Keep the Questions Coming

I go to church downtown, so I park my car in a deck and then walk a block to the church.  Between the parking deck and the church building is a Marbles Children's Museum, and Sunday is a big day for them.  As a result, I see a lot of families with young children.  

This week, a family was slowly making its way down the stairs because their son (who appeared to be three or four) had short legs, and stairs are made for taller people.  He looked up at his dad and said, "Why are stairs hard?"  In the half block I walked behind them, I saw him point to a tree and say, "What kind of tree is that?"  He put his hand on a public scooter and said, "Is this the motor?"  He looked down at the gutter as he stepped off the cure and said, "Where did all the leaves come from?" and "What's that thing?" (There was a piece of metal in the pile of leaves, and I don't know what it was either.)  He pointed to a parked bike and said, "What kind of bike is that?"  He pointed at a helium tank and said, "How is there a gas station on the sidewalk?"  

This kid is my people.  

He's clearly part of a family that values his questions because his dad answered them all, even explaining the difference between the helium tank and "a gas station."  His older sister wasn't asking a million questions, but she didn't seem to think it was odd.  She just happily skipped in front of them.  Little kids want to understand the world, and they ask a ton of questions because they have no self-consciousness about not knowing.  

Most people as fewer questions as they get older (those of us that don't become science teachers), and there are a few reasons for that.

• We have answers to the most common questions, so we don't have to point to things on the street and ask about them.
• We have some prior knowledge about more things, so we can do a lot of asking and speculating inside our own minds, leading to asking fewer questions out loud.
• We stop caring about things that don't impact our wallets.  This one makes me the saddest, and you know it has happened when students start asking about when they will use something in real life.  We didn't care about that when we were young, and it only changed because an adult told us it should.
• We start to feel insecure about what we don't know.  This four-year-old didn't think he should already know the answers to the questions he was asking, so he had no fear in asking them.  As we get older, we're afraid we'll look dumb if we ask a question because we assume our peers already know the answer.
• We stop thinking of pure curiosity as a virtue.

Teachers, we can't control all of these factors, but we do have some level of control over our classroom environment.  

• The first and most important thing we can do is model our own curiosity.  When you wonder about something, wonder aloud.  Ask your students; they will love it if they know the answer to something you don't.  When they see adults being curious about something just out of interest, not because it makes them better at their job or makes them more money, it can keep them engaged in asking questions.  
• Help them to recognize that there are deeper questions to be asked about everything.  Just because a student has the answer to a surface-level question doesn't mean there is nothing more to be asked.  When I ask a question, so students like to give them the most basic and accessible answer possible.  My most frequent follow-up is, "So then how does that happen?"  They need to know that saying "A plant makes energy through photosynthesis" isn't the end of the story.  There are between 3 and 300 more questions to be explored beyond that level.
• Make it okay to "ask a stupid question."  Please don't tell them there is no such thing as a stupid question; it's just untrue.  However, there is nothing wrong with asking about something you do not know.  When other students react badly, point out that we all have things we don't know and that the only way to find out is to ask.  (Again, if you have modeled this in your own life, the atmosphere of your classroom will be different.  My middle school history teacher, Mr. Watkins, used to talk about things from the Mini-Page, a weekly insert in our local newspaper aimed at children.  When someone in our class asked why he would read the Mini-Page, he said, "because there are things in it that I didn't know before.")
• Explicitly state that curiosity matters.  I've always been curious, but perhaps the most important thing my 9th-grade science teacher, Mr. Sandberg ever said to me was, "This curiosity you have is an important part of you."  He made it clear that it wasn't just a good thing or a fun thing, but it was an important thing.  The fact that he said to me in the 9th grade mattered a lot because that is the time when the utilitarian shift tends to happen.

Ask questions.  Answer questions.  Respect questions.  Love questions.  Do whatever you can to keep the questions coming.

The Things They Notice (and Don't)

If you have taught longer than a day, you've had this experience.  I had it this week.  A student commented on something in our schedule (we have lunches differently this year than we have in th past), so I spent a minute explaining why we had made that change.  At the end of my explanation, she said, "Why did we change the length of lunch this year?"  I said, "I just explained it . . . to you.  Specifically, I was explaining to you."  She didn't even notice that I had been talking, much less that I had been addressing her.

In this case, it didn't matter much because the reason for the schedule change isn't particularly important.  But, we all know that this happens with other things too.  You can spend ten minutes going through a lengthy explanation of a complex topic, only to have a student raise their hand and ask you about the thing you had just been talking about as though it was brand new.  I have sometimes turned to the nearest child to me and said, "When I talk, words come out, right?"  When they confirm that words did indeed come out, I say, "Are they in English?"  

