoes and they slip into a tryptophan coma, so we mostly plan their tests during the week before Thanksgiving. They worry and complain. They stress themselves, their teachers, and their parents out. They feel like they are going to die. But you know what? They don't.
Just like we don't die when we have a week of too much, middle and high school students also don't die. They come out on the other end, realizing that they are stronger than they thought they were. This is a valuable and important lesson, and it would be wrong for us to rob them of it by giving them what they say they want. It is important to go through stressful times because they train us for more stressful times down the road.
Last week, my students got to hear a veteran from Iwo Jima speak the day before Veteran's Day. One of the things he said that stuck out to me was about a time near the end of his training. He was dropped at an unknown location and given the address of a different location. He had to get there. They provided no help and no rescue. This probably sounded mean to the students who were listening, but I thought about how prepared he was for the same scenario should he encounter it in Japan. It seems mean that me give our students a lot of tests / projects in one week, but the reality is that they will be better prepared for those times inevitable to adulthood than they would be if we didn't.
No one likes to see their kids stressed, but a certain amount of stress is needed. It is needed to prepare their brains, their stamina, and their energies for the future. Chronic stress is bad, but brief periods of acute stress are actually necessary for building strength. Support your students through the week of too much. Listen to their complaints and empathize with them; but do not take away the valuable stress they are experiencing. If you do, they will fail during their adult weeks of too much.
Tuesday, November 10, 2015
Find a Real Problem
Normally, this blog is about education or at least the philosophy behind my teaching. Occasionally, however, I find it useful to use this blog to respond to a current issue. This one has been on my mind since last year.
It's November, and soon the holidays will be upon us. They will include heavy meals, decorated malls, shopping for gifts, and animated specials. It is also time for Christians to write Facebook posts about the most trivial issues ever. About this time every year, several of my Facebook friends proudly announce that they will not shop at any store where the clerk has told them "Happy Holidays." Setting aside that there are, in fact, multiple holidays that Christian celebrate within a few weeks of each other, let's address the fact that these people act as if they should get some sort of medal for their own pride. That poor, exhausted store clerk makes about $9 an hour trying to serve as many kinds of people as possible. She works in retail, serving a public that is increasingly entitled, impatient, and prone to offense at the drop of a hat. She makes the effort to wish you well, but because she didn't use your preferred method of well wishing, you lash out with your angry, "It's Merry Christmas, and I won't shop in any store that doesn't exclusively say that." Is it any wonder why the world believes we are mean. What a witness our snappy comeback must have been to that store clerk.
Last year, I watched as 172 people argued on social media about whether a PASTOR'S Christmas greeting was heretical or Biblical because he said X-mas. Some took the stance that he was destroying the place of Jesus while others argued that the X was the Greek letter Chi and, therefore, stood for Jesus. The reality was that on Twitter, he only got 140 characters and was trying to save 5 of them by using the X. Is this really something to spend our time on?
This year, we have a brand new issue for the self righteous to get bothered about. It is about the red cup at Starbucks. I mean, last year it had snowflakes on it, and snowflakes are clearly more Christian than solid red. We must use our social media power to complain about this travesty. Red cups are a the true sign that Starbucks is anti-Christian. Never mind that Starbucks has been donating to Planned Parenthood for years and supports gay marriage, we will not drink from a red cup at Christmas time.
Do we really think these are the problems of the world that need a response? Right now, in the world, there are 29.8 million victims of human trafficking. There are 795 million people who will go to sleep hungry tonight and 783 million who don't have access to clean water. There are countries of our world in which girls are executed in the street because they committed the crime of going to school and others where girls are simply left to die because they they committed the crime of not being boys. ISIS has behead over 300 people in the past two years, and thousands of Christians are killed for their faith every year (although there is wide debate over the exact number). American Christians have opted to turn their backs on all these issues. No, we must take a stand on the red cup. We must refuse the well wishes of those who disagree with us.
Starting tomorrow, when I go to the store, I will gratefully accept the well wishes of anyone. Whether they wish me Merry Christmas, Happy Holidays, Seasons Greetings, Happy Hanukkah, or simply Have a nice day, I will return their good wishes. I will also set aside five dollars. In January, whatever amount I have accumulated will be donated to an organization that helps the truly persecuted around the world. I am currently researching exactly which organization is best, but the ones I have found so far are: Voice of the Martyrs, Open Doors, The Persecution Project Foundation, Barnabas Aid, and RescueChristians.org. Each of these ministries support those Christians for whom responding to persecution doesn't mean whining about the cup holding our four dollar latte or treating service personnel disrespectfully.
It's November, and soon the holidays will be upon us. They will include heavy meals, decorated malls, shopping for gifts, and animated specials. It is also time for Christians to write Facebook posts about the most trivial issues ever. About this time every year, several of my Facebook friends proudly announce that they will not shop at any store where the clerk has told them "Happy Holidays." Setting aside that there are, in fact, multiple holidays that Christian celebrate within a few weeks of each other, let's address the fact that these people act as if they should get some sort of medal for their own pride. That poor, exhausted store clerk makes about $9 an hour trying to serve as many kinds of people as possible. She works in retail, serving a public that is increasingly entitled, impatient, and prone to offense at the drop of a hat. She makes the effort to wish you well, but because she didn't use your preferred method of well wishing, you lash out with your angry, "It's Merry Christmas, and I won't shop in any store that doesn't exclusively say that." Is it any wonder why the world believes we are mean. What a witness our snappy comeback must have been to that store clerk.
Last year, I watched as 172 people argued on social media about whether a PASTOR'S Christmas greeting was heretical or Biblical because he said X-mas. Some took the stance that he was destroying the place of Jesus while others argued that the X was the Greek letter Chi and, therefore, stood for Jesus. The reality was that on Twitter, he only got 140 characters and was trying to save 5 of them by using the X. Is this really something to spend our time on?
This year, we have a brand new issue for the self righteous to get bothered about. It is about the red cup at Starbucks. I mean, last year it had snowflakes on it, and snowflakes are clearly more Christian than solid red. We must use our social media power to complain about this travesty. Red cups are a the true sign that Starbucks is anti-Christian. Never mind that Starbucks has been donating to Planned Parenthood for years and supports gay marriage, we will not drink from a red cup at Christmas time.
Do we really think these are the problems of the world that need a response? Right now, in the world, there are 29.8 million victims of human trafficking. There are 795 million people who will go to sleep hungry tonight and 783 million who don't have access to clean water. There are countries of our world in which girls are executed in the street because they committed the crime of going to school and others where girls are simply left to die because they they committed the crime of not being boys. ISIS has behead over 300 people in the past two years, and thousands of Christians are killed for their faith every year (although there is wide debate over the exact number). American Christians have opted to turn their backs on all these issues. No, we must take a stand on the red cup. We must refuse the well wishes of those who disagree with us.
Starting tomorrow, when I go to the store, I will gratefully accept the well wishes of anyone. Whether they wish me Merry Christmas, Happy Holidays, Seasons Greetings, Happy Hanukkah, or simply Have a nice day, I will return their good wishes. I will also set aside five dollars. In January, whatever amount I have accumulated will be donated to an organization that helps the truly persecuted around the world. I am currently researching exactly which organization is best, but the ones I have found so far are: Voice of the Martyrs, Open Doors, The Persecution Project Foundation, Barnabas Aid, and RescueChristians.org. Each of these ministries support those Christians for whom responding to persecution doesn't mean whining about the cup holding our four dollar latte or treating service personnel disrespectfully.
