The Power of Silence

I have a magical super power that makes kids fall into hushed silence.  It isn't a special hand signal.  It isn't a sound.  It isn't a flashing sign.  It is MY silence.

Kids are used to being lectured, yelled at, told what to do, when to do it, and how to do it.  They are used to music being pumped into their ears 24 hours a day.  They are used to beeping, buzzing, and ringing.  What they are not used to is the sound of silence (I wish I could input Simon and Garfunkel here).

When my students get out of hand while I'm in the middle of a lesson, I stop speaking.  I stare at the ceiling, and I wait.  If you know me, you know that silence isn't exactly a strength of mine, but it doesn't take long.  It takes 30s or so for the first student to realize I have stopped speaking; then he usually spreads the word that everyone should shut up.  The whole process usually takes less than a minute.  It takes much less energy and is much more effective than fussing.  They don't care if a teacher fusses because, in their minds, teachers fuss all the time.

The one I keep in my back pocket for the most extreme times is keeping silent for the remainder of the period.  This usually happens when we have played a review game.  I certainly don't expect the same level of decorum for a game that I do for other times, but it is only useful review if people are paying attention.  I usually give them a few chances (because it is a game, after all).  Then I say, "That's it.  I'm done."  I sit down and don't speak for the rest of the period (which is usually only 10 minutes or so if I get to this point).  It freaks them out.  They don't know what to do if a teacher doesn't talk for ten minutes.  In those times, you could hear a pin drop on the carpet.  Beware: Using  this technique too often will make it stop working.  It is the novelty of it that makes this work.

Right now, I'm sitting in a completely silent room.  It is my study hall.  It consists mainly of 8th graders and a couple of seventh graders.  Because they all have the same classes, I usually let them work together.  We are a school that places high value on collaboration and cooperation.  However, as with any study hall, it can be dangerous to let them talk.  My policy is clear.  There is one warning for the volume being too loud or lack of productive talk.  After that, you go back to your assigned seat and remain silent for the rest of the period.  If this happens in the next class period, you will remain silent for not only the remainder of that period but for the next day's study hall as well.  That's the step we are on now, which means I will have to suffer the sound of a silent classroom for the entire period on Thursday.  I don't enjoy this, but it is amazingly helpful.  Last year, we never escalated beyond this point because NO ONE wanted silence for three class periods.  This class is a smart bunch, so I'm sure they'll do the same.

Student Blogging - Experiment in Public

After I started blogging for real last year, I came to realize what a valuable tool this kind of reflection is.  Each week, I choose some piece of teaching life and really think about what it means to me.  I did this before, but it was hit or miss random thoughts and usually while I was driving.  Now, I try to figure out what I really want to explore through writing.

The fact that other people read my reflections pleases me almost as much as it confuses me.  For example, one day two weeks ago, my number of page views in Portugal jumped from 4 to 54 in one hour.  What happened?  (If you are one of the 50 Portuguese readers, please comment below.)  I love checking the stats, not just for the number but for which posts people are reading and where people are reading.  I like thinking about the fact that my experience as a teacher might lend any kind of insight to other teachers (or even students and parents).

Last year, I decided I wanted my students to have this experience as well.  I want them to reflect on the things they are learning in all of their classes.  I also think it fits well into some of the changes that are happening in education.  If you remember my post called The Poster By My Desk, you know that one of the ways we are rethinking teaching is Talk to Strangers and another is Real Work for Real Audiences.  Student blogging seems like the perfect way to do this.  I believe they will write better if they know it is being read by people out in the cyber universe.  I believe they will reflect well if they are trying to convey it to someone else.

Once per week, my 8th graders will be assigned a blog by one of their teachers.  It won't always be me, but they will be writing about something they are learning, and this makes me happy.  I may be a science teacher, but I know the value of writing and am so happy they will be doing this.

In order to keep all their blogs collated, I have compiled a list of links to their blogs.  If you would like to read the blogs of 8th grade students and encourage them with comments, you may find a list of all their blogs at this blog.  This has all gotten a little too meta for me because I am using this blog to link you to another blog, which is a list of 61 more blogs.  I've never used the word blog this many times in one day - even when I ran a work shop on blogs.

Our Shared History

Yesterday was World Photography Day.   You didn't get a long weekend, and there were no fireworks to mark the occasion.  Photography has become so much a part of our normal lives that we don't even think about them any more.  Most of us have thousands of photographs stored on a phone or computer.  They are as normal to us as our speech.  I want to take a moment to reflect on why photography matters.

No one who is alive today remembers a time when there was no photography.  This is because usable photography was developed in the 1820's.  There was image capture earlier than that, but it took too long to be usable.  If you are interested, here is a good summary of the history of photography.  People over the age of 30 will, however, remember when it wasn't as easy to see your photos as it is today.