You'd be tempted to think students just don't pay attention to anything, but then you have experiences that make you realize that is a wrong assumption as well.  They'll ask you about something you were wearing three days ago or ask about your cat.  I overheard this piece of a  conversation between two 8th-grade boys a couple of weeks ago.  One said, "I don't think she ever sits down.  I've never seen her sit."  The other replied, "There was that one time during a test."  So they are observant about what I'm doing perhaps more than what I've said.

I guess the trick is to harness the power of their observation skills and figure out how to get them to observe content-related things.  If you figure it out, let me know.  I'll let you know if I do.

Collaboration - An Evolving Process

I know I already posted a blog this week, but I am currently in our library watching Mrs. Wingerd, our wonderful librarian as she guides my students through research for their NASA papers.  I've written about the NASA paper a million times before, but I am thinking today about how the collaboration I have had on this paper has changed over the years.  I've worked with five different people (three English teachers and two librarians) on this project over the years.

One of the things that made me think about this was the instruction I was giving the kids about writing from a Biblical worldview (In case you didn't know, I teach in a Christian school).  I was pointing out that this did not mean they had to include a specific Bible verse.  The first time I partnered with an English teacher on this paper (when it was still about whether or not we should go to Mars), she insisted that they quote a verse in their writing.  Since there is no verse specifically about space exploration, you can imagine the myriad of misinterpretations (bordering on heresy) I got from this requirement.  There is a verse in Psalms, for example, that says "the earth belongs to man and the heavens belong to the Lord."  Since 8th-grade students have little nuance, they said, "This means that we should not go to space."  That is not, of course, remotely close to what David had in mind when he wrote these words because that would have been rather confusing to an ancient audience.  When she left and I started partnering with a different teacher, I asked her if we could find a different way to ask kids to write from a Biblical worldview than insisting on a verse, and I have gotten much deeper and more interesting results.

A few years ago, the 8th-grade English teacher I conspired with suggested changing the paper from "Should NASA put a crew on Mars?" to "What should NASA prioritize spending its budget on."  She said to me, "Ten years ago, the Mars paper made sense, but we're going to Mars.  Now it's not an issue of if but when."  She was right, and I'm not sure how long it would have taken me to change it if she had not made that point.  It also resulted in MUCH more interesting papers.  When it was the Mars paper, there were only two options - Yes and No - so I was reading the same basic paper over and over again.  When I ask students what the top three priorities should be for NASA spending, they have a wide variety of thoughts.  Many still making putting a crew on Mars one of their points, but others talk about cleaning up orbital debris, space telescopes, planetary probes, studying black holes, the DART program, returning to an American rocket for sending humans into space, etc.  It's far deeper thinking and much nicer to grade."

One of my best collaborators on any project is our librarian, which is why we are here today.  She has already talked to them about databases and resources other than Google.  She has shown them how to sign up for an appointment with a writing mentor (high school students who are strong writers).  She has created a pathfinder of links to good credible sources that are places to start.  She has pulled some books for them.  In a couple of weeks, she will come to my classroom and talk to them about parenthetical citations and works cited pages.  She can do that in a way this science teacher can't, so it allows them to be trained in better work than if I were the only one showing them things.

I collaborate with Mrs. Wingerd on a number of things, from a speech my 8th graders do about elements to my physics students' 3D printed spinning tops.  We are able to do more for our students as a result of this collaboration.

Part of Something Larger

 I've been teaching about the history of NASA this week, and I was reminded of this story from 1962.  John F. Kennedy was touring what would later be called the Kennedy Space Center, and he introduced himself to a man carrying a broom.  "What do you do here?" he asked this man who was clearly a maintenance worker.  "I'm helping put a man on the moon, Mr. President," was his reply.  This man understood that he was making a contribution larger than himself.  In order for NASA to exist, someone had to empty trashcans and sweep up messes and unclog toilets, and the million other things janitors do to keep a building in operation.

The longest-lasting architectural project ever undertaken was the construction of the Cologne Cathedral in Germany.  Construction began in 1248 and was not completed until 1880.  While there were years where no work was done, that's 632 years from start to finish (continuously for the first 200 of them).  Imagine how little progress a mason must have felt he was making while laying bricks in those first few years.  He wouldn't see the spires rising into the sky, drawing people's attention upward as they worshipped the Creator.  He wouldn't have seen the incredible stained glass windows that communicate Bible stories to people who couldn't read.  He would not have seen the heavy doors through which people would pass into this artistic masterpiece.  He would have seen the bottom few layers of stone and needed faith to recognize that he was part of something bigger than just his part.  Generations of bricklayers and glass makers and lumberjacks and artisans would be a part of this massive construction.