Tuesday, November 3, 2015
It's All Related
My favorite middle school history teacher, Danny Watkins, used to say, "You thought we were off the subject, but we've never been more on the subject in our - what - lives. Everything relates to history." Aside from just loving to hear him talk like that, I'm not sure I truly understood what he meant until much later in my life.
Like most middle school students, I did not yet have the ability to see the intertwined relationships of all the subjects I had at school. Your life exists in 50 minute segments at that point, and it is hard to see past that. It seemed like math was math and science was science and history was history. It was probably when I started taking chemistry in high school that I started seeing the relationships between science and math. When I was in college, taking the required humanities courses, I began to see the connection between art and literature and history (which I now realize is the reason they require these courses).
It wasn't until I began teaching, however, that I realized how related all the subjects are to each other and to truly understand Mr. Watkins assertion that "everything relates to history." This week, I took my physics students (in conjunction with the math club and an art class) on a field trip to the art museum. Why? Because they have an exhibit on MC Escher and one on Leonardo DaVinci. If not for space restrictions on the numbers, we could have totally included Latin and history classes on this trip. Art reflects the thinking of the artist, and Escher's schooling (small though it was) was in architecture. Is it any surprise that his art work often involved impossible structures, building architects could dream of but not build? DaVinci is often referred to as a Renaissance man, meaning he was good at a lot of things. While we are not all as gifted as Leonardo, shouldn't we all be Renaissance in our thinking? Shouldn't we be interested in a lot of things? If we were, wouldn't we all be able to better view the created world as a whole, instead of the specialized niches we operate in these days?
Why does it matter? You may be wondering. Seeing the relationships won't change the price of milk or change my gas mileage. Why should I care enough to see the world as a whole when doing so does little to affect my daily life? I think there are at least two good reasons.
First, it applies more to your daily life than you probably realize. When I am teaching about physics, I may not consciously be thinking about art work of Isaac Newton's time or the fact that the periodic table was invented in Russia around the same time that the civil war was happening in America. However, it is in my subconscious. It does inform the depth of my understanding of what I am looking at. You may not think consciously about whether the Mayans or the Babylonians came up with the concept of zero when looking at your bank statement, but their understanding of the concept IS why you have a bank statement. A Facebook friend of mine recently posted that he had not diagramed a sentence in his adult life. Neither have I, but I do know when to properly use who and whom (and I'm pretty sure that my understanding of that came from sentence diagraming even though I HATED doing it). I know I'm not going to convince you of this, so let me move on to reason number two.
Second, and more importantly, God's work reflects God's nature. If he has created both beauty and function, we should care about both art and engineering. If His patience is reflected by the erosion of the Grand Canyon, we should absolutely want to understand that erosion. If his dependability is reflected through the consistency of mathematical relationships, then we cannot fully understand how to depend on him without caring about those relationships. Having a deep and full relationship with God should mean caring about the things He has made, whether or not they apply to our career. When did our career become the measure of importance? You would never say to your spouse that you don't care what he does during the day, except for the parts that impact what you do during the day. You would never ignore your child's drawing because it has nothing to do with the price of groceries. No, you hang it on the very refrigerator that holds those groceries. Why, then, do we do that to so many aspects of God's work? We have allowed ourselves to be deceived into believing that education is about getting a job and being prepared for that job. I may have to write a separate post on this some time because it is difficult to convey briefly. Education is about repairing something that was fractured by the fall. It's nice that we are able to use some of what we learn in our education for our jobs, but we must let go of the utilitarian philosophy that makes us think that is all we need to learn. I teach physics, but I would be the world's most horrifyingly dull person if that was all I could talk about. I also love art and literature and music and television and film and dance and theater and theology and the unit circle. I can hold a conversation on just about anything because I am interested in everything God has put for us to enjoy. It is part of being what He created me to be as a WHOLE PERSON, not just as a physics teacher.
Mr. Watkins was right (as he usually was). It is all related.
Like most middle school students, I did not yet have the ability to see the intertwined relationships of all the subjects I had at school. Your life exists in 50 minute segments at that point, and it is hard to see past that. It seemed like math was math and science was science and history was history. It was probably when I started taking chemistry in high school that I started seeing the relationships between science and math. When I was in college, taking the required humanities courses, I began to see the connection between art and literature and history (which I now realize is the reason they require these courses).
It wasn't until I began teaching, however, that I realized how related all the subjects are to each other and to truly understand Mr. Watkins assertion that "everything relates to history." This week, I took my physics students (in conjunction with the math club and an art class) on a field trip to the art museum. Why? Because they have an exhibit on MC Escher and one on Leonardo DaVinci. If not for space restrictions on the numbers, we could have totally included Latin and history classes on this trip. Art reflects the thinking of the artist, and Escher's schooling (small though it was) was in architecture. Is it any surprise that his art work often involved impossible structures, building architects could dream of but not build? DaVinci is often referred to as a Renaissance man, meaning he was good at a lot of things. While we are not all as gifted as Leonardo, shouldn't we all be Renaissance in our thinking? Shouldn't we be interested in a lot of things? If we were, wouldn't we all be able to better view the created world as a whole, instead of the specialized niches we operate in these days?Why does it matter? You may be wondering. Seeing the relationships won't change the price of milk or change my gas mileage. Why should I care enough to see the world as a whole when doing so does little to affect my daily life? I think there are at least two good reasons.
First, it applies more to your daily life than you probably realize. When I am teaching about physics, I may not consciously be thinking about art work of Isaac Newton's time or the fact that the periodic table was invented in Russia around the same time that the civil war was happening in America. However, it is in my subconscious. It does inform the depth of my understanding of what I am looking at. You may not think consciously about whether the Mayans or the Babylonians came up with the concept of zero when looking at your bank statement, but their understanding of the concept IS why you have a bank statement. A Facebook friend of mine recently posted that he had not diagramed a sentence in his adult life. Neither have I, but I do know when to properly use who and whom (and I'm pretty sure that my understanding of that came from sentence diagraming even though I HATED doing it). I know I'm not going to convince you of this, so let me move on to reason number two.
Second, and more importantly, God's work reflects God's nature. If he has created both beauty and function, we should care about both art and engineering. If His patience is reflected by the erosion of the Grand Canyon, we should absolutely want to understand that erosion. If his dependability is reflected through the consistency of mathematical relationships, then we cannot fully understand how to depend on him without caring about those relationships. Having a deep and full relationship with God should mean caring about the things He has made, whether or not they apply to our career. When did our career become the measure of importance? You would never say to your spouse that you don't care what he does during the day, except for the parts that impact what you do during the day. You would never ignore your child's drawing because it has nothing to do with the price of groceries. No, you hang it on the very refrigerator that holds those groceries. Why, then, do we do that to so many aspects of God's work? We have allowed ourselves to be deceived into believing that education is about getting a job and being prepared for that job. I may have to write a separate post on this some time because it is difficult to convey briefly. Education is about repairing something that was fractured by the fall. It's nice that we are able to use some of what we learn in our education for our jobs, but we must let go of the utilitarian philosophy that makes us think that is all we need to learn. I teach physics, but I would be the world's most horrifyingly dull person if that was all I could talk about. I also love art and literature and music and television and film and dance and theater and theology and the unit circle. I can hold a conversation on just about anything because I am interested in everything God has put for us to enjoy. It is part of being what He created me to be as a WHOLE PERSON, not just as a physics teacher.
Mr. Watkins was right (as he usually was). It is all related.
Thursday, October 29, 2015
Changing it Up on the Fly
When I was in college, I learned to write detailed lesson plans. These were multiple page documents with the objective laid out in excruciating detail, every material you might possibly use (right down to paper and pencils), descriptions of each and every activity, and the questions you planned to ask at the end of the lesson. Absolutely no teacher writes in this level of detail after they get out of college. That doesn't make learning it without value, a point I will return to in a moment.
