The Misleading Hierarchy of Numbering and Pyramids

This week, I took a training for the Y because I want to teach some of their adult health classes.  In this course, there was a section called "levels of awareness."  Level 1 was simply being aware of yourself.  Level 2 was focused on one other.  Level 3 was focused on the room you are in, and level 4 is global awareness.  

Let's set aside that there should probably be several levels between the room your are in and the whole world. The instructor asked what our level of awareness should be during group problem solving sessions.  One of the participants answered, "Ideally, anything level 2 or above."  I resisted slightly because if you are thinking globally in the moment, you will not be able to pay attention to the people in the room with you. There are times for thinking globally, but that time is not DURING class.  Part of the reason this woman initially answered the way she did is that we all accidentally misinterpreted level 2 to read "one another" instead of "one other," a problem easily solved by adding a word to the end of the sentence - person (or individual).   But the other reason is our strange interpretation of numbered hierarchies.  As soon as we attach numbers to something, we all want to race up to the highest levels.

Enter all of the educational books.  Whether it is Bloom's taxonomy or Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs or the SAMR model, you have seen diagrams of pyramids or rows with numbered levels and been told to aim for the highest levels on the list.  I don't know if this is a natural human trait or a cultural Western one, but as soon as we see rankings, we want to be at the top as quickly and as frequently as possible.  

The problem with that thinking is that we tend to think less.  What was meant to deepen or lessons makes them shallow because we stop thinking about what our class needs.  We stop planning for a solid foundation.  We stop being responsive to formative assessment.  Instead, we take the mental shortcut that the higher level of challenge must be good for them and that all struggle is "productive struggle."  

It is worthy to note that we don't do this in other areas.  When I began taking weight lifting classes, my instructor did not say, "Load up that bar and struggle through it."  Instead, he said, "Go light until you get the form." and "See how it feels. Perhaps, you add an XS next week."  When a parent is seeing their child take their first steps, they don't immediately jump to, "Now, honey, here is the proper form for running marathons."  That would be absurd.  

When you are doing your lesson plans, don't take out all of your pyramids and choose activities that are all at the top.  Take the time to ask yourself some questions.  "Do my students have the knowledge required to think deeply about this topic?"  If not, you need to teach an introductory lesson to equip them with that knowledge.  (You can also blend this during class with interactive direct instruction in which you teach them some facts and then ask them to analyze something with them.). Ask yourself "How am I going to require my students to use this knowledge?"  If it is going to be plug it into one equation, it is likely worth putting it on a list.  If it is going to be use for problem solving the rest of the semester, it is worth having them memorize it.  As we have seen with the recent reading controversies, students needed to understand how words work before we set them loose on reading books on their own.  

This requires more thought than the mental shortcut of getting them to the highest levels of the pyramids, but it provides for better learning because you are giving students what they actually need.

Notes from Research Ed Denver

I am at the Rocky Mountain Mind, Brain and Education conference put on by Research Ed in Denver.  These are my raw notes.  They may be mixed with my own thoughts, but they will not be in a coherent form until I have a chance to process them later.  Also, the 3:30 session will be missing because I am speaking during that session!  If you want notes for that, you can got my website, thelearninghawk.com and find them under the Presentation Resources tab. 

Keynote:  Dr. Jim Heal - Mental Models: Cognitive Keys to Effective Teaching

Book coming out in the spring of next year on this topic.

What do we mean by mental models? 

• A cognitive blueprint for how to do something 
• What does success at this thing look like
• What you draw upon when making decisions in the moment

Mental models are developed in real time and over time.  When a soccer player scans the field (average 150 per game - Messi 680 per game), he is putting together a picture of what the game looks like at that moment.

Teaching is complex - "The only time medicine ever approaches the complexity of an average day for a classroom teacher is an an emergency room during a natural disaster." - Lee Shulman

All techniques can be done at on a spectrum of fidelity.  Are you doing retrieval practice in a low resolution way or a high resolution way?  Low resolution is just carrying it out.  High resolution is knowing what you are doing, but also how and why you are doing it on a deep level.

Schema Theory - a network of interrelated concepts of ideas that we make more robust and useful over time.  Example: A four legged creature that is furry and goes woof approaches.  Your mind accesses your schema of things that fit into those categories and determine it has more dogginess than other things. Your schema then informs your response.  If your schema of dogs includes fear, you will run away.  If it includes love, you will pet the dog.  

Don't skip from the simple to the complex too quickly.

Students can't build a schema for something if they have no point of reference or background knowledge or if it is presented in a distracting way.  There is a difference between understanding the words and understanding what the words mean in a specific context.  You have to know enough to access what you need to access.  For example: if you didn't grow up watching baseball, it may feel like this.  With missing items in your schema, you are reading a redacted document, but because our minds are wired to make meaning, we fill in with guesses about what we think we are seeing.  This corrupts the schema for the future.  

The less a student knows, the harder it is to acquire more knowledge.  The new knowledge MUST fit meaningfully in what you already know.  

Chess board study - Three groups of people (Chess masters, quite good chess players, and chess novices) were shown a collection of chess boards in mid game and asked to remember the placement of the pieces.  The chess masters were able to remember significantly more than the other two groups.  Then, the boards were changed to a random arrangement, not like something that would happen in actual game play.  Then, all of the groups remembered the same low amount.  In the first scenario, people with more knowledge remembered because they weren't seeing pieces, they were seeing something with meaning.  Once it had no meaning, prior knowledge didn't help.

Even the stories we grow up with influence our schema.  A scenario was presented about a treasure hunter going into a cave with many branched tunnels who had nothing with him but a flashlight and a bag.  Students were asked to predict what was the best way for him to make sure he didn't get lost on the way out.  American students correctly answered 75% of the time (vs. 25% of Chinese students) because they had grown up with the story of Hansel and Gretel.  When a scenario was presented with a corresponding Chinese fairy tale, the numbers reversed.  

