Modeling What You Teach

Because we have used the word "mandate" a lot in the past two years, I think we have come to believe that we weren't all subject to mandates before.  We have a lot of them, from daily things like clocking in and out on your job to the ones that may only happen a few times, like mandatory TB tests.  A stop sign is a mandate that restricts your freedom for the safety of the community.  For my entire life, I have entered restaurants with signs reading "No shirt, no shoes, no service" without viral videos of barefoot individuals hassling the hostess about it.  Rules and mandates, even those we disagree with, are simply a part of living in a civil society.  I remember a middle school teacher telling us that he had a right to swing his arm back and forth as much as he wanted but that his right ended where my nose began.  He couldn't punch me in the face and then claim that I was restricting his right to swing his arm.  

When you are a kid, you think that you won't have to deal with rules as an adult.  If anything, there are more rules when you are an adult, and the consequences are far greater.  For my entire adult life, I have had traffic rules (can't drive on whichever side of the road I want), camp rules (can't have a bottle of aspirin in the same room as kids), school rules (can't leave kids unattended), travel rules (had to have a yellow fever vaccine and MMR booster when I went to Zambia), and the simple rules of living in the world (can't streak through Moore Square).  Rules aren't new, and they are necessary.  

As a teacher, I have had many, many, many conversations with my students about rules.  One of the most important things I teach them is what to do when they disagree with a rule.  Their first instinct is to ignore it or disobey it while complaining about it.  I always ask them if they believe I agree with every rule I have to follow.  They assume that I do.  For the record, I do not.  It's not possible to agree with every rule that I am subjected to.  There are simply too many made by too many people for that to even be a thing.  But I talk to them about the right way to go about dealing with those kinds of situations.  If I really care deeply about the rule with which I disagree, I go to my authorities to discuss it and present my case or do what I can to get the rule changed by going through proper channels.  If I do not care enough about it to go through that kind of process, then I just follow the rule and hush.  I'm not talking about a rule that is illegal or immoral; that's a different and rare scenario.  I'm just saying that you don't have to agree with a rule to follow it.  Most of the rules we are talking about aren't immoral.  They are just things we don't like or don't understand or aren't the way we would do it if we were in charge.  When I worked in child care, I thought it was really stupid that we were required to keep medication in a locked box on a high shelf inside a locked closet in a room with children who couldn't yet crawl; yet I kept this regulation because it was not immoral.  When I have this conversation with students, it is good that I have these examples because they need to know that their teachers are humans with opinions but also people who submit to authority.

I intentionally did not name this post "Practice what you preach" because I think this goes deeper than that simple cliché conveys.  We aren't just talking about hypocrisy; we're talking about teaching.  When you model something different than what you say, you teach kids that what you say doesn't mean anything.  If I tell them to follow rules with which they disagree, but then I only follow the rules I agree with, I have undermined any ability to enforce the rules I have written in my own class.  I have taught them, but I haven't taught them what I hoped.  It would be like telling them how to solve a physics problem but then doing it a different method on the board for every example and then expecting them to do it the way I said on their test.  That would be confusing and unfair.  The same is true when you try to exert authority while undermining the authority of others.  

Change Prompts Change

I have had variations on the same conversation 7 times this week.  I have appointments to have it again two more times this week.  It's a conversation with 8th-grade students about their study habits.  See, the last year of middle school is when things change.  From kindergarten through 6th grade, there is an age-appropriate level of thinking that largely involves memorization and observation.  Application and analysis is usually a teacher-guided process.  In the 7th grade, application becomes more prevalent on assessments (e.g interpret this weather map), but it is still a relatively small part of a test, so students still rely heavily on flashcards and quizlet for their study.

Teachers of 8th-grade students have a responsibility that we take very seriously.  We have to turn our middle school students into high school students by the end of the year.  The percentage of application and analysis-based questions and skills increases dramatically, and good students are thrown a bit off balance.  While I talk to them about this as part of the class and during test reviews, it seems to only sink in during these one-on-one conversations.  I start each one by asking them what they currently do to study.  About 90% of them have the same answer.  "I look over my notes and use Quizlet (or flashcards)."  I ask them what it means to look over their notes and what value that provides (very little, if any).  We talk about the value of Quizlet and flashcards because they do have value for the types of questions that have one-word answers and definitions.  