When I student taught, I was placed with two teachers who were at the opposite ends of the planning spectrum. Mr. Bell was type A, high strung, sinister man who planned like a Bond villain. He had plans for his plans, which were written always and only in fine point black ball point pen. That was the right way to do it, and if you used a medium point, you were just wrong. My second teacher was a "go with the flow," extroverted, relationship is everything kind of woman who was 9 months pregnant (our last days were the same day). She would come into the room in the morning and say, "What are we going to do today? Let's see." When I had my "defense" of student teaching with the committee, they asked me what I learned from having such varied experiences. My response was that I didn't think I could be either one of them. I would probably slide around somewhere in the middle.
I am a planner. Every personality test says so, and it's not like I needed a test to know it. I have back up plans for my back up plans and make lists every day which may or may not be cross referenced to other lists. However, teaching is far too fluid an experience to expect my plans to be completely set in stone. A good teacher has plans, but a great teacher can make changes to those plans on the fly.
I can anticipate times when I know my plans will have to change, and (wait for it) I plan for them. However, you won't always be able to expect these times. You will have the best plan that involves the coolest website, only to find that the filter blocks that site on student computers. You will have the perfect demonstration, but it requires that you be outside on a day when it rains. You can't just fall apart in those moments and have students do nothing. Let me repeat that a different way: There is nothing more dangerous than a group of students who have nothing to do! When you are making your plans, consider the possibilities and figure out a back up. Maybe there is a youtube video of that cool demo that you can use if it's not possible to do it live. With a couple of days notice, your IT people might be able to unblock that website. If you don't know it is blocked until the kids are in front of you, send an e-mail to IT, and start teaching the follow up first. Maybe it will be unblocked by the end of class, and you can do the activity tomorrow. Unless you teach math, there are many ways to change the order of what you are teaching to adapt to surprises.
Let's also remember this. Our curriculum is important, but we are not the only person who will ever teach them any one topic or skill. If my 8th grade doesn't learn about the polarity of a water molecule, they will encounter it again in biology as well as high school chemistry. When you have to change things up, focus on having them learn what is most important, not just what you had planned for that day. It may be that the lesson your students learn that day is the humility and flexibility modeled by their teacher.
When I student taught, I was placed with two teachers who were at the opposite ends of the planning spectrum. Mr. Bell was type A, high strung, sinister man who planned like a Bond villain. He had plans for his plans, which were written always and only in fine point black ball point pen. That was the right way to do it, and if you used a medium point, you were just wrong. My second teacher was a "go with the flow," extroverted, relationship is everything kind of woman who was 9 months pregnant (our last days were the same day). She would come into the room in the morning and say, "What are we going to do today? Let's see." When I had my "defense" of student teaching with the committee, they asked me what I learned from having such varied experiences. My response was that I didn't think I could be either one of them. I would probably slide around somewhere in the middle.
I am a planner. Every personality test says so, and it's not like I needed a test to know it. I have back up plans for my back up plans and make lists every day which may or may not be cross referenced to other lists. However, teaching is far too fluid an experience to expect my plans to be completely set in stone. A good teacher has plans, but a great teacher can make changes to those plans on the fly.
I can anticipate times when I know my plans will have to change, and (wait for it) I plan for them. However, you won't always be able to expect these times. You will have the best plan that involves the coolest website, only to find that the filter blocks that site on student computers. You will have the perfect demonstration, but it requires that you be outside on a day when it rains. You can't just fall apart in those moments and have students do nothing. Let me repeat that a different way: There is nothing more dangerous than a group of students who have nothing to do! When you are making your plans, consider the possibilities and figure out a back up. Maybe there is a youtube video of that cool demo that you can use if it's not possible to do it live. With a couple of days notice, your IT people might be able to unblock that website. If you don't know it is blocked until the kids are in front of you, send an e-mail to IT, and start teaching the follow up first. Maybe it will be unblocked by the end of class, and you can do the activity tomorrow. Unless you teach math, there are many ways to change the order of what you are teaching to adapt to surprises.
Let's also remember this. Our curriculum is important, but we are not the only person who will ever teach them any one topic or skill. If my 8th grade doesn't learn about the polarity of a water molecule, they will encounter it again in biology as well as high school chemistry. When you have to change things up, focus on having them learn what is most important, not just what you had planned for that day. It may be that the lesson your students learn that day is the humility and flexibility modeled by their teacher.
Friday, October 23, 2015
Community Service Day
"GRACE Christian School is a loving community . . . " is the beginning of our mission statement. Because of that, we have our students reach out to the community in a variety of ways.
Within the school, we take care of each other. If someone gets sick, we make meals for them (like proper Southerners do). Teachers meet twice a week for prayer and once a week for a faculty meeting and multiple times if there are special needs. Teachers have donated their sick days to staff members with long term illnesses. We have held charity walks for members of our community to help them with finances, collected baby items for one of our teacher's nephews who was born just after hurricane Katrina and then arranged for the students to attend a funeral after that baby died a few months later. When my cat died, I got sympathy cards from several members of our staff and one alumna. GRACE is a loving community, and you experience it quickly and overpoweringly if you have a need.
We do not, however, want our students to believe that we only take care of our own. We want the to recognize that, having been blessed by God, we have a responsibility to share our blessings and the love of Christ with those around our community and around the world. For that reason, we set aside two days each school year in which we empty out our upper school building for the entire day so that middle school students, high school students, and teachers can go out into our community for a day of service.
Let me first give a big shout out to the receptionists who have taken charge of this over the years. Michele, Dana, and now Lisa have taken the enormous task of sending hundreds of kids to multiple places with multiple adults. If you are a teacher reading this, you know what a hassle it is to plan a field trip for you class of 30 kids. Imagine doing it with 330 kids (and not all to the same location). This involves permission slip, money for the bus drivers, parent drivers and chaperones, grouping kids, figuring out which ones need to bring their lunches and which done, emergency information packets, medicine for the right kids to the correct adult. It's crazy. The work of this person is just as much a community service as the kids going out to do the work. The students do a variety of things.
Middle School - Gleaning - Our middle school students were taken to a sweet potato field, where they spent all day gleaning. For those who may not know, gleaning is a practice established in Old Testament law. Farmers were instructed by God to leave some of their harvest in the fields for the poor to harvest and eat. The modern version of this the farmer harvested only one round of sweet potatoes and then has allowed ministries to come out and dig up more. They are then bagged and taken to the food bank. We had 122 7th and 8th grade students digging in soil!
Freshmen - Thrift Shops - We always send our freshmen to thrift shops. We want them to see that other people live on less than they do and that new is not always better. We want them to understand
that they can help in a variety of ways. We divide them between With Love From Jesus, the Mabopane Foundation, and two Thrift 2 Gift Stores. They do a variety of things, from sorting clothes to cleaning to decorating Christmas trees to organizing food to checking out customers. Basically, they do whatever the store owners ask them to do. I like visiting these sites because kids have usually found some strange, interesting, vintage item that they would want to buy themselves. This shows they are gaining a perspective on the materialistic world they are soaked in. In past years, many students have returned from these stores and organized their own food drive because they saw a greater need than they knew.
Sophomores - Service Homes - We want at least one year of their experience to include interacting with the people they are serving. There are several homes or day centers in the area that deal with the mentally disabled, the elderly, or those transitioning back into normal life. Since sophomores are at an age where they can interact appropriately, we send them to those homes. They are able to have meals with the people, play games, have Bible studies, and generally get to interact. Because of the personal interaction with people so unlike themselves, I believe it gives them a perspective on the world they might not otherwise get. These can be some of the more difficult sites because they are sometimes seeing very difficult circumstances.
