What Inspires Me

Last week I mentioned Danny Steele, an administrator with a Twitter account of educational encouragement.  Occasionally, he does a few posts called "What Inspires Me?"  Since I don't do New Year's resolutions, I thought I would use the typical end of year reflective time to think about the things that have inspired me in 20 years of teaching.  Here are some things that inspire me (and just a few of the people who display them).

- Teachers who challenge their students and then spend their time helping students meet that challenge. (Zane and Meagan)
- Students who give their best to meet challenges. (They're minors, so I won't use their names, but they know who they are.)

- The energy and enthusiasm of first and second year teachers. (Hannah and Emily)

- Veteran teachers who still spend time reading and learning from the latest research. (Kristin)
- Teachers who keep using techniques they know to be effective, not being swayed by fads. (Kellie)
- Teachers who come to our school from other places and give us a chance to see it with fresh eyes, reminding us what we have. (Melanie and Julianne)
- Colleagues who generously share their best practices. (Too many to name)
- Media specialists who help me think through new things. (Laura and Daniel)
- Colleagues who give me great ideas and then help me implement them.  (Kellie, Elizabeth, Jaime)
- Administrators who problem solve so that everyone gets the best they can have. (Mandy, Eric, James, Pascale, Isaiah)
- Office, lunch, and maintenance staff who give their best every day even though their work doesn't get talked about. (Karen, Kathleen, Willa Bea, Beth, Vivian, BJay)
- Educators who take to Twitter to share their wisdom and encourage strangers. (Danny Steele)
- The memories I have of my best teachers (I wrote about them in November)
- Alumni who return to share their lives with us. (Harrison, Will, Jay, Caroline, Cassidy, Rhea, Alex, and dozens of others)

Thanks to all of you for inspiring everyone you influence.

Counting Your School Blessings

My twitter account exists as a professional learning tool.  I follow Scientific American, CERN, Fermilab, and some other things that keep me up with current science.  I follow Buzz Aldrin and NASA.  This year, I have made the effort to follow other educators, thinking I would find some interesting ideas.  What I have found are people who are reaching out for encouragement.  This year, I have spent more time talking education with educators outside of my school than ever before, and so many are feeling alone in their schools. 

Since I had a year like that in my career, I have reached out to a few.  They are generally idealists who adore their students and want to do what is best for them.  They feel their hands are tied by systems of testing over-emphasis, unsupportive administrators, or schools in which student compliance is valued above learning.

What I have also found on Twitter is a group of teachers and administrators who seem to be made of encouragement.  If you need some online boosting in your job, try following Fixing Education (@WhyTeaching),  Dave Stuart, Jr. (@davestuartjr), and Bethany Hill #JoyfulLeaders (@bethhill2829). 

These are all great, but the account that drips with enthusiasm, love, empathy, and encouragement is that of Danny Steele (@SteeleThoughts).  Just to give you an idea, here's a screenshot from a few days ago.

On December 19, @SteeleThouts tweeted this:  "Do our students know we love our job?  I hope so."  Some of the replies he got to this tweet were amazing teachers showing how they communicate their enthusiasm to their kids, even a principal dressed up as a Christmas tree.  Other replies were heartbreaking, like this one from @JeffcoEducation - "Danny, my son comes home and tells me about his teacher sitting in the corner, reading her book..... he asks: “if she doesn’t want to be here.... why should I want to be here?”.

The one that stuck with me was from @EthanAdshade.

Aside from how sad it is that a person in his position (his organization pairs experts and educators so that students will be exposed to people in higher education) has not observed many positive school cultures, he reminded me to be grateful that I am in a supportive and encouraging school environment.  Here are a few things that spring to mind.

- I laugh with my students every day.

- I laugh with my colleagues every day.

- My administrators pray for/with me.

- I am trusted and respected by my administration (a fact that a teacher who came from a different school reminded me of on Friday)

- My administration asks for my input on important decisions.

- My administration creates space for us to encourage each other.

- My administration and colleagues help me solve problems.

- My colleagues share ideas and resources.

There's more, but I would like to say based on Ethan's reply, "I consider myself blessed because I do love my job."

Magic of the Mundane

Do you know what a miracle walking on two feet is?  No, you don't.  It's okay that you don't.  You aren't crazy enough to think about things like this while just living your regular life.  I'm the person who thinks about physics all the time and how, while we think of friction, as a negative thing, we could not walk, swallow, or write with a pencil if it didn't exist.

Okay, let's talk about bipedal walking.  First, have you noticed that we are the only species (besides non-flight birds) that use it as a primary form of movement?  I'm not saying nothing else can walk on two legs, but they do it for short periods and then drop back down to four for actual travel.  My cat will get on his back legs to swat at something with his front paws, but he doesn't walk to the kitchen that way.

Why?  Because bipedal motion is inherently unstable.  Most animals keep three points of contact with the ground most of the time (exceptions when running fast or for defensive reasons, but for most regular activity, they keep a tripod on the ground).  Keeping three points of contact means that if the center of gravity shifts a bit, it is still supported (physics, just roll with me).

Now, let's look at the way we humans walk.  We stand on two legs, which means there is a much narrower range to how far our center of gravity can move before we lose our balance.  Then, we pick our foot up, shifting all of our weight to one foot and make ourselves fall forward!  The other foot comes down to support our shifting center of gravity and just as soon as it does, we repeat the process with the other foot.  How are we not falling down multiple times a day?  We aren't.  We walk without even thinking about it.  If you aren't amazed by that, adjust your sense of awe.  Even atheist researcher Steven Pinker,  in his book How the Mind Works, calls it miraculous.

Your hand is even more amazing.  It can open a vacuum sealed jar, turn a key in a lock, type, lift a fork, operate a pencil or chopsticks, stroke someone's hair, and pinch.  These are massively different skills involving different sets of muscles.  Have you had this experience?  You are on the way out of the house to get in your car when you realize the trash bag is full and needs to be taken out.  While still holding your car keys, you reach down and hook the bag with two fingers.  When you get outside, you lift the garbage can lid with your one free finger and drop the bag in without letting go of the keys?  What?  Do you realize how many different kinds of muscle maneuvers that involves? 

I could keep going, but here is my point.  We live our lives every day with awe-inspiring incidents all around us that we don't notice because they are so common.

This week is going to be stressful.  We are getting close to Christmas.  For some schools, that means there are exams.  For others, it means kids getting rambunctious.  For all, it means there will be tons of sugar coming into your building.  I haven't even mentioned the non-teacher related stresses of the holidays.