Then, we talk about the tools that need to be added to their toolbox.  I advise that they start by writing down everything they can remember from the chapter.  Comparing this to the book/notes will help them narrow down what they need to study most.  Then, we talk about how learning a fact is valuable only because of how the facts fit together or how they fit into a pattern or how they inform a skill they will be applied to.  The best students are often surprised by the "think outside the book" approach, but when they grasp it, they become stronger learners in a way that pays off in high school and college.  It's a painful process, but it is worth it.  Growth is never linear, and it involves fits and starts; but I hope they recognize the long-term value of what they are doing because it isn't just about the test they have Thursday.  It isn't even just about my class.  It's about the definition of learning and the meaning of all information.  No fact is an island.  It all fits into your life according to a pattern.

Changes in the way tests are written should cause students to change their study habits.  Changes in data should change the advice scientists give.  Changes in relationships should change the way we communicate.  Changes in the world changed the way we taught last year.  Change for the sake of change is stupid, but change in response to change is prudent and necessary.  We must ask ourselves how our practices fit into the larger pattern.

Sometimes - Intuition Is Wrong

Last week, I wrote about normal classroom practices that are completely backed up by scientific research in the hopes that you could be encouraged in what you are already doing and also be more intentional about doing it, knowing that it is effective.  Today, I want to talk about some things that we've been doing wrong (or just as importantly telling kids to do wrong) because, when studied scientifically, they turned out to be ineffective.

Read the chapter again - When a student doesn't do well on a test at the beginning of the year, I ask them to come in and talk with me about studying.  I always start with the question, "What do you currently do to study."  There answer is almost always, "I re-read the chapter" or "I go over my notes."  We all know this isn't how to memorize something because we don't apply it to anything else we want to remember.  If you have to type in a number in a few seconds, you don't just look at it again.  You repeat it over and over out loud as you walk across the room to your computer.  If you are in a play, you don't read the script again to learn your lines.  You put the script down and try to remember the line.  Then, you pick it back up to check and see if you were right.  It's called retrieval practice, and it is highly effective.  I tell my students RECALL beats REREAD every time.  

Group by learning style - This is the myth that will not die.  It started when I was in middle school.  You had to take a test to learn your personal style, and teachers felt pressured to cater each lesson to each style, which is completely untenable.  I remember being in groups that were specifically designed to have one person from each learning style in it, even though no research had ever remotely suggested that teachers do that.  Parents still tell me their child's learning style when I meet with them, and many teachers still believe in it.  Brain science, however, is clear.  There is no such thing as a person whose brain behaves differently if they prefer to learn from visuals than if they prefer to learn from listening.  Their brains are not more active when being taught in their preferred style.  One of the reasons for the staying power of this myth is that dual coding (teaching with multiple modalities at the same time) IS effective.  That's why many teachers will tell you they see benefits when teaching with multiple styles.  The conclusion they are drawing is wrong when they could stress less by understanding the difference.  Teaching with strong visuals attached to our words helps all students.  You can create one strong lesson that pairs visuals with words (whether written or auditory) and give every brain a chance to process the information through two different parts of their brain.  You don't have to cater your teaching to individual students when catering it to the material is so much more effective.

Brainstorm in groups - Since we starting making group work the gold standard of education (which it is sometimes, but not always), we have encouraged group brainstorming with the belief that we can get more ideas from a group than we can from individuals.  The research shows the opposite result.  When people brainstorm together in groups, there are fewer unique ideas, and the idea that the group ends up going with is usually the least creative idea.  This comes from social pressure.  A more introverted person is less likely to present their ideas to the group and more likely to go along with the majority even if they don't agree.  Once a person perceived as a leader puts their idea into the mix, the group tends to go along with it and stop presenting anything else.  This doesn't mean work can't be done in groups, but if you want more ideas and more creativity, it is best to let people brainstorm on their own for fifteen minutes, to write down their ideas, and then to have all ideas read to the group without responding to any of them until they have all been heard.  The research shows that this practice will result in more solutions and that the group will be more likely to gravitate to the best one, not just the one presented by the most vocal person.

Highlight and underline - I'll admit that this one surprised me.  I was shocked to learn that it is not just ineffective, it has a negative effect (meaning highlighting and underlining makes it less likely you will remember it).  I've always been a person who read information texts with a pencil in my hand, ready to underline anything I liked and wanted to revisit.  That's a good practice if you are going to have a discussion on a book or plan to write a blog post on it and need to be able to find material to reference.  It's a bad practice if you are going to have a test on what you are reading.  By underlining the text, you have told your brain that it doesn't need to remember the information because it will be easy to find when you need it again.  Meanwhile, it instills a false sense of confidence because since you highlighted it, you believe you confirmed its importance and know it well.  