How do we expect students to think?    Do we expect them to have the parts of the knowledge they need to make meaningful and robust connections?  What do we do if they don't?  We can change the way a question is asked to reduce the cognitive load required to make meaningful connections (or have them memorize the fundamentals ahead of time).

If you want them to move from their current state to the desired state, you must given them the information so they can guess and check along the way.  Otherwise, you aren't teaching; you are giving them a riddle without hope of an answer.

How do we ensure they activate the right kinds of prior knowledge for the content we are teaching?  It's not guaranteed in your classroom, which is why you need a sophisticated mental model for teaching.

Rock Climber Model - Prior knowledge is the foot hold.  New knowledge is the handhold.  Teachers bridge that gap.  When climbing, the handhold becomes the new foothold.  This is also true in learning.

1. Where do I want my students to end up?
1. Do this with precision by doing the activities you want them to do and see what is important about it.
2. Where are they starting from?
1. What can I reliably assume my students already know that is relevant?
3. How do I bridge the gap?
1. Make analogies or connections from what they already know to your objective.  What is the underlying structure you can reveal even if the surface features are different?  (Division vs. dealing cards equally). You aren't "meeting them where they are at" by making it cool or fun but by making an actual deep connection between something they know.  One is the outward illusion of relevance and the other is connecting new knowledge to prior knowledge.
4. How can I avoid pitfalls and slips along the way?
1. Make sure your connections are accurate and relevant.

The book will have multiple mental models.  The rock climber is just one of them.  

Session 1:  Andrew Watson - Thinking Creates Learning, The Essentials of Working Memory

Learning happens inside the human mind, so educators have a lot ot learn from those who study mental functions.

"Memory is the residue of thought." - Dan Willingham 

You cannot say, "Research says this, and therefore you must . . ."  What you can say is "Research found these principles. Use them to inform your decision making about your practice."

Working memory - A temporary system that selects, holds, reorganizes, and combines information from many sources.

Pulling from multiple streams of informations (alphabetizing the days of the week means pulling up the days, the order of the alphabet, and English spellings) requires a lot of working memory just to select and hold before you even get to reorganizing.

Students using working memory ALL of the time.  Very few things (only things that are firmly in long term memory with no other demand) don't require it.

Working memory is obvious crucial, but it is also limited and cannot be increased with training (the only thing that makes it bigger is aging from 4 to early 20s).  Play Lumosity games for enjoyment, but don't think it will increase your working memory; they were fine for false claims.  Teachers must be relentless about managing working memory demands.

Ask questions:

1. Can I predict working memory overload before it happens?  If so, I can prevent some.
2. Can I recognize working memory overload while it happens?  If so, I can address it in real time.

Session 2: Helen Reynolds - Three Research-informed Strategies that have been Game-changers in My Classroom

The Big Picture - The Brain and the Landscape

• Talking to students about their brains.  Help them to understand learning in a way they can apply.
• Advance organizers - Help students know where they are going.  Map out the terrain so the student can see it the way you see it.  Hang the "objectives" in the room, but not in the curriculum language - in language that helps them understand why they are doing what they are doing.

Breaking it Down - Explicit Instruction

• Explicit instruction is not lecturing because you are interacting with students and pausing to check for understanding all of the time.  Rosenshine and Sweller provide good research on why these work.
• Explicit instruction creates fewer working memory demands than other forms of instruction.
• Whiteboards for brain dumping, turn and talk, teacher organizes what they are producing on the board and asked them to consider why she organized it the way she did.
• Chunking into small steps
• I do/we do/you do guided practice
• Novices are NOT little experts
• Stop to ask questions

Building it Up - Spaced Retrieval Practice

• Retrieval practice - Pulling it out of your brain helps you to "cement it" in your brain.
• Shed Loads of Practice (SLOP)
• Weekly retrieval quizzes - low stakes (either don't grade it all or let them correct it for 100%) with questions that are spaced over time.

Be explicit about what you are doing, why you are doing it that way, what you are thinking while you are doing it.

Panel Discussion - Using the Science of Learning for Equity

First, we have to want to reach every single student.  We must design for the students at the margins.

The way you were taught is not necessarily the best way to teach.  Find out about the science of learning so you aren't perpetuating errors from the past.  (Personal note:  That doesn't mean you have to throw out things just because they are traditional.  It means do the work to find out why things work so you can choose from old and new thoughtfully.)

Start your lesson plans from the standpoint of those who need the most support rather than adding them on after your "normal" plan.

You have to show up and learn what works.  It's a moral imperative.  

If you are sharing research, you have to find digestible books and articles.  Not every researcher is a writer, and most people aren't trained in interpreting scientific studies.  Find authors that people will be wiling to read.  (I suggest Daniel Willingham, Andrew Watson, Barbara Oakley, John Almarode, Bradley Busch, and Peps McCrea.)

This should not be an initiative.  It should be the heart of what we do.

Invite policy makers into your schools and classrooms.  They need to see what works and what doesn't.  Amplify the stories of your students.  Advocate for what works publicly.  

Session 3: Mary Fran Park - Transforming Student Learning - Strategies from the book Making It Stick

You have to be careful what you assume they know.  Teach the essential basics at the beginning of the year.