Remember film?  My father and I are both shutter bugs.  We would go on family vacations and take about 8 rolls of film each.  At 36 frames per roll that meant, we were taking over 280 pictures each, not knowing until we got home whether any of those were worth having.  We took our rolls of precious film to Eckerd Drugs and put them in envelopes that were dropped into a slot and sent to "the lab."  Four days and a hundred dollars later, we would pick up our prints.  After sorting out the blurry, the overexposed, the underexposed, the finger in frame, and other such errors, we often found two or three pictures that were really worth enlarging to 8 x 12 (that's right) and hanging on the wall. In an interview, a National Geographic photographer said he took 300 rolls of film to get enough for a spread (usually 8-10 photos), so I didn't feel so bad.

That little walk down memory lane is not what I want to write about.  I want to write about the meaning of photography.  Our history as a people was once passed down by oral tradition.  Then came writing.  The ability to capture an image is just a progression in sharing history.  Photography gives all of us a shared history.  Buzz Aldrin and Neil Armstrong are the only people to see each other on the moon with their own eyes, but we share that historic moment because they took photos.  When the concentration camps were liberated, the instruction was given to take as many pictures as possible.  Otherwise, no one could believe how bad it was.  Unless you were in New York City on September 11, your memories are shaped entirely by the pictures taken by those who were.

These events all took place when photography was the realm of professionals and hobbyists.  Even on 9/11, phones with cameras were not as ubiquitous as they are now.   The people who took the photos of those historic moments meant to capture something big.  Now, almost everyone can capture what is happening in front of them at the moment it happens.  They can also share it almost instantly with everyone in the world.  This may or may not be a good thing.  On the one hand, ease leads to lack of thought.  Twitter doesn't require that you think before you post.  Instagram never asks if you are sure about what you are sharing with the world.  When film had to be developed, no one would have wasted that frame on a shot of their lunch.  Also, more people doing something hasn't always made us better at it.  People post a lot of blurry shots.  On the other hand, the shared history of photographs means that we now have a visual record of more things than we have ever had before.  What the printing press did for writing, cameras on phones will do for imaging.  It is too soon to know what this will one day mean, but I feel like it will mean something.

The next time you are looking through a history book or an old National Geographic and see a familiar image, think about the connectedness that image brings.  Everyone else who see that image shares it with you.

First Week Fun

The first week of school is an interesting and wonderful and crazy time.

If you read Harry Wong (and if you don't, you should), his excellent book The First Days of School will tell you that the first few days are critical for establishing procedures and routines.  Teachers want to do this, but the first week almost never allows for it.

Our school starts on a Tuesday, so the first week is four days long.  This year, none of those four days followed the same schedule.  On the first day of school, we begin with a whole school assembly, so that alters the schedule a bit.  Our second day was Wednesday.  In my school this means the chapel schedule (or what I call "the flippy do").  This means that instead of going to third period, middle school students go to chapel while high school students go to 8th period; and instead of going to fourth period, high school students go to chapel while middle school students go to 9th period.  Then, when 8th and 9th happen, our students go to 3rd and 4th.  If that sounds confusing to you, it is because it is confusing.  We have been doing this for five years now, and I am still surprised when my third period class doesn't show up.  Thursday does follow a "normal" schedule, but since they haven't had that yet, it does seem normal.  Also, it is the day our high school students get their computers, which pulls them out of a class or two.  Friday, we have a homeroom schedule.  While this is only a few minutes difference in a few periods, it is a fourth schedule in four days.  It is also the day middle school students receive their computers, so I will have one of my 8th grade classes but not the other two.  Harry Wong, how do I go about establishing procedures this week?

Lest you think of the previous paragraph as a list of complaints, let me tell you that I love all of these things.  The first day assembly is awesome.  You get to hear all the happy sounds of students reconnecting, who are happy to see each other, and excited about a new year.  Chapel is awesome.  I can't wait to see the chapel news videos each week, and yesterday's promo was epic.  Getting the computers is so great I wish we did it earlier in the week.  We haven't done homeroom yet, but I am optimistic that it will be a good thing.  I'm not complaining about any of this, but it does make it difficult to establish procedures and routines.

I suppose that will come next week.

What Students Can Learn From American Ninja Warrior

For the past two summers, I have been enthralled by the phenomenon that is American Ninja Warrior.  If you've never seen it, go to youtube and watch at least a few runs.  People go through an insanely difficult obstacle course with a variety of strange skills.  The run ends if they touch the water below the course.  This doesn't seem like it would have a lot to do with education, but I believe there are important lessons to be learned from Ninja Warrior that can be applied to learning.

