Don't Cause Your Own Stress

This week, we had our first community-building group of the school year.  My group is 8th graders, and the deans had given us a little activity.  Students were given the outline of a t-shirt that was divided into squares that were meant to be filled in with favorites - favorite color, fruit, song, movie, etc.  For most students, this was what it was meant to be, a fun activity.  

One student stressed over it the whole time. 

• "Do I have to do it?"  Well, yes, this is what we are doing today.  
• "Can I just write words in the square?"  Some of them could be that, but maybe make the words fun.  The example shows how you can do that.
• "I can't draw."  No one is looking for great artwork.  Just have fun with it.

She finally gave it a half-hearted effort and did a pretty good job, but what I noticed was how she turned something that was meant to be relaxing into a stressful experience because she couldn't see how she could enjoy something even if she wasn't awesome at it.  She created her own stress because of her performative way of thinking.

This experience brought to mind a student that I had a few years ago who created her own stress in a different way.  Every day in middle school contains good moments and bad moments, events that make you smile and events you find mildly irritating.  Most students ride the waves of these small ups and downs pretty smoothly because they react to minor things in minor ways (and with some exceptions - they are hormonal after all - save the major reactions for major upsets).  This student, however, turned the little waves of the day into tidal events.  The slightest annoyance, like a student behind her putting their feet on her chair legs, was met with a dramatic response.  One day, I said to her, "I'm going to need you to learn how to level your responses.  You react to everything at a level 9 or 10, and that was a 2 at best."  

When I joined the Y in March, or every new class I took, I approached the instructor and said, "I've never done this before.  What do I need to know?"  Most instructors answered me with information - how to set my bike, what size weights I would need, etc.  These were all important, but the best answer came when I took cardio kickboxing for the first time and approached Matt with that question.  He said, "Well, first of all, don't take yourself too seriously."  This was good advice for someone who was about to execute every move incorrectly.  If I thought I had to be good at everything to enjoy it, I would never have found this source of joy in my life.

Life is stressful in a lot of ways, but we don't have to make it more stressful for ourselves.  Stop thinking everything is bigger than it is, more important than it is.  Enjoy things for the sake of doing them rather than the outcome.  Let the stress you experience come from external sources.  Don't make rules for yourself that cause your more stress.

Stop with the Pyramid - Remembering is Sometimes "Higher" Than Understanding

As a teacher of 8th graders, I operate as a preparer - a trainer of students for high school.  They come to me as middle schoolers with middle school mindsets, but it is my job to morph them into high school students by the end of the year - mostly as it relates to study skills.  

They are used to pretty weak studying, and the techniques they have used in the past have brought them some degree of success due to the nature of the tests they have taken.  This is not a criticism of their K-7th grade teachers.  The tests they have been taking were age-appropriate, but they need to add tools to their toolbox.  While I devote some class time to giving study advice and test-taking advice, I also end up having a couple of dozen meetings with students after their first and second tests (and a few after the third when the ones who had thought it would go away if they ignored it realize that strategy isn't working).

During these meetings, I always start with the same question.  "What does studying look like for you?"  Ninety percent of the answers are, "I look over my notes" and "I re-read the chapter."  We talk about the ineffectiveness of that strategy and how their time would be better spent on retrieval practice.  I recommend flashcards as though I had stock in the index card companies.  Flashcards, however, are only good for what they are good for - information in which the answer is rather short.  So, this year, I added another question to this conversation.  "How do you prepare for the questions that are likely to be (or that your teacher has explicitly told you are) short answer or essay questions?"

Wow, did this question ever get me a lot of blank stares.  Most of the conversations sounded like this:

Me:  "Do you remember when I told you that this question about explaining inhaling and exhaling using Boyle's law would be on the test?"

Student:  "Kind of"

Me:  "Do you remember that I showed you the page number where it is explained and where the link to the video animation is?"

Student:  I guess

So, of course, we talk about the reason teachers tell you things and how, if I have gone to this much effort to make sure you have the resources to prepare for the question, you should take that seriously.  The most interesting conversation I had on this topic, though, came from a very conscientious student who did take the time to use her resources.  It sounded like this:

Me:  How did you prepare for the Boyle's Law/Breathing question?

Student:  I read the section and I watched the video you gave us.

Me:  Good start.  Did you do anything to make sure you remembered it?

Student:  I read it and I understood it.  I figured that would be enough.

That was a revealing answer, which I had never gotten before.  I asked a few more questions and advised her that next time, she should try writing out the answer like she would if it were on a test BEFORE she went and checked the video and the book page.  In other words, she should use the resources for feedback after retrieval.  Her answer then benefitted every student I met with afterward because I gave the same advice to them.

Later that week, I was relating this story to a colleague, and she said "That's interesting.  Understanding is considered a higher level thinking skill than remembering, but it didn't do her any good to understand it because she couldn't remember it."

If you aren't a teacher, you might not know the phrase "higher level thinking skill," but it comes from the misapplication of Benjamin Bloom's work.  He set out to identify different types of thinking.  His publishers put it into a pyramid diagram.  Teacher prep programs started using the diagram to press teachers into racing their way up to the top levels of the pyramid without recognizing that the lower levels are just as important and perhaps foundational.  (I like the wheel diagram to the left better because it doesn't imply a hierarchy.). You cannot engage in "higher level thinking" with things that are not in your brain.  If you can't remember it, it doesn't matter that you understood it.  If you can't remember it, you can't apply it, analyze it, or evaluate it.