Make It Stick:  The Science of Successful Learning by Brown, Roediger, and McDanil

Illusion of Knowing

• Memorizing, Rereading, highlighting the book, and rewriting notes are ineffective strategies.  They lead to the illusion of mastery, but it is a poor example of metacognition.
• Retrieval practice allows them to check their own knowledge and reinforces, moving things from short term to long term memory.
• Turn think, pair, share into write, pair, share.  If they start talking right away, they haven't taken time to think.
• Low or no stakes quizzes.  Call it something else if it helps, but you must have them retrieve.
• Shuffle your flashcards for spacing and interleaving
• Distribute practice to give time for myelenation.
• IF you don't allow for some forgetting, they won't move it into long term memory.
• One page summaries - Having them translate it into a picture form makes them have to analyze and summarize

Session 4:  Paige Jennings - Cognitive Load Theory: What Every Educator Should Know

Dylan William says Cognitive Load Theory is the single most important thing any classroom teacher can understand.

Tapping into the already existing schema (accessing prior knowledge) decereases cognitive load.

Cognitive Load Theory is an information processing model in three parts

1. Sensory memory - what we take in
2. Working Memory - holding onto what we are paying attention to in the moment
3. Long Term Memory - Encode, retrieve to strengthen encoding

When you start to forget, you go through retrieval practice and "interrupt the forgetting."

Recommended Making It Stick

Reduce Extraneous Load - Consider how many other things may be in a student's working memory than just your content.  This is extraneous load.  It can come from room decorations, hunger, anger, the crush one of your students has on another, or instructions with two many steps.

Intrinsic Load - These are things we can manage, not eliminate.  Explicit (direct) instruction puts less demand on working memory.  Worked examples, chunking, and graphic organizers can help if used well.

Germane Load - This is the load you want.  It is one connects to your learning.  It's in your long term memory and giving your working memory a break.  Retrieval, spacing, interleaving, elaborative interrogation, and problem solving will help make the content stick.

Feedback is Essential - for Everything

If you are around my age, you might remember getting assigned all of the odd problems in a math book.  Why odd?  Because, in the appendix, you would find the answers to the odd problems.  Not the solutions, mind you, just the final answers.  

And, that was better than nothing, but if you got the problem wrong, it didn't really help you much with knowing what you did wrong or how to do it better in the future.  It wasn't really feedback.

Since feedback is valuable, we should define it.  Like a lot of educational terms, it sort of depends on who you ask.  Let's look at a few.

• "Feedback is a game plan for getting better.” - Todd Zakrajsek, book The New Science of Learning,
• "Feedback answers the questions Where am I going? How am I going? What do I do next?" - John Hattie and Helen Timperley, article “The Power of Feedback,” in the Review of Educational Research
• "Feedback and adjustment means additional tries increase accuracy.” - Kevin Washburn, Uprise

There are other definitions, but they all have one thing in common: Feedback isn't just telling you what you did wrong. It's tell you how to improve.

Feedback is cyclical and builds into a whole that is greater than the sum its parts. Think about feedback from a microphone and speaker that are improperly positioned. Sound coming out of a speaker enters the microphone, comes out of a speaker combined with additional sounds, and goes back into the microphone again. That combination produces the awful sound we have all heard in a conference, concert, or church service. In education, we should get a more pleasant result, but the effect is still a combination of input and output building on each other for a different result.

Think about non-academic forms of learning - sports, weightlifting, doing chores, trade jobs, etc. A basketball coach explicitly teaches his players how to properly shoot a free throw, assesses their performance while they practice it multiple times, and provides feedback for improvement.  Personal trainers show their client proper squat form or how to execute an effective hammer curl and then stand by and provide feedback while they do it.  An apprentice mechanic is carefully taught and monitored by a mentor who provides feedback along the way, so he doesn't destroy someone's car.  Students of cosmetology are first taught principles and then practice on wigs with detailed feedback before being allowed to apply a pair of scissors to the hair of a human client; and even then, they are closely watched by an instructor and provided with feedback throughout the process. 

Teachers, this means "grading" homework. I don't mean it has to actually have a score in the gradebook, but it means they can't just get credit for doing it. You may not be able to do that with every problem, so you might need to select a couple of critical ones from each assignment. It might mean providing the key and allowing them to check it themselves or going over it in a full class. It will mean doing more than putting a line through a wrong answer on a quiz. That may look different for you than it does for me, but it has to be more than "this is wrong;" it must include a way to be right in the future.

I can hear you saying, "But that takes a lot of time." Yes, it does. And I know the pressures of trying to fit everything in by the end of the year. But the heart of teaching is student learning and improvement, so it is worth eliminating something else to fit in proper feedback. After all, it doesn't matter how much of the curriculum you "cover" if they aren't getting what you are covering. We all have something we could probably leave out if we have to. Effective feedback is worth making that decision for.

If you want to know more about doing feedback well, this website has some good advice.

You may not be a school teacher, but if you are teaching anyone anything, take the time to give feedback to show them how to improve.

Strength or Weakness - Depends on Context

Whether in school are workplace performance evaluations, there is much focus on strengths and weaknesses.  You might work in a place that does verbal gymnastics to prevent using words like "weakness," so they might call it something else, like "opportunities for improvement."  Whatever the verbiage, it's the same thing.  There is a list of things you appear to excel at and a list of thing that you don't, at least not yet.

A few years ago, at a Learning and the Brain conference, Dr. David Rose came into deliver a keynote address, pitch hitting at the last minute for someone who was ill.  While I would love to see the person who was slated to speak someday, Dr. Rose's speech was amazing.  He had worked as a very young man for B.F. Skinner during the famous pigeon experiments.  While I learned a lot from that portion, it wasn't the main thrust of his speech.  Mostly, he discussed what it meant to have a disability and whether or not something that might be a disability in one situation could be a strength in another.  He explained that he was tone-deaf.  This might not be considered a disability, but most would likely think of it, at least, as a weakness.  After all, it interferes with one's ability to identify voices and enjoy music.  