When you need something to destress during this week, look around.  Look at your hand while it holds a pencil or types on your computer.  Be amazed at the quick movement across the keys and how your brain and fingers work together without your even noticing.  Look at the paper you are writing on and think about how incredible it that it was once an actual tree with bark and leaves that there is no way you could write on with a pen.  Marvel at your calculator, which has more power than the computer that took us to the moon.  Be amazed by your stapler, your copy machine, or any of the other astonishing things that surround you in everyday life.  It will make you smile to recognize the magic in the mundane.

Reacting to Someone Else's Thoughts (You May Be Wrong)

I am going to start with a story that happened while I was in Boston for the Learning and the Brain Conference.  This has nothing to do with the conference.  It happened while I was walking from my hotel to the convention center at 7 am on Sunday morning.

I am a single woman, walking alone at an unusual time in a city with which I am not familiar.  For that reason, I was experiencing a little nervous energy.  I wasn't super anxious or afraid; it was just that low level of nerves that makes you alert to your surroundings and likely to evaluate every sound, shadow, and person on the street.  If you are a man reading this, you may not understand, but women do this any time we are out alone.  This level of alert vigilance is a gift of God that helps with our safety.

I was in this process of heightened evaluation when a man who I was about to pass on the sidewalk came to a complete stop.  My anxiety level spiked from the low level that makes you alert to the level of "I don't know what is about to happen, and it could be very, very bad." I quickened my step to get away from this situation a little faster, and I heard behind me a very irritated, "You're welcome."

Why am I sharing this story?  There are two reasons.

First, it is an interesting illustration of the differences between men and women.  When a man is walking alone, he is trying to get to a destination.  When a woman is walking alone, she is trying to not get attacked.  Women are not being paranoid; men are not being reckless.  It is just a function of how our experiences and environments differ in the world.  We probably can't understand this about each other, but we can accept it anyway.

Second, I think this could have a valuable application in our classrooms.  Let's revisit the thought processes of the two people in this story.
Context
- I was a single woman in an unfamiliar city and was, therefore, on the lookout for danger.  This was a thought that was already in my mind as I walked down the street.
- He was walking home on a Sunday morning.  There were no thoughts on his side that I might pose a threat to him.

Motivation
- He was attempting to do something nice (although I will say I think that is undercut by his expectation of being thanked for it).
- I was attempting to get to the convention center unharmed.

Assumption
- I assumed he had the potential to be dangerous.
- He assumed it was clear to me that he was not a danger (if he thought about it at all).

Timing
- It took me an extra 0.5 seconds after I passed him to realize that he was, in fact, stopping for my benefit.  I had to reverse directions in thinking and that takes a moment.  I would have certainly thanked him at that point if I had been able to.
- He already knew his motivation, so it took 0.0s for him to decide I was rude.

So, how does this apply to the classroom?  When conflicts arise, the reactions of both teacher and student are always based in context (which we usually think we are sharing but might not be), motivation (which are different between the two parties), assumptions (which we may or may not be right about), and timing (perhaps it takes the student an extra half-second to process what you meant, not just what you said).  Just like this man on the street and I had very different reactions to the same experience because neither of us knew what was going on in the other's mind, students and teachers may have very different reactions to each other.

Did you know that there is a part of your brain solely responsible for helping you construct a representation of other people's thoughts?  It helps you know when you have upset someone or see that the boy in your class likes you.  When it is accurate, it is quite helpful; but it can be wrong.  Sometimes, we process the input from a student incorrectly, and they interpret us incorrectly as well while both of us absolutely believe we are right. 

As the adult in the room, I am the one responsible for moderating my reaction.  I have the maturity to act, rather than just react that my 8th-grader may not have yet.  Perhaps, I should slow down and ask a student why they are reacting the way they are.  It will give me insight into, not only the conflict of that moment, but it might help me avoid future conflicts as well because I will have a better understanding of how they think.  Let's have the humility to doubt or own rightness is every situation.

Thanksgiving Post 4 - Mr. Barbara

When you teach, you often get asked who was "the one."  People want to know who the teacher was that inspired you to be a teacher.  You may be able to tell from the series of posts this month that I didn't just have one.  I had many teachers in my life that pushed me along the way and inspired me in different ways.  (I haven't even touched on the English teachers who made me love literature and taught me to organize my thoughts in writing.  I haven't mentioned a favorite math teacher who showed me the magic of fractals.)  God definitely blessed me with "the several."  However, there is one teacher who beyond doubt is the reason I teach physics today.  My physics teacher, Mr. Jim Barbara, is the physics teacher everyone should have had.

Let's start with this astounding fact.  My brother liked him.  My brother is not a fan of teachers.  He tolerated their presence in his life at best.  When I got my schedule for my senior year and saw Mr. Barbara's name on it, my brother said, "You'll like him.  He's crazy."  That may not sound like a high praise, but from my brother, it is a glowing recommendation.  From the first day of school, it was clear that Mr. Barbara loved physics.  I mean, he loved it, and he obviously loved teaching it.  I'm not sure I ever had a teacher who seemed to be having more fun than Mr. Barbara.  I'm sure you already know this, but when the teacher is having fun, the kids learn more (A thought I keep in mind while I'm teaching as well).

Mr. Barbara had more energy than a person can handle while standing still, so he was always bouncing around the room.  He would be in the middle of a sentence and run into the storage room to get something to illustrate his point, emerging from the storage room still talking.  He just had more to say and show us than he could contain.  I couldn't get enough, and since I had him the last period of the day, I would often stay for a few more minutes to ask him more questions (I didn't stop being a demanding learner after Mr. Sandberg, you know).

Although Mr. Barbara and I had different worldviews, I felt that he respected mine (or at least my devotion to it).  When he discovered the internet (This was 1994, and he was the first person I ever heard use the word internet.), he actually took the time to tell me about "religious things" he had seen on it.

Because of Mr. Barbara's energy and response to my innate curiosity, I devoured physics.  I went home at the end of each day and did my homework in reverse class order so that I could do my physics first.  I would be sitting at a concert and be really excited that I knew how the microphones worked.  I would watch a play and wonder about the physics behind getting the sets to move.  This was possibly also the first time I understood that math described the function and relationship of things.  I had been able to do math, but I had not understood its purpose until Mr. Barbara connected it to physics.

I was a college freshman when I found out that Mr. Barbara was leaving the teaching profession for the world of computer networking.  I wrote him a letter, telling him that while I knew he didn't owe me an explanation, I wanted one anyway.  I'm sure he enjoyed his career in computers, but the world of education suffered a great loss that day.