Juniors - Habitat for Humanity - We love helping Habitat. Students often report this as their favorite year because they get to build something. They get to see the end result. Sometimes, we have been lucky enough to have the construction professionals tell us about the family who will live in the house. Kids don't generally get to build things in their childhood the way they used to because we have safety-ed kids to death. Putting them in a hard hat on a construction site, swinging a hammer (or using power tools) let them see the possibilities of being makers.
Seniors - Wherever We Can - This year, our seniors were split into two groups. One group spent the day at the Salvation Army and another at Meals on Wheels. I was unable to get to the Meals on Wheels crew, but I did get to visit the Salvation Army. They put our boys to work in the warehouse and girls in their store. It was great for them to get to see the variety of ways one ministry can help so many. I hope when they hear the bucket bell ringers this year, they will want to stop and give. One of my homeroom students was at Meals on Wheels, and while she reported some sadness at some of the circumstances she encountered, she also said, "I'm definitely more grateful for the life I have." That awareness is the beginning. We want them to take that awareness and gratitude for their blessings and pass them on to others.
As a teacher, I love our community service days. I like seeing my students step out of their normal routine, move out in courage and faith, and serve others. Thank you to all the ministries who allow us to invade your routine in order to open the eyes of our kids.
One other thought - Our elementary kids participate in a lot of service as well. They just don't leave school for the day to do it. They collect coats every year for the WRAL Coats for Kids campaign. They make pillowcases for military members. Their teachers organize activities for their classes to do. I didn't want to ignore them just because this post was about the day we just had.
Within the school, we take care of each other. If someone gets sick, we make meals for them (like proper Southerners do). Teachers meet twice a week for prayer and once a week for a faculty meeting and multiple times if there are special needs. Teachers have donated their sick days to staff members with long term illnesses. We have held charity walks for members of our community to help them with finances, collected baby items for one of our teacher's nephews who was born just after hurricane Katrina and then arranged for the students to attend a funeral after that baby died a few months later. When my cat died, I got sympathy cards from several members of our staff and one alumna. GRACE is a loving community, and you experience it quickly and overpoweringly if you have a need.
We do not, however, want our students to believe that we only take care of our own. We want the to recognize that, having been blessed by God, we have a responsibility to share our blessings and the love of Christ with those around our community and around the world. For that reason, we set aside two days each school year in which we empty out our upper school building for the entire day so that middle school students, high school students, and teachers can go out into our community for a day of service.
Let me first give a big shout out to the receptionists who have taken charge of this over the years. Michele, Dana, and now Lisa have taken the enormous task of sending hundreds of kids to multiple places with multiple adults. If you are a teacher reading this, you know what a hassle it is to plan a field trip for you class of 30 kids. Imagine doing it with 330 kids (and not all to the same location). This involves permission slip, money for the bus drivers, parent drivers and chaperones, grouping kids, figuring out which ones need to bring their lunches and which done, emergency information packets, medicine for the right kids to the correct adult. It's crazy. The work of this person is just as much a community service as the kids going out to do the work. The students do a variety of things.
Middle School - Gleaning - Our middle school students were taken to a sweet potato field, where they spent all day gleaning. For those who may not know, gleaning is a practice established in Old Testament law. Farmers were instructed by God to leave some of their harvest in the fields for the poor to harvest and eat. The modern version of this the farmer harvested only one round of sweet potatoes and then has allowed ministries to come out and dig up more. They are then bagged and taken to the food bank. We had 122 7th and 8th grade students digging in soil!
Freshmen - Thrift Shops - We always send our freshmen to thrift shops. We want them to see that other people live on less than they do and that new is not always better. We want them to understand
that they can help in a variety of ways. We divide them between With Love From Jesus, the Mabopane Foundation, and two Thrift 2 Gift Stores. They do a variety of things, from sorting clothes to cleaning to decorating Christmas trees to organizing food to checking out customers. Basically, they do whatever the store owners ask them to do. I like visiting these sites because kids have usually found some strange, interesting, vintage item that they would want to buy themselves. This shows they are gaining a perspective on the materialistic world they are soaked in. In past years, many students have returned from these stores and organized their own food drive because they saw a greater need than they knew.
Sophomores - Service Homes - We want at least one year of their experience to include interacting with the people they are serving. There are several homes or day centers in the area that deal with the mentally disabled, the elderly, or those transitioning back into normal life. Since sophomores are at an age where they can interact appropriately, we send them to those homes. They are able to have meals with the people, play games, have Bible studies, and generally get to interact. Because of the personal interaction with people so unlike themselves, I believe it gives them a perspective on the world they might not otherwise get. These can be some of the more difficult sites because they are sometimes seeing very difficult circumstances.
Juniors - Habitat for Humanity - We love helping Habitat. Students often report this as their favorite year because they get to build something. They get to see the end result. Sometimes, we have been lucky enough to have the construction professionals tell us about the family who will live in the house. Kids don't generally get to build things in their childhood the way they used to because we have safety-ed kids to death. Putting them in a hard hat on a construction site, swinging a hammer (or using power tools) let them see the possibilities of being makers. 
Seniors - Wherever We Can - This year, our seniors were split into two groups. One group spent the day at the Salvation Army and another at Meals on Wheels. I was unable to get to the Meals on Wheels crew, but I did get to visit the Salvation Army. They put our boys to work in the warehouse and girls in their store. It was great for them to get to see the variety of ways one ministry can help so many. I hope when they hear the bucket bell ringers this year, they will want to stop and give. One of my homeroom students was at Meals on Wheels, and while she reported some sadness at some of the circumstances she encountered, she also said, "I'm definitely more grateful for the life I have." That awareness is the beginning. We want them to take that awareness and gratitude for their blessings and pass them on to others.As a teacher, I love our community service days. I like seeing my students step out of their normal routine, move out in courage and faith, and serve others. Thank you to all the ministries who allow us to invade your routine in order to open the eyes of our kids.
One other thought - Our elementary kids participate in a lot of service as well. They just don't leave school for the day to do it. They collect coats every year for the WRAL Coats for Kids campaign. They make pillowcases for military members. Their teachers organize activities for their classes to do. I didn't want to ignore them just because this post was about the day we just had.
Monday, October 19, 2015
Let Them Be Curious and Make Them Curious
Last week, I had the pleasure of attending a conference of Christian School teachers in my area, called ACSI Nexus. This is not a normal convention because for the most part, we all listen to the same speakers. There is a live site (in Maryland I think) that beams out the signal to satellite sites all over the world. This year, we had an excellent collection of speakers (see my notes in a previous post). The one I most looked forward to was by Dr. Kevin Washburn. I looked forward to it partially because I have seen other presentations and enjoy his style and partially because his topic was the role of curiosity in the learning process.
We all know (I hope) that a student will be more likely to learn something they are curious about. Some have taken that to mean that we should not have curricula. We should just allow students to explore whatever interests them, and then they will get the things they need for the career they will ultimately have. Aside from that being a little hippy dippy for 2015, let's analyze the problem with that. A student doesn't always know what they will like until they have been exposed to it by a passionate advocate of that thing. My second favorite vegetable on earth is a zucchini (the first is green peas in case you are interested), but I would have never have eaten the first bite of zucchini if it had not been for my friend Kay's mom. When you ate dinner at Kay's house, her mom pulled a number out of thin air and required you to eat at least that number of everything before you could say you didn't want any more. I'll never forget this day. She was steaming zucchini, and that looked weird to me. She said, "You don't have to like it, but you have to eat three slices." Those three slices have turned into three hundred thousand slices over the course of my life. You don't like the food example, here's one that is more on point. The great love of my academic life is physics. When I tell people what I do, I do not get positive responses from most people; but I adore it. Before I took it in high school, I didn't know that I liked it. My chemistry teacher insisted that I take honors physics, so I did. On day four, I had already decided that teaching physics would be the thing I did for a living.