Or does it?  It turns out that there might be a situation in which it helps.  He was attending a church in which the organ had fallen out of tune.  The discordant tones were driving everyone else crazy, but he was happily singing along as he always had because his tone deafness prevented him from knowing the difference between an organ that was properly tuned and one that was not.  This weakness turned out to be a strength in that context.  

Conversely, I have had students with "perfect pitch," a seeming strength for aspiring musicians.  But, I have watched them cringe at tones being even slightly less than perfect - even when it was just a group of people singing "Happy Birthday."  They do not enjoy much of the music they listen to because most music doesn't rise to the level of perfection.  What we would identify as a strength becomes a weakness in those situations.

I'm not a fan of most personality type testing because there is little to no science behind any of them. They only tell you what you already know about yourself because you are the one answering the questions.  However, in the training I do for camp, we are divided into four personality types (and I am less than shocked to find out that I am a planner).  The reason I am okay with our doing this, despite my skepticism of the tests, is that it leads to a discussion about the need we have for every type of person at camp.  

If there weren't planners, we would arrive at camp, ready to have fun, but there would be no food, no activities packed on the truck, and no program.  It would be total chaos.  Planning is an obvious need and strength.  However, if ONLY planners showed up at camp, we would be on time for every well planned event with no one to provide the energy.  Camp wouldn't be any fun.  If all the staff were super focused on relationships, the kids would bond well, but rules would go out the window, and that could make things dangerous (at this camp, especially, the rules protect everyone).  The point is that we need each type of strength to be present, or those strengths would make a very weak camp.

For 18 years, I was a yearbook advisor.  I had quite a mix of students with a variety of strengths.  Some had an incredible knack for visual balance and creative ideas about how to represent events.  Some had the ability to write with concision. Some understood how to include every member of a team on a page without it making the page appear overcrowded.  Some were super critical.

You don't think criticism is a strength?  Then, you have never needed an editor.  A yearbook editor needs to see what is wrong with a page and be able to fix it.  The gentle optimist is generally not suited for the job.  My first editor was incredibly self-aware, and it led to a practice I'm glad we established early.  She emailed me and said, "I don't think I can tell her what I think of her page without making her cry.  Why don't I send my thoughts to you and you tell it to her in a nicer way than I can?"  The lack of tact that accompanied her strength of criticism would have been a weakness if she hadn't also been able to criticize herself.  For the next 17 years, that was the process, saving everyone a lot of heartache and making for a better creative environment.

My point is this.  Instead of telling students or employees what their strengths and weakness are, we should talk about the contexts in which all characteristics could be best used.  It's easy to think a weakness should be eliminated if you don't recognize that there could be a situation in which it is a strength. Suggest to a student that they might be good at . . . because of that trait that they have previously been told to eliminate.  

Research Ed Notes - Saturday October 19

These are raw, unfiltered notes.  More intelligent processing to come later.

Professor Pamela Snow - Reading Instruction and Professional Accountability: Challenges and Opportunities for Classroom Teachers

Reading is important for individuals and for society.

• But it has long been contested.
• Whole Language sold us a story in more ways than one and had a hidden curriculum.  It relationship with evidence was problematic (as much of education has been - but is slowly changing).

Preservice teachers have been exposed to wrong information, leading to poor knowledge translation and the creation of echo chambers.  This leads to poor academic outcomes and pervasive harm, not only to students, but also to the professional standing of teachers.

Kenneth Goodman's teachings were about whole language but had an impact on teacher professionalism.  He said things like, "teachers know what they are doing because they are professionals" and shouldn't be beholden to "academic gurus." Teacher agency was valued above evidence or outcomes.

Teacher Knowledge - You as a teacher cannot give what you don't have (the Peter Effect), so if a teacher doesn't have knowledge of language constructs, it will be difficult for them to teach students to read. Yet, there is an inverse relationship between knowledge and confidence.  Do elementary school teachers have an understanding of the history of the English language?  If not, they won't understand the tiers of vocabulary.

"Teachers, not programs, teach children to read." - Dr. Louisa Moats

But HOW should teachers teach?  Unlike the general atmosphere of "guide on the side," the evidence supports explicit instruction. 

Professionalism means:

• high accountability.
• ethical commitment to practice according to the best available evidence and adapt as the evidence changes.
• respect children's time.
• using high quality materials rather than making our own and hoping they'll be good.

In other professions, we expect accountability and sanction when professional standards are violated.  Reading instruction is key because reading is the way students access every other part of the curriculum.

The science of reading is not a pedagogy; it is an evolving body of knowledge that needs to be thoughtfully and carefully applied.

Just as the tallest trees in a forest flourish because they receive the most light while those below don't get resources, teachers and students often get less exposure to evidence because school leaders, policy makers, and education academics are not sharing.

David Daniel - Usable or Just Interesting: How Relevant is "The Rearch" to Those Who Actually Educate?

Teachers under attack. They are called indoctrinators, liberals with an agenda. How do we defend ourselves?  We paint ourselves as saints and martyrs.

We need a way to generate evidence of our own practice.

It is often difficult to translate the research evidence into the classroom. We need to generate evidence rather than just consume it.

It's all hypothesis until YOU put it into practice.  Everything works somewhere, and nothing works everywhere.  "Let's try it in my classroom."

Studies that were working to generate data didn't work once the researcher left.  There is a difference between evidence inspired and evidence produced in the classroom.

The idea of skin to skin contact being critical to bonding was 100% taken from goats.  This did harm to women whose babies had to be taken to the NICU or were adopted.  It's still taught even though we now know it is not true (unless the mother believes it because she changes her behavior based on that belief).