When people tell me they don't like physics, I tell them they didn't have the right teacher.  The teacher is important in every discipline, but in a subject like physics, it is essential that you have someone who can show you the bigger picture and reveal "the awesome" that lies behind the work.  Mr. Jim Barbara did that for me, and for that and all his energy and love, I am thankful.

Thanksgiving Post 3 - Mr. Sandberg

While I wrote these posts in order of the year I had each teacher, I am very happy that this particular teacher landed on the week of Thanksgiving.  When I think of the teachers for which I am most thankful, Mr. Don Sandberg is number one on the list.  This should be the easiest post to write, but it is actually difficult because it is hard to sum up what Mr. Sandberg has meant to me in just one post.

Mr. Sandberg taught me physical science in the 9th grade, and this is the subject I have taught every year for the last twenty years.  In the first two years of my teaching, I never sat down to do a lesson plan without thinking of how Mr. Sandberg taught me.  If there was an analogy or example or technique he used to make something clear to us, I wrote it into my own plans.  Although I have developed my own style and techniques in the classroom, some of those early things remain in my teaching to this day.  Any student who has had me for physical science has gotten at least a little instruction from Mr. Sandberg.

Perhaps the most important thing Mr. Sandberg did for me as a student was to encourage my curiosity.  He didn't make me curious because I came into the world that way, but he did keep me curious.  And at a time in my life when it would have been easy to throw me off track as I was a loud, strange, 14-year-old girl when I was in his class.  I was a pretty demanding learner.  In the 10 months that I was in his class, I estimate that I asked him 144,000 questions.  I asked him how keys open locks, how gas pumps know to cut off when the tank is full, and thousands of other things.  One day, he pulled out a scrap of paper and said, "I think you would find this book helpful."  It was The Way Things Work by David Macauley.  I ran right out and bought it; and before there was Google, this book was a valuable source of information for me.  I still have it today.  While his recommendation of this book might have been as much for his benefit as mine, it just led to me asking him even more questions.  The important thing is that he never seemed exasperated by my constant stream of questions.  He didn't turn me away, even if he couldn't answer.  It is scary to know that a frustrated teacher on a bad day could say something to squelch a student's curiosity, and it is amazing to me that he never did.  I keep this in mind when I am teaching students like myself.  I look at the picture on my classroom wall and say, "Mr. Sandberg was patient with you.  You must be patient with them."

If you have never taught in a Christian school, you may not know the responsibility that a Christian educator feels in fostering the spiritual development of students, modeling faith, and integrating Biblical worldview into the curriculum.  It is frightening because the last thing you want to do is innoculate students to the Lord, giving them just enough of a weakened version of Jesus that they miss the real thing.  You may not know that teachers receive zero training in how to do this, even when getting an education degree from a Christian university.  When I started at GRACE, I was at a bit of a loss for how to lesson plan with this in mind.  Once again, I thought back to my times with Mr. Sandberg.  He revealed the gospel in everything he did and every conversation he had with students; it was just implicit in who he was.  While I don't know that I will ever think I'm doing enough of this in my classroom, his model was inspirational and still is.

For all that Mr. Sandberg was to me my freshman year and what he continues to be for me now, I am thankful.

Learning and the Brain Conference - Reaching for Greatness - Sunday

Keynote 6 - Sir Ken Robinson - You, Your Child, and School:  Teaching to Their Talents, Passions, and Potential
(Disclaimer of bias:  I adore Sir Ken Robinson.  I have zero ability to be objective.  I will gush.)

There are groups all over the world having this conversation - about how we develop systems of education that are faithful to the talents of our children.  Around the world, this is happening in the face of a political headwind.

We all have some deep talents, and there is a need for education to develop them and provide access to them.

Politicians of all parties seem to take the view that education is a form of preparation for something that happens later on.  It's like a holding camp for the jobs market.  This is how they became so focused on the need to raise academic standards and lead to the downgrading of vocational programs.  Society depends on people pulling on the rope together, but our education systems have come focused on competition for political reasons.

"I'd rather have an electrician rewire my house than a man with a PhD in electrical engineering."  The unemployment rate would be lower if we didn't tell kids they had to reach a level above of what they want to do to contribute to the world.

"If you design a system to promote certain abilities and downgrade others, don't be surprised when that happens."

All grandparents think that their grandchild is the smartest, most beautiful, wonderful child that ever was born.  However, like every other child, each is a human being, who grows and depends on resources to live.  As humans, we have curiosity and have desires to create culture and change the world rather than adapt to it.

Speaking multiple languages doesn't mean you are linguistically gifted.  It has to do with your background and environment.  There is a natural capacity that the environment develops.  Nobody teaches you to speak.  You couldn't teach it if you wanted to because you don't know how you do it either.  They learn to speak because they want to and because they can.  Learning is natural.

Learning is the natural process of acquiring new skills and understanding, and it is a gift of nature (God).

We have education systems because
- there are things that are important to us culturally and want to make sure kids don't miss them.
- there are some things we want kids to learn that are to difficult to learn left to their own devices.

A school is a community of learners, where people come together to learn with and from each other.

Video showing extreme enthusiasm - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wzry8ATXvX0&disable_polymer=true

All kids love to learn, but many have a problem with education and school because of the pressures inherent in the system that have been caused for political reasons.  Humans have a sense of enthusiasm and enchantment in discovery and learning.  That joy of learning should impel learning.

We fall for the lie that if you do well on tests you will get better jobs and live happier lives.  It used to be true, but it is not anymore.  We need forms of education that fit the way the world really is.

Technology has utterly transformed every aspect of childhood, from work to play.  Kids are rarely outside.  By the time a child is 7, he has spent two years in front of a screen and one year of that time alone with the screen.

After contracting polio, he was sent to a special needs school for the physically disabled.  He was at school with people who had cerebral palsy, partial blindness, heart problems, etc.  None of the children thought anything about it.  They didn't see each other in terms of disability.  A boy with CP sat next to him who had very clear thinking, but the lack of muscle control kept him from speaking well.  He wrote with his feet and had excellent penmanship.

Reflecting on his childhood as he was writing recently, he had this thought.  "If you have a narrow view of ability, you have a broad view of disability.  Our education systems are structured around a narrow view of ability."  People probably have abilities that you don't notice just because you aren't looking for them.  We have to broaden our view of ability, intelligence, and creativity rather than compliance and linear skill development.

Capacity is different from ability.  You may have the capacity to play the cello, speak multiple languages, or be a master of calligraphy but not have the ability to do it because no one ever taught you.  If you don't find the thing you love and are good at, you will get through the day; but you won't really enjoy it.