As teachers, we have to hold this same mindset.  While it may not be on the scale of a Moon landing or a gothic cathedral (or who knows, maybe it is - someone taught those people too), we are making a contribution to the lives of students and their families and the other people they influence.  We are not, however, the only ones involved in this building project.  They had teachers before me and will have teachers after me.  They have family members and church workers and scout leaders and friends participating in the building of their lives.  We may not be able to see the people they will eventually become, but if we recognize we are part of something larger than ourselves, we will make decisions differently.  We will do our work with excellence when we recognize the foundation we are laying for someone else to build on.  

Keeping that in mind might help you persevere when grading gets tiring and lesson plans feel tedious.

  

Change for All Because of the Few?

A few weeks ago, I was in a meeting where a policy change was being discussed.  One of the members of the meeting said, "If we are going to make a change, it should be because it will benefit all or almost all students.  We should not design a policy around the few who will take advantage of the current system."  This obviously reasonable idea is not as universally accepted as you might think.  Most would probably agree with the sentence if you posed it to them, but in practice, they design most of their policies around a few exceptions.

This week, I've been following a fascinating discussion on Twitter about homework that illustrates this idea.  There may be no more divisive topic in education than whether homework is a good or bad thing.  The research is unclear because the different designs of various studies and types of homework will allow you to claim research is on your side either way.  If you hate homework, you can go pick the study in which students were asked to memorize nonsense syllables or color in a worksheet for the sake of having something to do at home and find that it didn't result in increased achievement, giving you permission to say, "See, research shows that homework is bad."  If you want to defend homework, you can find the study that was carried out under ideal conditions with perfect questions that don't reflect classroom conditions in any way, giving you permission to say, "See, homework is critical."  If you consider that we have been using this tool for decades, it is worth examining its purpose and use because there are some who resist change and others who believe in change for no other reason than the belief that newer is always better.

Well, this week, education blogger and host of the podcast Progressively Incorrect, Zach Groshell, decided to host a Twitter conversation on the topic of homework and homework bans.  Now, Zach has a Ph.D. in instructional design and works as an instructional coach, so he has both experience and expertise in this area, but on social media, that doesn't matter.  The structure of social media means I can assert that my ignorance is as valuable as your expertise; so despite his best efforts, the conversation didn't remain one of professional debate about research or how to design meaningful learning experiences as homework.  It devolved into name-calling and emotional rants.  Zach's main premise was that, in addition to homework's function as retrieval practice or extended learning, it was a form of free communication with parents about what is going on in their child's classroom and a tool for parents to assess how their child is doing. I confess that these were not points I had ever considered, but it does make sense that after ten minutes of going over vocabulary words with their 3rd-grader, a parent would know what was being covered in class and know if their child was struggling with those concepts.

What I most noticed, though, was that the theme of the negative responses was about the exceptions.  "What about students who have jobs?" and "But my dyslexic child's experience is . . ." and "How dare you assume all parents can help their students."  I was impressed by Zach's ability to remain engaged in the conversation (I would have muted it pretty quickly) and to respond rationally and calmly to comments that would have raised my blood pressure and brought out my inner snark.  His most common reply was, "We shouldn't remove a tool that is valuable for most because of exceptions; we should design ways to support the exceptions."  He suggested ways to support those for whom homework was not a valuable tool that were doable and scalable because he has experience in this area, but that only brought about accusations of burdening teachers.  One of his replies was particularly interesting because it tackled the idea that just because something feels equitable doesn't mean it is because if we eliminated this tool, the wealthiest would replace it by hiring tutors for their kids while those who couldn't afford that would have stopped receiving it for free.  He also brought up the idea that lowering the standard being met by the top performers will only look like it is closing the achievement gap, giving us a false sense of progress.

That part of this conversation took me back in my mind to a time when "teach to the middle" was a commonly heard phrase.  The idea was that you had a range of students in your class, so you had to design your teaching around the center.  Thankfully, I don't hear that much anymore because it is kind of crazy; it means you constantly chase a moving target depending on what the range in your particular class is.  This is why standards exist.  You should teach to the standard and then provide help and scaffolding for those who struggle to meet that standard.  What we should be saying is, "Teach the best and support the rest."

Around midnight, Zach thanked everyone for the conversation and provided a link to resources on how to design good homework policies, showing far more grace than I could have.  I hope people will respond to his grace by considering what he said rather than just being defensive about their own ideas.  I hope they will consider whether we should design policies around the exceptions or whether we should decide what best meets our goals.  I hope people will consider designing valuable homework rather than submitting to the two extremes of "ban for everyone" vs. "homework for homework's sake."  I hope teachers will use their professional judgment about whether to grade an assignment rather than feeling they must grade them all or grade none of them.  I hope people will resist making a change for everyone because of a few but will embrace giving the few what they need.