Research needs to be done "in the classroom."  Applying the principles of cognitive science is harder than knowing them.  When learning them, put on a critical thinking hat that makes you ask how it could be applied realistically in your classroom.  Create a science of teaching rather than just a science of learning.

We need a better model for moving promising findings from research into actual practice in the wild.

What if you developed your own experiments from hypothesis to data collection?  It needs to be natural and fluid within the practice.  If it comes from the outside, it will make teaching more difficult.

Other professions have agreed upon processes that take promising findings to ubiquitous practice.  Education doesn't have one.  Without a system of proof, it's not a profession; it's a faith-based calling.

Look up "Scholarship of Teaching and Learning."

A statistic is not significant if it isn't relevant to your practice.

Sometimes side effects are more damaging than the problem you were trying to solve.

Research is clean and uncomplicated; teaching and learning is messy and complex.

The comparison of "team based learning" to lecture is only significant if you choose a bad lecture.  If you have a typical or excellent lecture, you have two things that work.

Solutions can come from a lot of places.  It doesn't have to be from the primary literature.  But the literature could inspire ideas for things you want to try and test.  It takes the pressure off of trying to "be right" of the time because you are "trying to find out."

Steve Hare - Pullting Themsevles Up: Self Remediation in the Math Classroom

Story about a boy with a number of strikes against him.  How he worked slowly and self-motivated at home.  His aid was reassigned because he didn't need her anymore.  He learned that "slow and right beats fast and wrong."  He learned he loved math.  He found out later that he had accelerated in subsequent years.

Putting examples frequently throughout the practice problems (rather than a couple at the beginning) allowed him to cover all potential sticking points, nuances, and exceptions.  Got emails from students and parents saying that they had work they could actually learn from.  (And they were doing it during lockdown, when there was little incentive to do things and little penalty for no doing them.)

Self paced activity sequences with frequent worked examples allowed each kid to self-remediate.  Using pre-worked examples make the activity self explanatory.  (You will likely have to make them yourself.)

You Teach You has many self paced math activities.

It is self-differentiating, and there is no shame because no one knows what anyone else is working on.

Don't underestimate how much work students will do when they know it isn't pointless.

M-J Mercanti-Anthony - Combatting Skepticism and Finding Entry Points for the Science of Learning

The Bronx broke up giant schools.  A large building that used to be one school is now three different schools that share only a cafeteria.  Students can't get lost, falling through the cracks large numbers create.

Causes of Skepticism:

• Initiative Churn - Too many new fads require too much time and attention to implement.  This may just seem like another one.
• Unfamiliarity - If your training involved other things, you may not know about the research findings.  Most teachers are still holding onto educational myths (learning styles, left brain/ right brain, etc.) because it was in their college courses.
• The Sincerity Problem - Trying to make everyone happy, promising a particular outcome, and not addressing people's fear of direct instruction can make them question the sincerity of the presenter.  The Faux Inquiry process results in confirmation bias.

Possible Entry Points:

• Give a scenario and ask a question to prompt conversation about the answer before presenting the concept.
• Just ask, "How do people learn?"

Three Tools to Support

        Having a strong professional environment allows teachers to grow.  It must be peer-led, trust-based, 

        slow and deliberate, and simple enough to respect teachers' existing work.

• Small group modeling - Weekly meetings in which teachers are presented with new techniques and encouraged to try it and report back.  It's low risk; we're just sharing.
• Lesson study protocol - Teacher shares a plan for a future lesson to implement a strategy and gets feedback from others in the meeting.  She then reports back after doing it in the classroom.  Everybody hates protocols because they are unnatural, but they work.  Medium risk because you are opening yourself up to criticism.
• Intervisitation - People come and watch a teacher implement a strategy.  Then, there is a debrief on the visit with positive and negative feedback.  Highest risk

Cynthia Nebel - Creating Learning Equity with the Science of Learning

Host of the Learning Scientists podcast

To get to long term memory, new information must pass through working memory.  Working memory is finite in both space and time.

For students with high anxiety, low working memory demand problems are fine.  They do not perform well on those problems that require high working memory.

Applying cognitive psychology to instruction is about building teaching and learning strategies that harness attention, memory, and perception.

Reduce working memory requirements for any given task

• Spaced practice:  Instead of reviewing things all at once in a short period of time, space that out over time. (Study 1 hour for 5 nights rather than 5 hours in 1 night.)
• Forgetting is essential for learning.  If you try the same problem again too quickly, you will believe you got better and faster at solving it.  Really, you just haven't lost it from your working memory yet, so you don't know if it is in your long term memory.  If you test immediately, everyone will do well.  BUT that is not learning.  
• If you can't remember it later, you didn't learn it.
• Spacing helps with vocab, facts, texts, problem solving, motor skills, surgical skills, etc.
• Spacing is usually coupled with retrieval practice, but it doesn't have to be.  It can also be spaced presentation.
• Retrieval practice - bringing information to mind
• Retrieval provides opportunity for feedback and reteaching.  It also has an impact on motivation and a direct impact on long term learning.

Background knowledge is one of the most important aspects of reducing working memory demand.  While a good reader will always get more out of passage than a poor reader, a person with more background knowledge on the passage's topic will get more out of it than a good reader with low or no background knowledge on the topic.

Reduce cognitive load associated with anxiety

• Allowing students to write about their anxiety before a test allows their brain to offload it from their working memory long enough to reduce its impact on their assessment.
• Taking away stereotypical environmental factors can reduce working memory load as well.  (Computer science study - remove the nerdy stuff from the room, and women are more interested)

Andrew Watson - The Surprising Science of Classroom Attention

We want to move things from the outside world into a student's long term memory, but it turns out that is a really complicated process.