There is a difference between physical energy and spiritual energy.  You can be exhilarated in your spirit while being physically exhausted when you are doing something you love.  You get energy from doing the things you love.  People are like that too. There are people whose energy you sync with, and you fall in love with them.  You just love being with them.  There are people drain the energy from you.

Paul McCartney and George Harrison's music teacher didn't think either of them had any particular musical ability.  He had half the Beatles in his class and missed it.  Elvis wasn't allowed in the glee club because they said he would ruin their sound.

"The aim of education is to enable students to understand the world around them and the talents within them so that they can become fulfilled individuals and active, compassionate citizens."
(Personal note:  This is a secularized statement that perfectly aligns with the GRACE Vision Statement:  Students at GRACE Christian School will be grounded in God’s Word and challenged to achieve academic excellence as they prepare to use their gifts and abilities effectively to follow God’s plan for their lives.)

Human talent is highly diverse.  Life is organic, not linear.  Every life is unique and unrepeatable.  We need a broad enough curriculum to let them find their talents.  (I have never met anyone who doesn't have special needs.  There are just some that are more obvious.  It's in the nature of human beings to have special needs.)


"To be born at all is a miracle, so what are you going to do with your life?" - Dahli Lama

Every one of us bears the imprint of humanity, but we all bear it differently.  People settle for too little.  At a time when we are better off than any other time in history, the most prevalent condition among people is depression.  We must create conditions for human growth.

You can raise the value of education without raising the status of teachers.  Politicians are focused on the curriculum rather than the teachers.

Wikipedia shows us that knowledge is a shared fabric and shows what people can do when they collaborate.  There's never been anything like it.

"I don't know.  I've never thought about that.  What do you think?" - Dahli Lama  (Great teachers are great learners, and they ask others to teach them.)

Concurrent Sessions C
Part 1 - 10,000-Hour Myth: Lessons From Child Prodigies (Young Children) - Ellen Winner, PhD

The Anti-Talent View 
- "Every child is born with the capcity for becoming richly musical so long as he or she is brought up properly.  There is no inborn talent for music ability." - Sinichi Suzuki
- Ericsson believes that deliberate practice can lead to high achievement in any domain.  It must be designed to improve performance, structured, effortful, and motivate by improvement, not enjoyment.
- Ericsson's study was based on 40 people divided into 4 groups.  Because the highest two groups practiced more than the bottom two groups, it was concluded that there was a direct correlation between practice and expertise.  Correlation is not causation, and the method is flawed scientifically.  Perhaps innate proclivity (talent) motivates more practice.

Evidence for Drawing Talent: Early Skill and Rage to Master
- Practice is necessary, but it is not sufficient for greatness.  There are individual differences innate to the human being. 
- Prodigies are precocious and learn rapidly.  The come to you already with greater skill.  You can't tear them away from their domain.  They have an intense desire to master that skill.  They tend to make discoveries on their own with little scaffolding from adults.
- Realistic drawing studies of young children show early skill is shown prior to practice in some kids.

These were drawn by two different 3-year-olds.

These are drawn by the same child as he aged.  The first one was at 4 years, 7 months.  The others were drawn at 6.

These were drawn by the same child at 3, 4, and 6.





Experimental Evidence for Talent
- To sight-read music, while playing the piano, you must look at the notes ahead while playing the current notes.  This involves working memory.  Experiments measured working memory in children using span tests.  It was found that deliberate practice led to better sight-reading skill but that working memory predicted sight-reading skills regardless of the amount of deliberate practice.  Therefore, working memory can limit ultimate attainment.
- Gobet and Campitelli studied 104 chess players.  Assessed the deliberate practice hours and whether they had reached Grand Master level.  They found that deliberate practice accounted for 34% variance in national rating.  In the 34 that had achieved Grand Master level, the average practice time was about 11000 hours, but the range was from 3016 to 23608 hours.  Some in the study spent 25000 hours without reaching Grand Master level.
- Deliberate practice is harder to measure in some fields than others.  
- One of the problems with the deliberate practice studies is that they are looking at people who are already elite.  You need a random sample to get an accurate view.

Is Talent in Drawing a Splinter Skill?
- Prodigy study: Drake and Winner - 12 drawing prodigies who achieved realism 2 years ahead of their peers were compared to a control group of typical drawers.  They were given IQ tests and visual-spatial tests.  IQ was not correlated to artistic skill.  There were two areas in which the artists visual-spacial skills were better or faster, but not all.  They did not find the underlying core capacity that might lead to realistic drawing talent.


Potential Dangers of the Anti-Talent View
- Drive and talent are associated, not learned.  
- Parental pressure cannot replace or overcome rage to master.
- If the child doesn't achieve, the implication is that the child just didn't work hard enough.

An argument among attendees about whether gifted kids could be gifted in domain-specific or domain-general areas.  Suggestions that parents might not be able to influence because of kids resistance, so a parent could enlist a peer as a stealth strategy.


Part 2 - Fantastic Failures: How Learning from Great Minds Can Help Students Reach Their Potential - Luke Reynolds, PhD

- We are so deeply interested in our students' success that we might be failing them.
- When a student fails, how do you respond?  You should help them figure out how to go deeper and examine the causes.
-  Told a story about a movie making him believe that people who drove vans were killers.  Kids can get wrong ideas in our head without even knowing it.  It is sometimes necessary to unlearn things that we have deeply ingrained in our minds.
- "I want you to see what real courage is, instead of getting the idea that courage is a man with a gun in his hand.  It's when you're licked before you begin, but you begin anyway and see it through, no matter what." - Atticus Finch
- Start with your passion and what causes a creative burst, and you will walk right into any standard a state can devise.  If you start with the standards, you might not ever get through to the passion.
- For the kid who feels like they don't belong, the goal of education is telling them that they do belong.

- Christopher Reeve's wife gave him the will to live after his accident when she said, "You're still you, and I love you."
- Charles Dutton took a book of African American plays into solitary confinement with him while he was in prison.  He said "I found my humanity in that cell and I was a changed man when I got out."  He asked the guards if he could start a theater group in prison and kept asking until they let him do it.  Upon release, he went to Yale and then Broadway, movies, and television.  Perhaps, if he had read these plays and gotten him involved in acting in school, he might not have ended up in that cell.
- JK Rowling was rejected by 12 publishers.  They thought Harry Potter was too weird a concept and didn't know how they would market it.  The agent who took her on told her children's books don't make a lot of money.  Bloomsbury's editor brought it home planned to reject it as well, but her daughter started reading it.  She told her mom, "If you don't publish that book, I'll never speak to you again."  