Extensive and detailed note-taking - Should students take notes?  Yes.  When done properly, it helps them maintain focus and gives them a guide for later study.  Do most students take notes well?  No.  I don't know about your students, but mine come to me with a belief that copying every word I project (and nothing else) is note-taking.  I sometimes intentionally move on from a slide before they can get everything down in order to break them of this habit.  When they ask, "Should we write this down," the answer I give is less than satisfying because it is, "You might."  On the rare occasion that I do want to students to copy an entire slide, I stop talking and give them time to do so.  When I tell students they should have things I said in their notes, they are surprised because it wasn't projected.  There is one lesson of the year in which the only thing I project the entire period is a diagram of the human ear.  We spend thirty minutes talking about each part's function and how it relates to the other parts, symptoms of problems with each part, and how the ear is also responsible for our sense balance.  One year, at the end of this rich conversation, my students said, "We didn't take any notes today.  What are you going to ask about on the test?"  They should have been taking notes the entire time, but because I had only projected the diagram, they thought they didn't need to write anything down.  Proper notes should point students back to the detailed information.  They should not be able to study using their notes alone.  It should point them to page numbers and reference videos on the LMS.  It should prompt their memory, not replace it.

Last week's post was meant as an encouragement.  This one is not intended to be discouraging, but it should serve as a challenge to keep current on the best research about education and not assume that just because you did things a certain way that it is the only way or even the best way.  

When Research Supports Instinct

There are many times when I read an educational research study and think, "I could have saved them some money."  That's because much of the time, the results of an experiment just confirm what we have been instinctively doing.  

(Sometimes it doesn't.  That's next week's post.)

Teachers are, by nature, experimenters.  We try new things.  If they work, we do them again.  If they don't work, we might refine it and give it one more shot with the next class.  When we teach for a while, we find a lot of things that work and a lot of things that don't, and we like passing that wisdom on to younger teachers.  We also see that fads come and go, but solid pedagogy stays.  In the 23 years I have been teaching, I have seen the same fad return four times with a different name; so when I sit in a meeting or PD workshop in which everything old is downplayed in favor of something new or hear people say, "This is the direction education is headed," I can't help but laugh.  Meanwhile, some of the basic techniques of education have stayed around since Socrates.  

There are things we just know, so when we see it backed up by research, it should be affirming and allow us to practice those techniques with more intentionality.  It's one of the reasons I love to attend Learning and the Brain.  I may not agree with everything every speaker says, but I know that they are not just parroting buzzwords or fads, and they can send me to the actual experimental data.  While they present new ideas, they also embrace what has been working for decades and explain why it has always worked. 

Here are a few practices you have been using intuitively that you can feel confident about because the research now shows us why it works.

1.  Daily, Weekly, Unit Review Questions - Teachers have opened class each day by asking questions about what we learned yesterday for as long as there has been schooling.  We knew that connecting what was learned yesterday to what is being learned today was a helpful practice.  Now, we know why.  The research on retrieval practice is clear.  The act of trying to recall information increases myelin on the brain cells, making them stronger and able to work more efficiently.  Actors know this, which is why they learn their lines by putting the script down and trying to remember them.  Doing this daily, weekly, and before a test also allows for spacing and interleaving, both of which current research supports.  Keep doing these things when someone downplays "drill and kill" because whether it is in fashion or not, it is good for the human brain.

2.  Breaking Things Down - We were chunking and scaffolding before we started calling it that.  Teachers have always divided large projects into parts with mini-deadlines.  In addition to holding students accountable, the research shows that the reason it is helpful is the reduction of cognitive load.  There are only so many things we can hold in our working memory, so breaking things down allows the brain to work at capacity (something called desirable difficulty) without trying to overload it.  Providing support while students develop a skill and then removing the support after it has become part of their practice reduces cognitive load.  This point was driven home for me during hybrid learning last year.  The first few weeks, the tech part of hybrid teaching was overwhelming.  I had to remember to turn on certain things and make sure the computer wasn't muted except when switching to the iPad for a demonstration when the computer had to be muted to avoid feedback that sounded like an alien invasion.   In the beginning, I had all of this written down, but after a couple of weeks, I knew what to do and could focus on other things because the cognitive load had been reduced.  It works the same way for students.  Supports they may need at the beginning will not be necessary after practice.