Why, because the man in this picture was amazing at showing me how much he loved it; and it made me love it too. This photo (which I took, developed, printed, matted, and framed myself) hangs behind my desk on the wall of my classroom. I am still inspired by his love of physics as well as his love for teaching. This is Jim Barbara, who was THE best physics teacher I could have had. One thing I remember the most is that he liked it when I asked him questions. I had poor Mr. Barbara the last period of the day. Not having another class to run off to, I would stay after class and ask him everything from why electricity hurt when it shocked you to how a key opened a lock. I'm sure Mr. Barbara had other things to get done, be he patiently and enthusiastically answered every question.
So, if we aren't going to take the hippy approach to curiosity, there's always the other end up the pendulum's arc. I'm the teacher; I know what you need to know; you don't; listen to what I am telling you; don't worry about learning anything else; don't worry if you haven't been excited to learn anything I have taught you all year long; just learn it. If you are this kind of teacher, please leave the profession. Don't wait until the end of the year. Go to your principal and resign as soon as you finish this post. There is not room for you in 2015 teaching. We all know that we can't make everything a student learns thrilling just as we can't deep fry zucchini in chocolate sauce (well, there is the fair, so maybe we can do that). But if you haven't made your students curious about anything, you have a problem. If they have had no enthusiasm for learning anything all year, it isn't them.
So, what is the middle ground between the hippy and the autocrat? It is two fold. First, you can make your students curious about whatever you are teaching them. You may have to get creative, but you work in a creative field. Google "demonstrations for _____" whatever the thing is you are teaching tomorrow. When I teach Bernoulli's principle, I start class by asking someone to blow under a sheet of paper I have sitting on two books. I offer them a dollar if they can blow it up and off the paper. When it does the opposite of what they think it is going to, I can talk for twenty minutes, explaining the principle and how it relates to flight and why the windows blow out of your house in a tornado and how a curve ball works. I could do the demonstration after we have learned it, but doing it before makes them want to understand it. It doesn't take a different amount of time, and it is way more fun.
The second is to follow some rabbit trails. As you can tell from the title of my blog, I believe strongly in the rabbit trail. I have always believed that this is where most of the learning happens. I have also been teaching long enough to know that you can't just follow EVERY trail wherever it leads. You have the pressures of curriculum, AP requirements, and common core. Some of you may even have administrations who expect you to cover the entire book. This doesn't mean you can't allow for some of them. There are a lot of ways to do this. Have a five minute time period after they start asking questions where you keep calling on kids before you have to say, "Now, back to what we were doing because we do have to finish." Invite your kids to e-mail questions to you, and then use a half day (when it is hard to accomplish a whole lesson anyway) to answer them. I knew an elementary teacher who had a stack of post its on every student's desk so they could write questions as they thought of them and then ask them when she had open question time. If you teach the same subject long enough, you will know where it is important to work in time because the same questions arise every year at that time. When I teach sound waves, I spend one day on the human ear because it helps to connect all the stuff we learn about frequency and amplitude and timbre if they understand the ear process the wave. After a few years, I realized that I was answering questions every year about ears popping on a plane, tubes, and hearing under water. I had planned my lesson bell to bell and quickly answer those and then talk really fast about everything else. Now, I know those rabbit trails are coming, and I leave time in my lesson for them to ask. If they don't ask, I throw the rabbit in myself. I say something like, "Sometimes, people ask about why your ears pop on an airplane. Do you ever wonder about that?" That's usually enough to get them going the direction I want, thinking they saw the rabbit themselves. For those worried curriculum coverage, how is the discussion of pressure on the eardrum not a reinforcement of what we already learned about pressure in the curriculum? The discussion on hearing under water is introducing the concept of refraction, which they will be learning later in the same chapter. They'll be so much more interested in learning that when I say, "Remember the answer to Brad's question a few weeks ago about hearing under water? Guess what? Light does that too."
There are all kinds of ways to take advantage of student curiosity, whether they have it when they walk through the door or you throw a rabbit at them to take them down the trail you want. They will like your class more and (more importantly) learn the material more deeply and fully. That's what we all want, no matter what the other pressures are.
We all know (I hope) that a student will be more likely to learn something they are curious about. Some have taken that to mean that we should not have curricula. We should just allow students to explore whatever interests them, and then they will get the things they need for the career they will ultimately have. Aside from that being a little hippy dippy for 2015, let's analyze the problem with that. A student doesn't always know what they will like until they have been exposed to it by a passionate advocate of that thing. My second favorite vegetable on earth is a zucchini (the first is green peas in case you are interested), but I would have never have eaten the first bite of zucchini if it had not been for my friend Kay's mom. When you ate dinner at Kay's house, her mom pulled a number out of thin air and required you to eat at least that number of everything before you could say you didn't want any more. I'll never forget this day. She was steaming zucchini, and that looked weird to me. She said, "You don't have to like it, but you have to eat three slices." Those three slices have turned into three hundred thousand slices over the course of my life. You don't like the food example, here's one that is more on point. The great love of my academic life is physics. When I tell people what I do, I do not get positive responses from most people; but I adore it. Before I took it in high school, I didn't know that I liked it. My chemistry teacher insisted that I take honors physics, so I did. On day four, I had already decided that teaching physics would be the thing I did for a living.
So, if we aren't going to take the hippy approach to curiosity, there's always the other end up the pendulum's arc. I'm the teacher; I know what you need to know; you don't; listen to what I am telling you; don't worry about learning anything else; don't worry if you haven't been excited to learn anything I have taught you all year long; just learn it. If you are this kind of teacher, please leave the profession. Don't wait until the end of the year. Go to your principal and resign as soon as you finish this post. There is not room for you in 2015 teaching. We all know that we can't make everything a student learns thrilling just as we can't deep fry zucchini in chocolate sauce (well, there is the fair, so maybe we can do that). But if you haven't made your students curious about anything, you have a problem. If they have had no enthusiasm for learning anything all year, it isn't them.