- You should have high standards for all kids, but you have to walk through it with them through the context of their life.  Join them where they are to get them to the standard.
- How do you want to be measured?  When kids talk about you ten years from now, what do you want them to say?  Measure others in that way, too.  
- Don't get so distracted by data that you forget the authenticity of learning.  It's not always measurable.

- If you can find a way to make a paper or speech on something a kid likes, you can accomplish the same skills without making them hate or fear it.  Find ways to reduce pressure on kids.  
- When you ask kids to tell you a story, they don't get scared about public speaking.  They are achieving all the elements you would have on your rubric, but there's no fear and loathing because they don't see it as a big deal. (Personal Note to Kellie: I will change my rubric a bit for next year's element speeches.  On the delivery part, I will change PVLEGS to how natural the delivery is to encourage them to be themselves or personify the element naturally.)
- You can reach any standard with creative methods.  If you are with your kids in the store, and you need 11 things (standard), you can say to your kids, "Aliens are coming to destroy the earth.  These are the 11 items we need." (method)  The more creative the method, the less pressur the kids will feel. 

Concurrent Sessions D

Part 1 - The Science of Innovation: Overcoming Obstacles to Creativity in Your Classroom - Anthony J. McCaffrey, PhD

All his students have been diagnosed with some sort of learning impairment.  

uPuzzles (Universal puzzles) can be adapted to any subject matter.

Show a doodle and ask what they see.

When asking people to solve a puzzle, it is difficult to get people to break out of the common use of an object to see how else it could be used.  Asking students to break those objects down into descriptions of their parts might help them see it in a different way.  

When asking people to design something new, they often get fixed on making variations to already established things.  If you are asked to design a new candle, you will probably only change color, size, scent, or shape.  You should focus on what other people have overlooked.

Design puzzles in such a way that the solution includes a feature that is commonly overlooked.

The brain hates nonsense.  It wants to make sense of what it sees and hears.  Nonsense makes the brain work hard.  Sometimes it needs clues, which is why it often becomes clear when someone else says what it is.  

Three degrees of separation among concepts.
Example: Brick and Banana - A brick can be used to make a building.  A supermarket is a kind of building.  Supermarkets sell bananas.  You can do this with vocabulary words in any subject (e.g. Mitosis and Basketball)

Noun-Sense (leads to metaphorical meaning)
Take any two nouns and have students tell what they could mean. (e.g. Diamond messages, Stake puddle, Dictionary treatment, Jello marriage, Drama mitosis)

Memes and Themes
Show a common meme and have kids write the words based on the material.

Strange Line
Give students a strange sentence (He met himself just yesterday.) and ask them to come up with the scenario.  When you present a text, before reading it, give students an interesting line.  Ask them what they think it means with no background or context. (To be or not to be.  That is the question.)  Then, when they are reading, they can find out what it really means.  

Complete the Famous Saying
Ask not what your country can do for you . . .
One small step for man . . .
Then, compare their answers to the real answer.

How did that happen?
Give two unrelated sentences. (The king is dead.  The evergreen trees are flourishing.)  Ask students to give a narrative chain of events to get from one to the other.  If you do it in history, you can use something like "Chauffer takes a wrong turn.  Sixteen million people died."  They fill in the details of how WWI started.  In Biology, you could use "The sun is shining.  People can breathe."

Making Headlines
Give a news story or historical event.  Have kids write the headline.  You could then look at real headlines from the time.

Group Creativity - Brainstorming in groups is not very effective.  Extroverts dominate, and they speak differently depending on who is in the room that they want to impress or don't want to be embarrassed in front of.  Brainstorm alone first.  Come together to share ideas.  Don't brainstorm together.

Shoevolution
Give students a collection of pictures of shoes.  Ask them to design a new shoe with aspects of two others.  Show the new shoes as a new collection of pictures.  Then, have them do it again with the second set of shoes.  Discuss adaptations.  

Brainswarming
Put goal at the top and resources at the bottom.  Figure out where the things can come together to find the solution.

Automaticity is the enemy of creativity.  It is an important neural process for everyday living, like why you can sit in a chair without fear, but it stops you from having new ideas of what to do with that chair.  To overcome automaticity, 

Learning and the Brain Conference - Reaching for Greatness - Saturday

Keynote 3 - Robert J. Sternber, PhD - Teaching for Wisdom, Intelligence, Creativity, and Success

"I've never seen so many people in one place at 8:30 on a Saturday morning, so even if this talk is bad, I've seen that."

Primary Motivation
The people who are smart in unusual ways do not test well.  The goal of instruction and assessment should be to reach all students equitably.  We mistakenly emphasize memory and analytical skills when the skills needed for life are creative, practical, and wisdom-based.  They need to have ideas of their own and an interest in the common good.

Secondary Motivation
Traditional testing emphasizes skills that kids from high socioeconomic status have but not those that kids from low socioeconomic status have, trapping them in a cycle.

WICS model - Wisdom Intelligence and Creativity Synthesized
This should supplement, not replace, traditional techniques.  Memory and analysis still matter; they just shouldn't be overemphasized to the point they are today.

"I got into this business because I crapped out on standardized tests.  They put me into stupid classes where they asked me to do stupid work.  I did stupid work.  They were happy.  I was happy.  Everybody was happy, but it wasn't right."

The world is changing so fast that there must be creative skills to adapt all the time.  You need creative skills and attitudes to come up with ideas.  You need wisdom to ensure your ideas achieve a common good over the short and long terms through the infusion of positive ethical values.

Creativity Intelligence  
- Coming up with ideas that are both novel and useful.  It's partly an ability but it is also an attitude.  - Creative people defy the crowd, themselves, and the zeitgeist.  There is often pressure on teachers to NOT develop that because creative people can be kind of a pain.  We typically try to fit in with the crowd because we don't want to be embarrassed and then regret it and are embarrassed by it later.
- Creative skills can be taught and assessed using words like create, design, invent, imagine, and suppose.  Use these in your projects and test questions.  (e.g. Suppose what it would be like if . . . and write what you think the solution would be).
- Creative people redefine problems in order to analyze solutions and are willing to overcome obstacles.  Recognize that the more creative idea, the less people are going to like it, so you have to believe in and sell it yourself.
- You can learn as much from your students or more than you can from yourself because you may have become entrenched in certain ideas because of your own expertise.  It's hard to be creative in a hyper-analytic world.
- If you want to foster creative thinkers, you have to tolerate ambiguity, help them find what they love, and create an environment in which outside the box thinking is valued.
- To assess creativity, ask yourself to what extent the product is informed, novel, compelling, and task-appropriate.