3.  Guided Practice Followed by Independent Practice - If there is anything this physics teacher knows, it is that for any new math skill, I must follow these steps.  First, I do an example while students watch and copy.  Second, we do a few together as a group with students providing the next steps as I write.  Third, students work on a problem while being allowed to ask questions of me and each other.  Finally, students do a problem themselves.  Math teachers have always known this works, but the research shows why.  It involves scaffolding, engages metacognition, allows for a growth mindset to be encouraged, and allows for retrieval practice.

4. Growth Mindset - Speaking of growth mindset, Carol Dweck's work served to solidify what teachers and coaches have always known.  Attitude matters.  How many classrooms have posters on their wall with something like "Your attitude determines your altitude" or "Whether you think you can or think you can't, you're right"?  Coaches have long encouraged players to visualize themselves making the shot perfectly.  Music teachers have more faith than anyone because they listen to the cacophony that starts the year and know it will be music by Christmas.  More importantly, they make the players believe it will be music one day.  Teachers have said, "You'll get there" to their struggling students because we know that the belief that appropriate hard work has a result is critical to learning something new.  The work of John Hattie shows that nothing has more impact than the teacher's belief that they can be effective.  That means the growth mindset of the teacher matters more than any other technique or practice.  

Teachers, our job is hard, and the pandemic has made it harder.  Sometimes, the professional development we engage in is fantastic, and sometimes it is crushing because it makes us believe that we are failing if we aren't always chasing the newest fad.  Please know that you have instinctively been doing a lot right for a long time.  While you want to grow, don't reject those established things you know to be effective.  Let the diagram below show you how your common everyday practices are scientifically proven to be the right things.

Perspective Is Key

 A friend of mine showed me a text from a friend of hers who had recently been substituting.  She said several things, but she ended with "teachers are saints, and cell phones should be banned in schools."  I've thought about this message a couple of times because I wondered if other parents took on a week or two of subbing if they would walk away with a similar thought.  Would people who have texted their children during the school day or insisted that their child must have their phone on in case of an emergency feel differently if they had 30 kids in front of them?  Would the change of position change their perspective?  Would a change of perspective cause a change of opinion?

We are all influenced by a wide variety of things, from DNA to parenting to culture to religion to formative experiences.  We have overt opinions, and we have biases of which we are not even consciously aware.  Infants as young as 8 days old have biases about the flavor of foods.  This isn't wholly a bad thing as we couldn't get through the day without certain automatic assumptions.  The people who bother me most are those unwilling to acknowledge that they have biases.  I encounter this a lot among scientists.  They believe they approach their work without bias because they know they are supposed to.  The problem with that belief is that it prevents them from taking steps to mitigate the effects of bias.  I also have some stubborn friends and family members who won't admit that unconscious bias exists, to which I want to reply, "How would you know?  It is, by definition, unconscious."  Again, the problem with believing that your perspective doesn't influence your opinions is that it leaves you believing your perspective is the only one and that anyone who disagrees with you is ignorant.  

While there are some first-dgree issues to which we must stubbornly cling, those are fewer than our behavior would reflect.  When the opportunity to challenge our assumptions arises, we should absolutely take a moment to examine our perspective.  There are many things that don't bother me as a middle-aged white woman that might be quite offensive if I were a 17-year-old black male.  Those are quite obviously different perspectives.  When a religious person interprets the results of a scientific experiment, he will do so differently than an atheist interpreting the same results.  They are both biased and coming at the data from their perspective, and they should both be willing to challenge that perspective as they examine the results.

We live in a world where people do not take the time to challenge their assumptions.  We rarely listen to the perspective of another person with a motive to learn, only to object.  Social media hasn't helped.  We all view it a a platform for our voice, but we rarely use it to educate ourselves about the reasons for another position.  I can't think of an issue that isn't currently divisive along party lines. We will never heal this problem without a willingness to listen to each other and challenge our own perspective (or at the very least acknowledge that our stance is informed by our perspective and might be different if we had different life experiences).

How can we, as educators, train our students in this?  First, as always, we must model it.  When a question comes up about a controversial issue, we should not just spout our own opinion.  We should give the reasons for our opinions and talk about how we would likely feel differently if we had different information.  We should ask them, not only what they think about an issue, but why they think it.  We should then ask them if they can see how they might feel differently if they came from a different family or attended a different school.  If we don't ask them to challenge their assumptions and show them how we do, the world will only become more entrenched.