Research cannot tell you what you must do.  It can only inform how you make decisions.

"Don't do this thing; think this way."

Why do students have a hard time paying attention?  (This is not a hard question to answer.)

We fundamentally misunderstand what attention really is.  Once we get that right, the solutions are easier.

Attention isn't a thing.  Attention is a set of behaviors that students exhibit when three other mental processes are present.

• Alertness - Too much alertness is equally problematic as too little alertness.
• Orienting - There are a lot of stimuli in the environment.  Orienting is choosing which one to attend to.
• Executive Attention - Effortful control of cognitive processes (Example: Showed words and asking us to say what color the font was.  The word RED was in blue, so it required us to control our mental processes.)

Getting a question wrong is different than thinking about a question the wrong way.

If you say, "Pay attention," you aren't telling the student which of the three things they need to fix.

Alterness solutions

• Create or allow movement
• Create visual novelty

Orienting solutions

• Address the bug in the room or firetruck driving by or weather at the window
• Don't over decorate your classroom
• Use technology judiciously
• Address the immediate usefulness of the content - have them do something with it now.

Executive Attention solutions

• Assume working memory overload and reduce cognitive load

Kristen Simmers - Adaptive Expertise in the Science and Art of Teaching

Teaching is a scientifically substantiated art.

What is Mind Brain Education (MBE)?

• The interaction between multiple fields (neurology, psychology, health, etc.) and classroom practice
• The bridge between education and our understand of the brain has often had gaps.  It's getting better, but it still has a way to go.
• MBE enhances your lens on what is happening in your classroom.  It gives a better understanding of the complexities of your situation and helps fill out your toolkit.

What is Adaptive Expertise?

Master teachers make it look seamless.  They are constantly noticing, assessing, changing, pivoting, and adapting in subtle ways based on their experience and expertise in both their content and pedagogy.  

They have a deep enough knowledge to flexibly address new and unforeseen challenges.

Routine expertise is like conducting and orchestra - everything has a specific place and role and everyone does what they are meant to.  Adaptive expertise is like playing jazz.  You understand the goals and can improvise with them.

"All new knowledge passes through the filter of prior knowledge.: - Dr. Tracey Tokuhama-Espinosa

Neuroplasticity

When you learn something new, your brain grows new connections.  New connections are typically weak, so purposeful repetition and practice are needed to strengthens it.  Your brain won't waste metabolic resources on connections you don't use, so it prunes the connection by weakening the synapse (forgetting).

Emotion and Cognition

"It is literally neurobiologically impossible to think deeply about things that you don't care about." - Drl Mary Helen Immordino-Yang

Emotion and cognition are all interconnected in ways we didn't understand before.  Nothing works in isolation.

An emotion is never inherently positive or negative.  How it impacts learning and action is context dependent.

Practical Advice for Your Student - Part 3 - Test Taking

In spite of the grade controversies you might see on Twitter, tests are an important part of learning.  It is important for a teacher to know if students have knowledge or can perform a skill on their own without teacher support.  They also provide an opportunity for retrieval practice, and important part of solidying memories.  

That's not to say they cannot be improved.  It would take too long to grade and give feedback for every question to be free response, especially for those teachers who have classes of up to 35 students.  So we are left with things like matching, multiple choice, fill in the blank, etc. for the sake of efficiency.  Much of the test taking advice you see online (like choose C because it is the most common right answer - which isn't even true anymore) are for those who don't have a clue about the right answer.  If you have studied, it is unlikely that you don't know anything at all.  So the advice in this post is for the conscientious student who prepared for the test.

Multiple Choice Questions

When I met with students, I asked them if they were the kind of person who quickly picked an answer and moved on or if the kind who talked themselves into every answer.  For both, I first offer this advice.  Bring a blank index card (you can also use a cover sheet if provided or even your hand) to cover the choices.  Read the question first and think of the answer in your mind.  Then, go look for the right answer.  The only type of question this won't work for are those where "all of the above" is the right answer, but there are usually only 1 or 2 of those on any given test.  For those who tend to talk themselves into the other choices, they don't even have to look at the others (maybe jump down to quickly to make sure "all of the above" isn't a choice).  For those who choose answers quickly, they will at least be more likely to be committing themselves to the right answer.

If, when you thought of then answer, you had some doubts, you can then go to look at the choices.  My next best advice is to cross out those you know to be wrong.  Then, go on to another question.  When you return to the one you had doubts about, you may find that your mind has continued in diffuse mode, allowing you to be confident about one of the answers you have left.

Short Answer Questions

It is easy to write something without really thinking about it.  I can't tell you how many times I have written next to an answer, "Read this out loud.  You'll hear that it doesn't make sense."  That's not me being mean; it's just easy to write without checking to see if it says what you meant.  You obviously can read your answers out loud during a test with other students around.  However, you can do two things.  First, you can do what I call "Reading out loud in your head." What I mean by that is rather than passively taking the words into your eyes, be intentional about "pronouncing" the words in your mind.  I think it is called "self talk," and it helps.  The other thing you can try is to ask the teacher if you can step into the hall and actually read the answer out loud so you can hear it.  I wouldn't do it a lot, but it could help if you are really stuck on a question.

The Order of the Test

Because we number the questions, students assume they must start with question 1 and go in order.  The problem with that is that the most challenging questions are often on the last page.  Because of the benefits of moving from focused node to diffuse mode, the best advice is to start with the hardest ones. Recognize when it is time to pause and go on to some easier questions, so you can return to them after your brain has had time for active recovery.  The other benefits to doing it this way are that you are able to time your pace better when the easier ones are the ones that are left and you don't already have an exhausted brain when your reach the free response section.