Analytical Intelligence 
- Ability to makes sense of or see order in complexity or even chaos.
- Important, just shouldn't be focused on at the expense of other skills.
- In the real world, unlike test items, analytical thinking comes in problems that are not predefined, unstructured, and have no multiple choice options.  There isn't one correct answer, and they sometimes come with emotional stakes.  Is there another way you can ask the question that will allow the kids to show the same skill?  Ask how they can see this in their own life and how they would handle it.
- The research shows that those who are good scientific thinkers are not good at the SAT and ACT.
- skills can be taught and assessed using words like analyze, compare and contrast, evaluate, explain, judge, and critique.  (e.g. Critique the ethics of a certain experiment, discussing why you believe that the benefits did or did not outweigh the cost and why.)

Practical Intelligence
- Common sense has almost no correlation with IQ.
- Based on informal and intuitive knowledge
- "You don't have to be the best student in the class to have something to contribute to the world."
- Most of what is important that is learned in a school is not the curriculum or what is directly taught, but the skills of being in an environment like a school
- Practical skills can be taught using words like use, apply, implement, convince, put an idea into practice.
- Teach students to ask these questions to develop practical intelligence.  How can I make this work?  Whose help do I need?  What resources do I need?  What are the obstacles to making this work?  Who will benefit?  Assess based on feasibility of the solution and its persuasiveness. (Personal note:  Remember this for the Global Solutions Project in Physics.)

Wisdom
- You can be smart but unwise through unrealistic optimism, egocentrism, the belief in our own omniscience, omnipotent, or invulnerability, and lack of ethical engagement. (Personal note: I cannot help but think of President Trump through this description.)
- Wisdom is the use of our knowledge, skills, and attitudes toward a common good, balancing the interests of all.  It must involve looking at the bigger picture.
- A wise person considers the long and the short term.  Sometimes you have to take a short-term loss for a long-term gain.
- A wise person seeks an ethical solution to complex problems.
- Dialogical thinking - Understanding other's points of view and how they are similar and different from your own.
- Dialectical Understanding how what is viewed as true or acceptable changes over time and place.
- Wise people seek to understand others and their points of view, feel compassion toward others, and understand all sides of a problem.  They seek to understand not only what they know, but what they do not know and what cannot be known.  They are open to new and possibly uncomfortable experience.
- The increase in emphasis on standardized tests, multiple choice problems, and memory and analytical thinking has led to a generation of leaders who can do those things without wisdom.
- Measurable and objective standards aren't everything.  College admission standards aren't based on height, even though it is measurable and objective.
- To evaluate wisdom based products, look for how the solution was arrived at.  Does it take into account the common good, positive ethical values, long and short-term consequences, and the interests of all?

Successful intelligence is figuring out what you want to do, revising as needed, moving on with new solutions.

Take the same material you already teach and adjust the questions you ask to assess creative, analytical, practical, and wisdom-based thinking skills.  Any teacher can do this.

(Personal note:  This has been my favorite speaker so far.)


Keynote 4 - Yong Zhao, PhD - Personalizable Education for All Children
(Disclaimer of bias:  I am not a fan of personalized education, so I am likely to be skeptical.)

"In my village in China, the IQ test was to ride water buffalos.  I was a terrible water buffalo rider, so I ended up in school."

The "7 keys to college readiness" only make you ready for something that doesn't exist.  It matters what kind of college or what major.  We have these things because we want them out of our basement.  We might as well call it "out of our parents' basement readiness" but it doesn't mean anything.  Yet, we let it drive our education today.  We are still thinking about education as training for more schooling.

First, there was ELA and Math.  Being good at those (SAT) would make you successful.  Then we added social studies and science (ACT).  Then, there were the 4Cs.  "If you don't know the 4Cs, you do not deserve to live in the 21st century.  You didn't have to communicate in the 19th century.  No one in the 14th century had to be creative."  (Obvious sarcasm)  Then, there was IQ v. EQ.  We keep adding things.  If we discover something that's good, we decide everyone should have it.  If all successful people have a certain trait, we decide we have to teach it to everyone.

What makes a person successful? (not people, A PERSON)
- There is no one human trait that makes a person successful.
- That means there is no curriculum that works in all settings, all the time, for all people.  You can prescribe the future.
- "I'm thankful that my father didn't try to give me tutorials on riding the water buffalo to make me more successful."
- How you react to the randomness matters.

- Learning can happen outside of schools.  If you really wanted to learn the equivalent of a college education, you could do it without going to college.  Schools are just the ones who credential that.

- A child does not walk into a future (that we have made them ready for).  They create a future.  

- They are all different.  We should stop trying to make them the same in the name of readiness.  "When you throw a dead bird, you can predict its trajectory.  You can't do that when you throw a live bird."  Kids are live birds, so let's stop treating them like we can predict their trajectory.

- When we prescribe something because it is useful, we are ignoring the fact that other talents could also be useful to that person. (Rudolph the Red-nosed Reindeer)  Not everyone relies on the same set of skills or talents to succeed.  

- The achievement gap cannot be closed by trying to make everyone the same (the problem with percentiles - someone has to be worse than me).  Human nature is to be involved in a community, but the SAT is set up to make you selfish.  The way to do well is to have people worse than you take it at the same time, not necessarily to do well yourself.

- Mass Mediocrity vs. Unique Greatness

(Personal note:  Anyone who tells you to teach to the middle should be slapped.)

If our job is to cultivate unique talents, how do we do that?  We can personalize the learning by giving multiple options, content, time constraints, locations, and perspectives.  You must learn X, but you can decide how and when.  They should be co-owners of their education.  

(Personal note:  I don't know how you fit this into daily, quarterly schedules.  I am also skeptical about letting the child lead because they have an even more limited perspective than we do.  I am on board with some choice and some agency, but there is still value in having the teacher create parameters.  There are things that they won't learn because they don't even know it is out there.)

Traditional school is like making a garden.  If I want to grow roses, I get rid of tulips.  We should be a nature preserve, cultivating and protecting each thing that grows.


Keynote 5 - Ransom W. Stephens, PhD - Your Pursuit of Greatness, Author of The Left Brain Speaks.  The Right Brain Laughs and ebook Your Pursuit of Greatness
(co-discover of the Top Quark - How am I in the same room with these people?)

If I can corrupt you (teachers), it's like exponential growth because the corruption will spread.

Time is like a river.  Your accomplishments, whether they last a few minutes or few millenia, will wash out to sea.  You have about 31000 days in your life.  What will you do with them?