Preparation is Key
It doesn't happen very often, but you occasionally see someone on ANW that has not trained at all.  They usually don't make it far.  One poor man fell into the water on the first step of the first obstacle.  He thought being strong was going to be enough, but it wasn't.  Most people on the show have trained all year, either at Ninja Warrior gyms or by building obstacles in their own backyard that mimic those on the show.  Some of them build a warp wall that is a foot higher than the one that will be on the show.  This is preparation.  These are the people who finish the course.

As a student, you can't expect to walk into a test and succeed without preparation.  I'm not saying no one ever has; but like on Ninja Warrior,
the odds are against those who don't prepare.  Spending time at home practicing your skills is a better path to success.

Keep Moving Forward
Ninja Warrior is made up of multiple obstacle that each require different kinds of skills.  It is difficult to be equally great at all of them.  Some people just barely get across the dancing stones but can totally rule the salmon ladder.  The true champions on the show put the previous obstacle behind them and focus on the next one.

Students often get hung up on one bad test grade.  They get so focused on that one bad grade that they let it affect the next activity.  No matter how low your last test grade was, you can't go back and do it over.  Put it behind you, and focus on the next set of skills because that is the test you can do something about.

Don't Stop - But Pausing May Be Needed
There are a couple of skills on Ninja Warrior that tax one specific muscle group.  Often, the next obstacle will require use of those muscles.  There are obstacles, like the rolling log, that will make the contestant dizzy.  Invariably, the following obstacle will require balance. There are people who are so focused on their time that they will jump off the rolling log and right onto the balance skill while they are still dizzy.  Those people fall in the water.  Success is more likely if the contestant pauses for a moment to establish equilibrium before moving on.  Some people even counter spin for a moment, forcing the fluid in their ears to stop spinning.  Rock climbers on the show will hold on to an obstacle with one hand in order to shake out their arm before grasping the next handhold.  They know that just a moment of muscle rest will save them time in the end.  Taking too long can be a problem, but a brief pause is often useful.

I think the student equivalent of being focused on time is being focused on perfect scores.  A driven student will take on five AP courses and then stay up late EVERY night trying to ace every one of them.  It is important to pause every now and then.  Trading a few points on one assignment to get a good night's sleep will ultimately yield higher scores in the end.  Take a day to "shake out your arms" and then keep going.  Not one of your teachers cares more about your perfect score than they do about you.  Don't stop altogether, but recognize that a pause can be what prepares you for the coming challenge.


When You Fall in the Water, the Run is Over
I've never seen anyone on American Ninja Warrior climb out of the water and go beg the producers for a do over.  The score is recorded.  You may be moving on to the next level, or you may not be.  This run, however, is finished.

I don't know who teaches students to ask for re-tests, but they need to stop it.  Life doesn't have do-overs.

Next Season is Coming
American Ninja Warrior has been on for seven seasons.  There are athletes on the show this year who have been competing all seven years.  Before they make their run, the producers will usually show a little package that includes clips of their previous runs.  I have noticed that most people who have failed on a certain obstacle before don't fail on that obstacle again.  These are the people who build that obstacle in their backyard to keep practicing or find a Ninja Warrior gym and work with a trainer.  If they fell in the water under the swinging spikes last year, they will likely not fall off them again.  They may fail somewhere else, but that will just drive them to practice that one for next season.

I just said that life doesn't have do-overs, but you can bet it does have next seasons.  If you don't learn from failure, you will repeat it.  If you take them time to analyze your mistakes and learn from them, you will not fail in the same place again.  Students, the right response to a bad test grade is NOT throwing that test in the trash.  Put it in your notebook.  When you are ready, sit down and look for patterns in your wrong answers.  Is there one skill you didn't master?  Master it before the exam.  Is there some concept you got reversed in your head, causing you to answer every question about that backwards.  Get it straight before the final.  Your teacher will help if you will let them.  Like a trainer, we can help you identify your weaknesses and work on them for "next season."

Sometimes, It's Just About Hanging On
There are certain obstacles on the show that seem untrainable.  These are obstacles where bicep strength may not be helpful.  You can train on balance, running, climbing, etc.  How do you train for grip strength.  The ledges on the ultimate cliff hanger are barely as wide as the first joint of your fingers.  It seems like they are hanging on by their fingerprints.  Rock climbers seem to be the best at these obstacles because they have learned that sometimes their life depends on just hanging on, praying for strength, and inching forward.

As a student, some weeks are harder than the rest.  These are not necessarily weeks for which you can prepare.  The last week of third quarter is going to be hard.  Know that, and just hang on.  It will eventually be over if you just keep praying and inching forward.


Watch this show.  Be inspired by the athletics.  Then, recognize that any lesson athletics can teach is something that is also true in life outside of that world.