Finding the Good in Bad Times - What We Can Teach Our Kids

My plan was to finish the series in practical advice for students this week.  But the effects of Hurricane Helene gave me the opportunity to observe some things I feel are worthy of comment.  So, I'll be back with test taking advice next week.

Hurricane Helene was a record storm, but it was made worse by its path.  People at the coast are accustomed to storm season.  They have sandbags and plywood at the ready, knowing they will need it at least once.  More importantly, they have flood insurance.  But why would anyone in Asheville, NC have those things?  That would be as odd as someone in Miami, Florida having snow tires.  The initial death toll is devastating and growing. And there are still people trapped due to road closures. It's just awful, and there's no other way to describe it.

But, as we often see in tragedy, there is good.  Setting aside the scammers and gougers trying to profit from the tragedy and Marjorie Taylor Greene's nonsense assertion that the storm was man-made to hit Republican voting areas (like that's even possible and like Asheville and Miami aren't completely blue - no Beth, don't get distracted by her crazy), we are seeing charities, churches, non-profits, and individuals doing whatever they can to help.  I work at the YMCA, and the donations have poured in. Within an hour of posting a list on their social media pages, one branch had this small pile. Today, that pile covers the sign.

Twenty-four hours after the list was posted, my other branch was loading these into an empty room to clear space in the lobby.

And by the end of the day Sunday, that room looked like this.

By the way, the Triangle YMCAs will be collecting until the 10th, so drop by with anything you would like.  Don't even worry about finding the list; they are collecting pretty much anything you can think of.  Friday, they'll drive them up to the Ys in Western NC to distribute to their people.  Also, if you know someone who has been displaced by the storm, they can come into any Triangle branch and be issued a free 30-day membership.  We had someone come in a few days ago from Wilkesboro just to take a shower because they hadn't been able to for a week.  (Imagine the basic human dignity that just comes from feeling clean. We were so happy we could provide that for him.)  A member from Asheville was driving through town a few days ago, and she scanned in just to use the bathroom because she was tired of stopping at gas stations. We take so much for granted until we can't.

My church was loading a truck on Saturday to take up to our sister church in Asheville, and halfway through the morning, they had to go rent a second truck.  So, people are doing what they can.

As teachers, parents, or anyone else who influences the lives of kids, we have a moment here as well.  I'd like to address a few of them.

Teach empathy - The obvious first step is to teach kids empathy by asking them to imagine what it would be like to be trapped without food or the inability to get clean. Ask them to donate things. They are amazing when you give them a cause. 

Teach the value of small actions - Some won't be able to do much because they just aren't in a financial position themselves, but it is always so good to know you contributed to a larger whole.  A student who can provide one package of toilet paper might feel like they aren't doing much, but if your whole school or church is collecting, and they see their donation as part of a truckload, they can recognize that a lot of little adds up to a lot.

Model sanity - If you are online, you have read a lot of nonsense in the last few days.  From the people who are disparaging FEMA with the false assertion that they are denying aid but sending body bags or that Biden and Harris haven't visited the area (or accuse them of just engaging in a photo op when they are there) to those who won't acknowledge the good that Samaritan's Purse is doing simply because they don't have any respect for its founder. 

If you have influence over kids, it is your responsibility to stay above the fray on these things.  Tell them instead how grateful you are to live in a country that has an emergency management agency. Tell them you are happy there were governors who declared the state of emergency before the storm hit (something they couldn't have done 50 years ago) in order to get the funds freed up as quickly as possible.  Recognize out loud that a lot of people are helping - including people you don't like - and that is a good thing.  

Listen to them - The world we are living in right now is tough, so it is no wonder that kids are suffering from anxiety disorders at a higher rate than ever.  Most of the people reading this only did fire drills as kids (maybe tornado drills if you lived in those areas). Current students participate in at least 1-2 active shooter drills per year. Most of them know someone who has been in either an active shooter situation or the threat of one. They don't know what to make out of the chaos in the Middle East. Don't think they aren't paying attention.  They don't have the luxury we did as kids of simply not watching the news; the news comes to their pockets 24 hours a day.  In 2020, the first person I heard suggest that schools might be close was a high school student.  Last week, the four-year-old granddaughter of one of my friends took a dollar from her piggy bank to her mom and asked if they could go shopping for the people that got hurt in the storm.  That was the first her mom knew that the child was even aware of the storm.

Kids, especially teenagers, are rightly concerned about the word they are going to inherit.  The least we can do is listen to those concerns.  Don't pretend to have answers that you don't have. They won't feel better if you try to put a happy face on it. They will feel better if you acknowledge their real concerns. But that doesn't mean compounding their anxiety with your own either. Catastrophizing will not help. You have the opportunity to loan them your calm.  Tell them how you are getting through the times we are living in - It could be prayer, focusing on the helpers, engaging in gratitude exercises, or engaging in physical exercise. Kids feel better when there is something to do, so give them an action step.

In the book of Genesis, we find the story of Joseph. He was sold into slavery by his own brothers, accused of a crime he didn't commit, and wrongly imprisoned for several years. If anyone has ever had the right to be bitter against his family, the government, and even God, it is Joseph.  Yet, at the end of the story we find him telling his brothers, "You meant evil against me, but God meant it for good, to bring it about that many people should be kept alive, as they are today." He focused on God's plan, which is so much bigger and more complex than we can imagine.  We would be wise to follow that example.

Practical Advice for Your Student - Part 2 - Studying For Tests

After I began attending Learning and the Brain conferences in 2018, one of my favorite things to do was have individual conferences with students who were not performing as well on tests as they would like.  I knew that I had advice that could help them because of what I had learned about cognitive science and memory.