Timescales of existence
- Second - awareness
- Day - action
- Month - billing cycle
- Season - sowing and reaping
- Year - evaluation and perspective
- Decade - accomplishment
- Life - all you get

Personal note:  This is amazing.  I've never thought of time in this way, but it is going to change the way I think about it from now on.  Each brings a different perspective.  If you are worrying, you will be able to change that by looking at it on a different timescale.

"Paradise is easier to find than it is to recognize."  This is why we often look back at a time and remember how great it was and wish we had enjoyed it more at the time.

Ask these questions:  What matters to you?  Why do you NEED money? What will you do?
- How do we acquire ambition?  Ask a 10-year-old.  (When you are 10, you care less about what other people think than you will again until your 40s.)
- Our brains construct reality by using past context and present pattern recognition to make future predictions.
- A pattern is any experience we can realize in less than .2s unless it is something we have never seen before.  This creates one problem:  We tend to recognize patterns even when there isn't one.
- Nature's dilemma - Good, fast, or cheap - Pick two.  Nature chooses fast and cheap because assuming the worst is best for survival.
- Recognizing patterns before we are aware of them leads to prejudice, whether racial, gender, or ideas.  We aren't even conscious of the thought we are already having.
- Two extremes - People who only recognize black and white and aren't burdened by nuance have much prejudice.  People who see everything in shades of gray and find nuance in everything have post-judice.  They are subject to more danger because they are still trying to find the nuance before they make a judgment.  Most of us are in the middle.

The education miracle
- 250000 years ago, people were aware of only months and seasons and only about 30 miles
- 25000 years ago, people were aware of only abou 50 years and only about 100 miles
- Now, peopl are aware of billions of years and about 500000 miles
- K-12 conveys a quarter of a million years of human knowledge

What do we do every day?  Lead a herd of horses to water.  Repeat.  Repeat.  Occasionally, we push their heads down toward the water.

Developing talent into ambition.
Education leads to talent.  If they like it, they want to learn more, looping it back to education and increasing talent.  If you do that often enough, it drives them and becomes an ambition.

Bliss, Blunder, and Fear
We put off our passions and ambitions for fear of failure, believing there is a time when all the resources will be in place to keep us from failing.  When you decide to go for it (or when your students decide to go for it), the worst case scenario is that culture would be better.  No matter what level you get to in the process, even if you ultimately fail, it is a higher level than you are currently at.

Do you have what it takes?  The people who have what it takes have two things in common. Determination and resilience, the ability to survive and overcome failure.
- Resilience comes from failing gently
- The ability to delay gratification overcomes IQ deficits EVERY time.
- Resilience is a skill that can be developed by reflecting on and analyzing success and failure (How did you get there?  How does it inform the next time?) and obstacles.

Be probabilistic, rather than realistic.  You can't do everything you set your mind to, but the odds are you won't set your mind to something you cannot do.

Parent problem:  They say they want their child to "go for it," but they really want them to be safe.  They encourage them to take safe, money making jobs so that they won't have to worry.

Recognize the challenges you have overcome before.  Apply that to the challenge you face now.  Whether you are 8 or 80, you have experienced success at some level before.  Mine the lessons learned from that to tackle the next thing.  List your top 20 greatest accomplishments (dig deep), your 5 worst failures, your top 5 fears and the safety nets you want.  Analyze how you succeeded, got through the failures, used (or are likely to use) the safety nets.  Is our mode of making money going to be our aspiration or just support the pursuit of our aspiration?  Don't think so much about the most catastrophic worst-case scenario.  Think about the most probable one.

Then ask what you are waiting for.  Are you ready?  There will be times when it seems like you don't have a snowball's chance in the Mojave desert, but sometimes it snows in the Mojave.


Concurrent Sessions B
Part 1 - Being Human: Genes, Skills, Values, and Settings - Jerome Kagan, PhD

All negative outcomes require a pattern that involves genetic and experiential vulnerabilities, triggers, and immediate circumstances.  For 90% of the outcomes scientists study, the biggest predictor is the socioeconomic class in which you were reared.  It influences everything from your peers to the quality of food you eat to the books and music you were exposed (or not exposed to).  

Children automatically identify with those of their own class.  The exception is that a very few very poor kids can live without recognizing their poverty.  Some who do become successful suffer from imposter syndrome.

The local circumstances in which you live at the moment a trigger occurs will make a huge difference in the outcome.  The murder rate in Manhatten is slower than that of Chicago because the rich and power mingle more in Manhatten.  The alcoholism rate is high in Russia, so you are more likely to turn to that when you encoutner stress than if you live somewhere where there are fewer alcoholics.  Japan has a high suicide rate, which continues to create more suicidal people.  

Humans' strong frontal lobe allows us to suppress and hide our animus (natural and perosnal feelings, personality traits, and tendencies that come from our biology) so that we will appear normal to others.  Some genetic vulnerabilities result in desirable outcomes, like math, music, or language.  Others result in undesirable outcomes, like cognitive compromises or a low threshold for uncertainty.

Triggers and stressful circumstances create feelings that we may not know how to interpret, so we decide they are anxiety, depression, or shame.  We are actually choosing the language.  It does not represent the biology.  

Each developmental stage is marked by particular talents, emotions, and beliefs.  
- Younger than 8 months, they have poor memories for the immediate past.  They don't really know if something is unusual because they don't yet have a pattern for usual.
- Infants older than 8 months are vulnerable to uncertainty (which is when they start crying when they see a stranger or are separated from the caregiver they are accustomed to).
- The second year is when humans start showing uniqueness. They can start making inferences about the thoughts and feelings of others, start using language to interpret the world, develop some sense of right and wrong, and have awareness of one's feelings, plans, and thoughts.  This is the result of brain growth in the neurons between the halves of the brain.
- Between age four and puberty, children improve at integrating present and past, experiencing guilt, identifying with family members, class, ethnic group, or religion.
- Puberty is accompanied by the ability to think hypothetically, separate possible from less possible causes, and the belief that they have exhausted all solutions to a problem.  Testosterone quiets the amygdala, so boys start responding to stress more calmly than girls do.  
(The sequence of these changes are universal, but the timing changes across various societies and historical eras.  You can't stop them from acquiring the skills, but you might delay or accelerate them.)

Most adults refuse to accept that this progression is a result of accidents without meaning but don't know how to interpret their desire for meaning and struggle to make sense of their life script. 