So, what is the middle ground between the hippy and the autocrat? It is two fold. First, you can make your students curious about whatever you are teaching them. You may have to get creative, but you work in a creative field. Google "demonstrations for _____" whatever the thing is you are teaching tomorrow. When I teach Bernoulli's principle, I start class by asking someone to blow under a sheet of paper I have sitting on two books. I offer them a dollar if they can blow it up and off the paper. When it does the opposite of what they think it is going to, I can talk for twenty minutes, explaining the principle and how it relates to flight and why the windows blow out of your house in a tornado and how a curve ball works. I could do the demonstration after we have learned it, but doing it before makes them want to understand it. It doesn't take a different amount of time, and it is way more fun.The second is to follow some rabbit trails. As you can tell from the title of my blog, I believe strongly in the rabbit trail. I have always believed that this is where most of the learning happens. I have also been teaching long enough to know that you can't just follow EVERY trail wherever it leads. You have the pressures of curriculum, AP requirements, and common core. Some of you may even have administrations who expect you to cover the entire book. This doesn't mean you can't allow for some of them. There are a lot of ways to do this. Have a five minute time period after they start asking questions where you keep calling on kids before you have to say, "Now, back to what we were doing because we do have to finish." Invite your kids to e-mail questions to you, and then use a half day (when it is hard to accomplish a whole lesson anyway) to answer them. I knew an elementary teacher who had a stack of post its on every student's desk so they could write questions as they thought of them and then ask them when she had open question time. If you teach the same subject long enough, you will know where it is important to work in time because the same questions arise every year at that time. When I teach sound waves, I spend one day on the human ear because it helps to connect all the stuff we learn about frequency and amplitude and timbre if they understand the ear process the wave. After a few years, I realized that I was answering questions every year about ears popping on a plane, tubes, and hearing under water. I had planned my lesson bell to bell and quickly answer those and then talk really fast about everything else. Now, I know those rabbit trails are coming, and I leave time in my lesson for them to ask. If they don't ask, I throw the rabbit in myself. I say something like, "Sometimes, people ask about why your ears pop on an airplane. Do you ever wonder about that?" That's usually enough to get them going the direction I want, thinking they saw the rabbit themselves. For those worried curriculum coverage, how is the discussion of pressure on the eardrum not a reinforcement of what we already learned about pressure in the curriculum? The discussion on hearing under water is introducing the concept of refraction, which they will be learning later in the same chapter. They'll be so much more interested in learning that when I say, "Remember the answer to Brad's question a few weeks ago about hearing under water? Guess what? Light does that too."
There are all kinds of ways to take advantage of student curiosity, whether they have it when they walk through the door or you throw a rabbit at them to take them down the trail you want. They will like your class more and (more importantly) learn the material more deeply and fully. That's what we all want, no matter what the other pressures are.
Thursday, October 15, 2015
ACSI Nexus
I know I already posted this week, but since we are at the ACSI teacher convention, I thought I would discuss some of what I learned here. This is really an act of public note taking more than anything, but it could potentially help you as well. Who knows. ACSI has invited us to tweet our thoughts and download their app, so I thought adding a little blogging to the technological mix couldn't hurt. Also, it is helping me pay attention because two days in an uncomfortable chair in a darkened room can be taxing on the attention span. We are also participating in a school scavenger hunt while we participate. One of the challenges was to take a selfie of your scavenger team at the sign in table. Here's my group Bluevengers as well our librarian and English teacher husband wife team. They appear to be psyched about Nexus Live.
Dr. Dan Egeler - A Pilgrimage to Servanthood: Wearing the Mantle of Humility
Told story in which a monkey "rescues" a fish from the water and thought he had done a good thing. What was right for the monkey wasn't right for the fish. Servanthood is as important to leadership as any other quality, and it requires humility. Humility is considered a virtue. (Personal reaction: That's supposed to be true, but I'm not sure it is in our culture. We seem to think pride is a virtue and anything that humbles you is "shaming.")
Characteristics of a Christian Community
- hospitality
- gratitude
- truth telling
- promise keeping
Students need to connect to who the teacher is. We must teach their head, their hands, and their hearts. We do so with our hearts. The heart provides the catalyst for the head and the hands to be effective.
Five Elements for a Pilgrimage to Servanthood
1. Openness - the ability to welcome people into your presence and make them feel safe. Don't form an opinion about an important matter until you have heard all the facts.
2. Acceptance - the ability to communicate value, worth, and esteem to another person. Who a person is now is different from who they will be. The person you may be tempted to ignore or treat badly now may one day be a person you would be tempted to worship. People are not mortals; they are eternal. There are no neutral contacts. We are either nudging people toward eternal horror or eternal splendor.
3. Trust - the ability to build confidence in a relationship. Both parties must believe that the other will not intentionally hurt them and that the other will act in their best interest.
4. Learning - the ability to glean relevant information about, from, and with other people. This does not come naturally to most people. It requires trust and humility. (Personal reflection: You must learn from those who you want to teach.) Those you think you have nothing to learn from, you may learn everything from if you have humility
5. Understanding - the ability to see through others eyes. It requires the other four because there must be openness, acceptance, trust for people to open up to us. Only when we learn from them will we have the ability to see through their eyes.
Cynthia Tobias - Motivating Students to Take Charge of Their Own Success
This is one of my favorites of the day. Book: The Way They Learn
"My first year of teaching, I was so excited that all my students would want to learn and think like me. After all, I was a living example of how the way I think works."
I can help students figure out for themselves how they work, how they think, and how to be successful.
How to get the most of what you are learning:
1. Know Your Strengths - Once you know them, you can make a plan for how to use them.
2. Figure Out What You Need to Succeed - Come up with a plan.
3. Prove That it Works - If you try your plan and it works, keep doing it. If it doesn't work, don't do it again.
How Do You concentrate? If you are physically uncomfortable, it is impossible to pay attention. Whoever makes school furniture needs to know this. The brain can only absorb what the seat can endure. Sometimes it is as easy as changing the temperature of your classroom. It's not always neurological. Try some simple things just to make kids more comfortable.
"There are two kinds of people - morning people and those would like to shoot morning people."
How Do You Remember?
Auditory kids remember what they hear, but not necessarily what they hear from others but themselves. Auditory kids need time to talk. They will talk about what they are learning, but it will be mixed in with other things. It doesn't count if you don't say it even if it has been on the board all week.
Visual learners look for minor flaws because they are easily distracted by visual cues. Visual learners are more literal than most. They will be focused by the stain on your tie or where you got your shoes. They have a picture in their mind of everything. Pause to give them time to picture your instructions.
Kinesthetic learners are born to move. You need to allow them opportunities to move. Put in a swivel chair or something they can bounce their feet on. If you get them to sit still they will not be paying attention. Adults have learned more subtle ways to move. It not practical to expect someone to be still (unless they are in an MRI).
If you can do three things in every class, you will increase exponentially their ability to remember.
1. Give them something to talk about.
2. Give them something to visualize in their minds.
3. Give them something to do.
How Do You Process Information?
Analytical thinkers will get their work the second they get back if they didn't call from their sick bed. They pay attention to every detail but miss the big picture.
Global thinkers will ask if you missed them the second they get back. They pay attention to big picture, plot, and story. They learn intuitively and are very creative, but they think they are dumb because school are not really designed for them.
School doesn't always bring out the best in us, but you are not at an ordinary school if you are a Christian educator. You know how important it is to reach out to help every student learn. Communicating ways they can be successful and confident is not as hard as it sounds. Nobody likes to be analyzed, but everyone likes to be understood. You do not have any students in your classroom by accident; God put them their for a purpose.
Jon Bergmann - Taking the Flipped Classroom to the Next Level
Book: Flipped Learning
We have way too much "sit and give" and not enough active, engaged learning. Flipping your classroom changes what happens IN the class. Instead of sending them home to do the difficult cognitive tasks, they can do the lower parts of Bloom's taxonomy at home and do the harder parts while we are there to support them. This puts the point of need with the right resource.
Turning the Bloom's pyramid upside down is what you do to get a pHD. If we make the pyramid a diamond, we will spend the majority of our class time on analysis and application. The students will think the homework is easier, and then they will be excited that they don't have to listen to the teacher at school when they can interact with their friends.
Next steps:
1. Rethink Classtime - Flipping is NOT about the videos. It is about what you do in class. There is a lot more time for guided practice, walking around checking in on your students, peer tutoring, lab time, small group work, debates, small projects. It gives you class time back. Trying to have them do something active every day is a mistake. Use the class time for the best use, not just the fun use. Don't feel guilty about using it the best way.
2. Interactive Notebooks - Questions to answer about the video to keep them engaged while they are watching. Include a link to the video, so they can use them at the same time. Using a tracking tool (like EduCannon) will hold them accountable and give the teacher formative data.