Doug Lamov, author of Teach Like A Champion is a great Twitter follow.  Several weeks ago, he posted this.  "Retrieval Practice is the act of recalling previously encountered information into working memory, or conscious thinking. Brief spurts of Retrieval Practice help students solidify information in their long-term memories, and, importantly, understanding is not learning until it is encoded in long-term memory." 

Debates about pedagogy are everywhere - traditional v. progressive, explicit v. project-based, worked examples provided v. student-generated examples (a lot of ink has been spilled on these topics), but we would be wise to keep in mind Lamov's point.  It isn't learning until it is encoded in long-term memory.  So stop with the pyramid, and figure out what you want students to do with the knowledge they have.  It will guide your thinking about what is important to have memorized rather than make you look down on all memorization.

Viewing Angle Revisited

I have had a fun experience every day this week.  Our new earth science teacher is across the hall from me.  As we have prepared for the start of the year, she has naturally had a number of questions.  

• Is it okay if I hang this in my room?  
• Yes, of course.  
• Am I allowed to put this in my policies?  
• Sure, if that'll work for your classroom.
• I went to IT to ask if they had any iPads left from the hybrid year.  
• They said they didn't have extras, but they would order me one.  They wanted me to have what I needed.
• How do I go about requesting more . . .?
• They are in the supply cabinet in the teachers' lounge.  You can just pick them up the next time you are there.

It would be difficult to describe the look on her face with the answers to each of these questions.  There is a disbelief that her professional judgment would be trusted in most cases.  I have loved watching her react to this because it reminds me that this is not normal.

I have been at GRACE for 20 years, and it is easy to lose sight of the limitations other teachers have to deal with, even slip into a sense of entitlement.  Having someone whose viewing angle is different allows me to see it differently.  It reminds me to have gratitude.  

I'm not saying GRACE is perfect.  Frustrations will come throughout the year because we are a building full of sinners, like everyone else.  But in those times, it will be helpful to revisit these experiences and remember that I also have it pretty great.

What You Can (and Can't) Control

According to Blogger, this is my 500th post.  I debated about whether to try something special and decided just to keep it a regular post.

Yesterday, I saw the movie Oppenheimer.  I'll save you the review, but it is dark and difficult in ways I was not expecting.  Brace yourself if you decide to go see it.  One of the more interesting takeaways for me came from a moment after the successful test at Trinity.  The military is driving away with crates containing the bombs that would be dropped over Hiroshima and Nagasaki.  Oppenheimer is conflicted about its use, but it is clear he has lost control of his own creation as it drives away.  He had been in charge of this project, but he was not in charge of the result.

Earlier this summer, I blogged about my summer goals.  While I have met goals related to reading, school work, and home projects, the goals I have been most invested in this summer have been related to working out at the YMCA.  This is the sticky note on my computer where I listed my goals to hold myself accountable.  I have completed the first four goals, and I will continue doing three of them from now on (not the 12 miles - that would be unrealistic to make a regular thing, but I wanted to see if I could do it once).  In kickboxing last week, I came very close to completing the last goal on the list, but there is a weird jumping jack that I didn't try.  I will do it this week.  While my pushups are getting a little better, I'm not sure I will be able to call that goal completed because I saw myself in the mirror today while I was trying them.  My elbows are bending more than they were in May, but they aren't bending far enough to call them pushups. 

Anyway, the point of this post isn't to congratulate myself on meeting my goals.  It is to point something out.  None of the items on that list are about weight loss.  I don't own a scale because women have such an unhealthy relationship with that number, so I wouldn't know anyway.  There is nothing about inches or a clothing size I want to fit into, although surely I hoped to fit comfortably into my Tuesday pants again because that's their job.  All of the goals are things I wanted to be able to do, not changes I wanted to see in my body.  Why?  Because I have control over what I do, but I do not have control over how my body will respond.  I'm not going to lie; I'm pretty happy with how it has responded, but if I had chased those numbers, I might have done the exact same things I'm doing now and not achieved them, resulting in feelings of failure rather than accomplishment.  I wanted to set goals that were related to things I could control.

Teachers, as the school year starts, you are going to be setting a lot of goals.  Keep the lesson of Oppenheimer and my workouts (a combination I never imagined typing).  Recognize what you can and cannot control.  Don't set goals like, "Half my children will make As" or "Every student will love me." Those things are not in your control.  In their book, Clarity for Learning, John Almarode and Kara Vandas say that students and teachers should know three things when going into a learning activity - What they are doing, why they are doing it, and how they will know when they have achieved success.  This should guide your goal-setting as well.  Figure out what is important to you to do or to have your students do.  Then, you will know what you are hoping to accomplish and why.  If you say you will "engage each class in retrieval practice at least five times per month" or "upload lesson plans on time every week," you will know what you are doing.  If you chose them for a reason, you will know why you are doing it.  And it is easy to identify success in a goal like that.  Put it on a list and cross it off when you have done it.  Tracking your progress is motivating, not being able to tell if you are successful because your goal was too nebulous is de-motivating.

There is much in the world of education we cannot control.  We cannot control the home lives of our students, no matter how much we might like to.  We cannot control the attitude or motivations of our students, although there are many evidence-based techniques we can use to challenge motivation.  You cannot control the broken nature of the system, no matter how many red shirts you wear.  You cannot control another teacher's policies that frustrate you because your philosophy is opposed to theirs.  Instead of wringing your hands over those things, focus on your actions in your sphere of influence.  Set your goals based on what you can control, and stop fretting over the things you cannot.