Kids are confused because they have no meaning attached to their existence.  We went from a belief in something metaphysical as a source of meaning to a belief in authorities.  Then, authorities failed us and we became disillusioned.  Then, evolutionary science made us think we were meaningless accidents.  This generation doesn't have a reason to get out of bed.  This is a crisis.  (Note:  This is not my interpretation of what the speaker said.  It is what he actually said.)


Part 2 - What Makes the Human Mind Special?: Insights from Non-Human Animals - Laurie R. Santos, PhD  
(Disclaimer of Bias: This talk was extraordinarily based in evolutionary psychology.  The phrase non-human animal makes me crazy.  Humans are not just another kind of animal.  Humans are special creations.)

Comparitive cognition:  Studies primates and dogs to compare with human cognition.  
- When first meeting someone new, you will likely ask, "Where are you from?" because we think it tells us something about that person.  
- Rhesus monkeys have a strong social structure.
- Humans have a cultural environment that other animals do not have (except for domesticated dogs because they experience human culture).   

Humans are really weird:  We do things that no other species does.  From the arts to marriage ceremonies to pedagogy to stock trading.  What cognitive capacities allow us to be so weird?  
- Most proposals are that there's some human unique smart congitive capacity (like use of language or tool usage).
- She proposes that there's some human unique glitchy congitive capacity.

- Humans want to get what is going on our heads into someone else's head.  We are the only species that have that.  Just at the end of the first year of life, kids start pointing to get you to look at what they are looking at.  Chimps that sort of point, but it is to get something, not to share an experience.  

- Both humans and animals have behavioral contagion (fish schooling, mirroring behaviors, picking up or losing an accent, unconscious peer pressure).   

- Humans and some animals have emotional contagion that come from behavioral contagion.  We are typically happy around people who smile or act excited.  Yawn contagion and getting the giggles from someone else's laughter seem to come from this.  This is why sit-coms use laugh tracks.  (Personal note:  I have observed this in movie theaters recently.  I had watched Casablanca several times, but there were lines I had not found funny before watching it in a theater with other people who laughed.)

- Chimps have contagious yawning.  Dogs don't really yawn but do mimic the behavior by opening their mouth.  Chimps don't truly laugh but have a heavy breathing that can be heard while they are playing.  They do seem to make these sounds more when another chimp is doing it as well.

What is unique to humans?  

- Mental contagion (like a Vulcan mind meld).  Do we pick up the beliefs and mental states of someone else?  We can mentally represent someone else's thought but keep it separate from our own thoughts (but it can affect what we think as well).  

- There can be interference of your perception when you can tell what someone else's perception is.  

- There can also be interference of your belief if you can tell that someone else believes differently than you do.  

- This happens in the prefrontal cortex of the human brain as well as the areas of the brain in the parietal lobe that represents the thoughts of others.

- Primates can use the perception of others against them.  Rhesus monkeys will steal food from someone who isn't looking because he can tell the person won't know.  A complicated experiment that is too difficult to describe in notes shows that rhesus monkeys do not seem to have their beliefs influenced by the beliefs of others.

- There is, of course, a cost to this.  Other people's bad information might make you unable to solve a problem when you could have solved it on your own.  Teachers must be careful of their bad information because it could be passed on to the student.  In an experiment, children did something they did not need to do when they saw someone else do it, but chimps cut to the chase and skipped unneeded steps even if they saw someone else do them.  Dogs also skip the irrelevant steps.

- Mental contagion allows us to experience culture and like the same books other people do, but it can also make us trust people we shouldn't.

The frightning implications of this are the effects of movies, the internet, and other media may cause kids to absorb the beliefs of what they are seeing represented on a screen.

The positive implication is that your content is probably pentrating more than you think it is.

(Apology for Previous Bias:  I got more out of this than I thought I would.  There was a lot of interesting information in spite of the worldview conflict.)

Part 3 - The Superhuman Minds: How the Science of Savants Shows Us How to Free the Genius in Children - Berit O. Brogaard, PhD, DMSci

Divergent thinking - Synesthesia
An unusal mixing of the senses.  Link color to numbers or sounds.  Link words to tastes.  Runs in families.  

- Grapheme-color synesthesia - The person has very specific colors and brightness associated with numbers that are unique to that individual.  The pop out effect - If shown mixed numbers, they can find the different ones quickly because they appear to be in different colors.  
- Number pattern synesthesia - More likely to choose codes in patterns
- Calendar synesthesia - The calendar is projected in front of them mentally.
- Fear-color synesthesia - Things that present a danger cause your visual field to become clouded.  Serves as a warning system.
- Sound-color synesthesia can be so extreme that it leads to legal blindness in noisy places because it interferes with the visual field.
- Sound-taste synesthesia can make food taste different if you hear certain sounds.
- Person-smell synesthesia - Associates a smell with a person.
- Word sound-shape - a type of synesthesia we seem to all have (Bobo Kiki Question)

Savant - A perosn with a radically enhanced cognitive ability in a narrow subject area.  Occurs in 105 of people with autism and some people with brain injury.
- Kim Peek is lacking the three main connection between the two sides of his brain.  No knowledge defects were apparent.  He was known as a megasavant or human encyclopedia.
- Human computers Kay and Fro could tell you exactly what they ate and were wearing or what the host of a game show was wearing on a specific date.
- Daniel Tammet knows Pi to 23000 digits and can calculate at high speeds.
- Card counters can sometimes keep track of 8 decks at the same time in a game of blackjack.
- Derek Amato - a salesman who had never played the piano.  He injured his brain diving into a pool.  When he woke up, he had an intense desire to play a piano, so he went to a piano store and started playing.  A year later, he had released to albums and was on a world concert tour.

Colored refrigerator magnets where different letters are different colors could actually induce synesthesia in some children.

Perfect pitch is strongly correleated with Sound-Color Synesthesia.

Personal note:  This lady seems to be interested in causing kids to have synesthesia.

Use of color can use learning and memory even if your brain is neurotypical.
- Red draws attention.  Marking mistakes in red draws the child's attention to them and may reinforce the mistake.  Write key points in red.  Write homework lists in red.
- Green and blue produce calm because of their short wavelength.
- Orange and yellow lift mood.  Orange tinted glases have made depressed people feel better.
- Use blue paper for especially complex information because it enhances understanding.

Ask kids to write with word pictures.  Instead of saying, "She is afraid," write, "Her eyes were wide, breath quickened, every muscle in her body felt tight."

Give kids prompts of things that don't typically belong together (internet, skiing, your teacher's desk) and have them write a science fiction story.

In case you are having trouble following these notes, she was a little jumbled and her slides had conversion problems, so I had a hard time taking coherent notes.

How can we create flow in the classroom?  Playing a game