3. Flipping Leads to Mastery - It makes for a bit of chaos because everyone is on different pages at different times, but they are all progressing at their own rate.
4. Flip Your Instructions - Put your instructions on video. You won't have to use class time, and they will always have access to it.
5. Time for student created content in the room.
6. It gives kids choices. If they prefer to read the textbook than to watch the video, let them (if the content is the same). Be careful about giving them TOO many choices, but if they have the power to choose based on their method of learning, they will learn it better.
7. The station model is like centers for elementary school. The class is divided into three areas in the room. It could be writing, research, and project work or whatever fits the lesson your are teaching. It makes your class kind of a workshop. Another version of this is the station rotation or In-Flip Model. If your students can't watch videos at home, one of your stations could be the video.
8. Choice boards - Give 2-3 choices using activities that cover Bloom's taxonomy in each of a few levels. Giving them choice, even if it is just the order you do it in, is empowering. Student Choice boards allow them to choose the input and the output while everyone has the same objective. Choice days are days the students can choose. Activity days are the days when everyone does the same thing together.
9. Explore-Flip-Apply - They start with inquiry until they need help. Then they get the video when they are ready for it or need it.
Challenging Thought: The world has changed. They have access to information like we can't even imagine. Most of what we teach is on youtube. We can be doing so much more than content delivery. "If you could be replaced by a youtube video, you should be."
Kristin Barbour - Walk a Mile in Students’ Shoes: Differentiating Between Low Motivation, Curriculum Casualties, and Learning Disabilities
Science has been studying learning with brain in mind for 20 years. We understand that learning disabilities are neurological, so they don't get better in a short period of time.
Phases of the Learning Process
1. Input: perception
2. Elaboration: processing, attaching meaning to the input, attaching a priority to it
3. Output
Give students time and tools to help with identification.
Lots of kindergarten level examples that I am not taking notes on because if my physics students need a letter of the week, there are bigger problems than I have.
This workshop is a reproduction of the FAT City Workshop done decades ago, but she is not giving credit to Rick Lavoie, so I am going to. I watched this video in 1997 in a college class.
Alan November - The Top Survival Skill for Teachers: Critical Thinking Using the Web
If you ask kids, "do you know how to use Google," they will say yes. However, they may not be using it effectively. They don't know how to get the best quality of information.
We should be balanced in our discussion of technology and acknowledge what can go wrong as well as what goes right. Google's algorithm assigns the most points when the search term is in the web address. It is not because it is the best information. It is also geographically biased. It places priority on sources closest to you. This will keep you from getting information from sources near the source of the topic. If you google Iran Hostage Crisis and use no sources from Iran, you are getting biased information.
When we teach kids about books. we teach them to understand the design of print; but we don't really do that with the internet. If you are preparing students for universities, you must prepare them to find content on the web. We should teach them to compare and contrast information. They might be manipulated if they don't understand the structure.
If you want to know how Google works, Google the word google and operator. You can get the google guide. Not teaching kids to use the google operators is the equivalent of not teaching them the Dewey decimal system in the library.
Ways to understand information. Use the site operators for searching. Use easywhois to find out who owns the site. Use the way back machine to find the original website when it was launched. Use country codes to limit your search to those countries. The internet gives the reader more tools to understand information, once you know how. If you don't know how, it is phenomenally dangerous.
The most powerful knowledge tool is Wolfram Alpha. It is only vetted scholarly information. "It is not like Google, where a twelve year old can give you constitutional law advice."
We should redesign our assignments so they can't look up the answers. Watch the TED talk from the Wolframs as they discuss what Wolfram Alpha and like tools are going to do to education. The problems we give kids need to catch up with the power of the information. Instead of asking kids to compare the nutritional content of two foods, ask them to design a food plan for the space station. Show kids a picture of a baseball field and ask them to design the perfect bundt because only a human can do that.
A lot of questions in life are not well organized. They are messy. Teachers should write messy problems. Give them more information than they actually need to solve the problem. Change the word solve to involve. Solve means every student gets the same answer. Involve means the student has to design the problem.
Follow Jessica Caviness on twitter to see how you can make kids design problems.
Dr. Bill Brown - Effective or Defective? Equipping Students for Lifelong Vision
All of the things we are learning converge when we think about the context of what we do.
The Bible opens and closes with humanity in close fellowship with God. In between is the fall and God restoring what was lost.
If your mission statement doesn't line up with God is doing, let God get in the way of your mission statement. You are where you are for a reason. What part is God giving you to play in His movement in whatever area you are in? You are part of the big plan of God. Bigger is not better; better is better.
How can we measure our effectiveness? You measure it 5, 10, 15 years after they leave. Are they still walking with Christ? Ask them if they were prepared for the world they are now facing? They need to know that you will never become in the future what you are not becoming today. We must educate for the world as it is becoming.
Agendas are short sighted activities to accomplish near sighted goals. Visions are expansive plans to achieve ambitious aspirations. We should be vision driven, not agenda driven. The only true vision is the one that God has, and we are part of that. How are you communicating vision to your students, your community, your faculty, and your staff? You don't necessarily have a Biblical worldview just because you know the Bible. You have to learn to think worldviewishly. Don't fill a bucket; light a fire. There is no safe place in the world where you aren't going to be bombarded with alternate views. We must prepare our kids to hold on to their faith in the face of opposition.
Know God
Know God's Word
Know God's World
Don't let them think being a Christian is knowing how to follow the rules. We need to equip and mentor them with God's word.
Action Steps: Be More Intentional
1. Develop or affirm your mission statement
2. Make sure everyone knows your vision.
3. Survey your parent and alumni to see if you are accomplishing your mission and vision.
4. Your own walk is crucial. You can't give away what you do not have (It's like measles).
Times are tough. There is every reason in the world to give up - but no reason in heaven.
A tweet from another conference attender:
Monica Remer @MonicaRemer
#NEXUS15 if you are different in ways that do not matter then you are just weird.
Let's view Christian education in an expanded light. If we as Christians are the light of the world, shouldn't our education also be light? Can we take Christian education and expand it from a defensive posture to an offensive posture? Rather than protect them from the darkness, we should prepare them to make a difference in the darkness.
I always ask the question "why you?" when I go into a classroom. I always know the answer is I Peter 2:9 - because you are a chosen generation, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a peculiar people. He called you out so you may show his marvelous light. Is our posture causing us to underperform.
The buzz word is to provide students with a "world class education." That's the best they can come up with. Their best line should be our baseline. We want to give them a "Kingdom class education."
Education should be in three dimensions, not just the two that the world focuses on. The world focuses on the head and the hand, but they don't get a return on their investment if they leave out the heart dimension.
The facts of God's world should be integrated with the truth from God's word. If you have worldly content devoid of God's context, it will inevitably lead to wrong conclusions. For that reason, we must be students of the Word because His Word is truth. We are also empowered by God's Spirit. What do we do with this power? Without his power, the best we can be is influential. With the Spirit of God on your credentials and pedagogy, you can be impactful.
God isn't limited to working in only favorable circumstances. He can work with all children. We don't want to communicate that the best God can do is teaching children who are highly educable. It would be nice if we had kids who don't need grace and kids who don't sin. They are not beyond God's ability.
We are equipped with God's love. The words on the page are powerless to transmit life. When we take the stuff of the curriculum and make it a living curriculum through your love, you can impart life.
There are no children or families that are beyond the scope of God's power. We take the cards no one else wants and give them a kingdom class education so that they will walk out saying, "The Lord - He is God."
Dr. Kevin Washburn - Fueling Learning: Sparking Curiosity in the 21st Century Classroom
This is the speaker I have most been looking forward to hearing.
You don't start from a place of know-how. You start from a place of curiosity. Intelligence gets an awful lot of press, but even Albert Einstein put more importance on curiosity than intelligence.
Learning is movement, and movement requires energy. The same neural network that is active when you take a physical step toward a goal is active when you learn something. The brain interprets learning a movement.
Curiosity drives interest, excitement, and exploration. It is a hunger to know. It is sad to realize that all children are curious, but most students are not. What are schools doing to take away their curiosity? One of the things technology provides us is the opportunity for self directed learning, but they won't do it if they aren't curious.
Engagement does not equal curiosity. Looking at cat videos online is engaging, but it isn't sparking the curiosity we are looking for. How do we make them curious?
Atmosphere - Curiosity thrives in atmospheres of freedom where adults respond positively to student questions. If your students have a fear of asking questions, they aren't free. Curiosity is caught through conversation. Respond to children with questions. This requires attentiveness to every situation to see where you can take advantage of moments. How adults respond to children influences how curious they become. Think about what you are communicating to the child by the way you respond to a question.
Model Curiosity - Show them that you are trying to figure out things. Tell them what you are wondering about. Show them the process of seeking information for personal interest. When students are in the midst of learning, model questions with them. What new questions can we ask now that we have information.
Encourage Curiosity Even When it Goes Off Track - Curiosity is more critical to their development than the material. Coverage can be the enemy of learning. Work in time for the questions they may have. Question and support rather than directing and explaining. When you start explaining, the child stops thinking. Be cautious with cautions because we need more freedom to their questions.
Don't Try to Make Your Classroom Foolproof - You can't learn resilience through easy success. You learn it by regrouping after a setback. If you are trying to overcome an intelligence deficit, realize that that is only half of the formula. The other half is a combination of curiosity and resilience.
Question, Guide, Allow the Student to FIND the Answers because it produces more robust learning than explaining things to them. Prompt and provide opportunities to spark curiosity. Study how Rod Sterling got you to want to know things. He raised questions in your minds before going to commercial. Bring in an element of mystery to your class. "Why do you think you have a radish?"
Allow students to generate and record questions. As soon as you've got them asking questions, you've got them. The quality of the question matters, so help them refine the questions. It makes a difference in the brain's response if it is too challenging or too easy. The right level of questions releases dopamine, which makes the brain happy and also makes better connections between brain cells.
Curiosity makes learning and recall stronger. If the question is too simple, the brain doesn't care. Keep encouraging the student to ask why questions until you get to an appropriate level. Keep asking why - just like 4 year olds do. Why and how questions produce more mystery than where, who, and what questions.
- If it is too simple, ask why.
- If it is too general, open or close it until you get to a good question.
- If it seems like the wrong question, contextualize it.
Curiosity doesn't deserve the bad reputation it gets. It didn't kill the cat. Curiosity drove Moses to an encounter with God. He wondered about the burning bush.
Eric Metaxas - Miracles
Author of Bonhoeffer -
What you are doing makes a huge difference. You are probably not half as aware of it as I am. You probably forget that all the curriculum stuff is periphery to the big questions. Who am I? Where do we come from? Where are we going? What is the meaning of life? Only Christian education deals with those types of questions. Others avoid the questions because the believe life doesn't have meaning, which is bleak. The difference you are making is beyond belief.
At the heart of our teaching is the understanding that we are made in the image of God. Others must look at their worldview, which is that we are here completely by accident. If they really believed that, they would kill themselves or go insane. The idea of meaning wouldn't even exist. All your feelings would be meaningless.
Making it explicit is great, but even if you aren't making it explicit, the assumptions that you have impart things to them they won't get anywhere else.
The heroic is a concept missing from secular education but is central to Christian education. God gives us examples throughout scripture. Faith is not about principles or rules, even though those things are important. It's about Jesus, who was a person who came to live among us. We transmit what we believe through life with the people around us. You draw people to Jesus by being like Jesus. We are potentially a hero to those around us, whether we know it or not, which is why we should know it.
When we read biographies of inspiring people, we realize the power of what they did. Those things are forgotten in our culture because we aren't being taught them any more.
Without a Christian worldview, you have no basis for believing that racism is wrong or any other moral standard. With a Christian worldview, the answer is the Imago Dei. We've got to be able to call evil evil rather than letting things go, calling it culture. Slavery was wrong even though it was culturally accepted. Boys being raped in Afghanistan is evil whether or not it is their culture. This is why moral relativism cannot work. Truth is not relative; it is not a cultural construct. WE HAVE TO COMMUNICATE THIS TO OUR STUDENTS.
William Wilberforce is a hero we must know. Dietrich Bonhoeffer is another one. He said, "Silence in the face of evil is evil." He stood up to the Nazi's. The fact that his story ended badly doesn't mean he isn't a hero. We must tell the stories of these people for others to be inspired by them. n't
Who are you affecting today? What you do matters. When you give young people stories of heroes and heroines, you are giving them something others do not have because we are so scared in our culture to say someone is better than others. We are so afraid of offending people that we are afraid to give them heroes.
God doesn't give you blessings for yourself. He gives them to you so that you can bless others. Greatness doesn't belong to a gender or a race. IT ONLY BELONGS TO GOD.
God calls us into all kinds of things because we need them all.
David Kinnaman - Why Our Students are Leaving the Church and What You Can Do About It as a Teacher
We want to understand through the lens of research what we can do about the trend of young people leaving the church.
The top reasons of young people leaving the church is that the church is overprotective, sexually repressive, anti-science, exclusive, appeared to be doubtless, and provided shallow experiences.
The world young people live in today is more complicated and complex than ever before. Are we meeting the challenge of helping students deal with that complexity? We have to be honest with ourselves about the students we have that are taking a journey away from faith. Christians are viewed as irrelevant and extremist today.
The way young people leave the faith fall into three categories
- Nomads - These are individuals who say they are still Christian, but they are not involved in any way with a church or Christian activities. They got to church on Christmas and Easter only.
- Exiles - Faith doesn't fit with the place where they are in culture.
- Prodigals - These are individuals who say they are NO LONGER Christians.
We live in a complicated, accelerated culture.
The best human inventions in history are in our pockets. Students spend 7 hours a day on some kind of media. We have become hyperlinked, multi-careered. Pop culture is our religion, but we crave meaning. We are lonely participants who are addicted to media and grazing information.
When Daniel lived in Babylon, he had be faithful in a different context. We are living in digital Babylon. Our students are living in a culture in which people are skeptical of scripture. We must teach them that the Bible has a countercultural narrative. Teach Ecclesiastes to a fame obsessed culture because it shows that the end of all their ambition is vanity. The idol of our time is fitting in and being up to speed.
Christian school students struggle with doubt more than public school students. They are more likely to remain active in the church. They seem to want more from their churches and to have a more integrated experience. Within this context, effective Christian education will provide meaningful relationships, cultural discernment, leadership development, vocational discipleship, and a firsthand experience of Jesus.
Millennials have been marketed to so much that they are skeptical. They think of our outreach as something we are paid to do in order to get them on our side, not as a genuine effort at relationship.
Be a learner. Emphasize purity within culture while having proximity to culture. Educate with young people. Teach a right theology of sexuality, work, and influence. Show how the Bible intersections with vocation and changes us as people. Model discipleship in our lives. Pray like we are exiles.
As much as we try not to be, we are part of the spirit of the age; so we have to work hard to examine our own hearts for the ways we are absorbing the culture of the age. What traditions are we keeping that need to be rethought?
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