I started by asking them how they currently study.  Their number one answer was, "I look over my notes."  I asked them what that meant, and it was clear why their study habits were ineffective.  They were basically re-reading the words they had copied from the wall with no context or processing.  For a couple of years, I gave them better advice about studying for tests.  

Then, I realized I needed to start expanding these conversations.  We discussed, first, what they were doing in class while learning.  I then addressed more effective study techniques.  Then, finally, we talked about how to deal with questions during the test.  

So this post is the second of the series.  How should a student study for tests?

First, their intuition is likely wrong.  In surveys, the methods students list as most effective turn out to be the least effective according to research.  My students most common answer, "I look over my notes" does little to improve their memory or understanding of the content.  Highlighting and underlining, as it turns out, have a negative effect on memory and fools you into believing you know it.  It's like your brain says, "Of course I know that.  Look at it; it's yellow."

The simplest way to answer the question about the best way to study is to recognize the power of retrieval practice.  The method is less important than that guiding principle.  Does this method allow me to passively receive input? If so, it is not an effective method.  Does it require me to actively retrieve the information from my memory?  If so, it is likely to be effective.  

So, make flashcards.  Use Quizlet or Anki.  Make flashcards.  Make and play a game of Kahoot.  Make flashcards.  Have your parents ask you questions while you answer without looking.  Did I mention you could make flashcards?  

Most of those are only useful for questions that have very short answers (definitions, examples of concepts, etc.), but they aren't great for questions that require you to explain.  For that, I would make a list of questions, including those the teacher has told you will definitely free response questions and those that just require more explanation to understand.  Then, without using your notes or book, write out the answer to the question as you would on a test.  Only after you have written out the entire answer should you go to the book, video, or other resource and check your answer against it.  Don't just do it in your mind; write it out.  I can't tell you how many times I have had students use most of the right words only to get the concept completely wrong.  In an explanation of how Boyle's Law determines breathing, the wrong answer, "Increasing volume in the chest raises the pressure" will be easy for you to fool yourself into thinking you got it right when you go look it up in the book to find "Increasing volume in the chest lowers pressure."  You see most of the right words and don't realize that you described a direct relationship when there is actually an inverse one.  But if you write it down, it is harder to fool yourself.  

It boils down to this: 

Recall > Reread

Wait some time.  Shuffle your cards / questions.  Recall again.  Wait even more time.  Shuffle again.  Recall again.  This requires planning.  It can't be crammed into one night.  But it is effective.

Practical Advice for Your Student - Part 1 - Note Taking

After I began attending Learning and the Brain conferences in 2018, one of my favorite things to do was have individual conferences with students who were not performing as well on tests as they would like.  I knew that I had advice that could help them because of what I had learned about cognitive science and memory.

I started by asking them how they currently study.  Their number one answer was, "I look over my notes."  I asked them what that meant, and it was clear why their study habits were ineffective.  They were basically re-reading the words they had copied from the wall with no context or processing.  For a couple of years, I gave them better advice about studying for tests.  

Then, I realized I needed to start expanding these conversations.  We discussed, first, what they were doing in class while learning.  I then addressed more effective study techniques.  Then, finally, we talked about how to deal with questions during the test.  

So, that's what I will do with this blog as well.  We'll start with note taking.  Students tend to fall into one of two extremes.

1. Note taking is not only copying what is on the board.  Before I had a textbook, my students had to rely on their notes.  Parents would come to conferences and say, "We don't know how to help because we can interpret his notes."  I would look at them and find that they had copied the words from the slides and nothing else.  Literally nothing else.  No examples.  No practice problems.  No thoughts of their own.  It needs to be more than that.  What is projected on the wall or written on the board is an outline at best, not the only things that are important from the lesson.
2. Note taking is not a class transcript.  The other extreme is when students become court stenographers, attempting to write down every word that is said in class.  This is more likely to happen when they are taking notes by typing on a laptop because it allows them to gain speed.  But, it also shuts off any processing of the information through their brain.  By writing more, they think about it less.  This is what leads some to believe that taking notes by typing is ineffective.  It's not the typing that causes the problem; it's the lack of thinking.  When taking notes by hand, we usually summarize what we hear to save time.  It's that summarizing that is helpful.
3. Notes should be a collaboration of brains.  So what notes should be then?  Well, as I already mentioned, they should be a summary of what happened in the lesson, not just what was projected but also the important parts of what was said.  This takes practice because students have a hard time identifying what was important.  (By the way, for some good advice in this area, see Daniel Willingham's great book Outsmart Your Brain.). They should also involve thoughts from the student himself.  It's probable that he thought of something while the teacher was explaining that would be useful to his memory later on.  The purpose of note taking isn't to have notes.  The purpose of note taking is to jog ones memory later, so write down anything that will be likely to help with that.  
4. Notes are for the student.  The important thing to remember is to write down what will help YOU to remember.  Notes aren't for the teacher or for your parents.  They are for the student to have a memory aid for what happened in class.  This is frustrating for parents who want to help their student study.  They want to be able to pick up the notes and make sense of them.  But they weren't in class, so it won't help them remember what happened in class.  The best thing a parent can do with their child's notes in helping them study is point to something and say, "Tell me about this."  The child should be able to look at that note and retrieve an episodic memory from that day's lesson.  If they can, these are good notes, no matter what they look like.  Conversely, if they can't, these are not good notes.

It's tempting to ask the teacher to provide a crutch for students who aren't yet good at this.  Some teachers provide a fill in the blank sheet of notes.  Run away from these!  That means the teacher did the summarizing (so she'll remember, but you won't).  It also means students only stay engaged for long enough to fill in the word.  Then, they check out for the next word.  Students, I implore you to take your own notes.  Don't do group notes with your friends on a google doc.  Don't borrow someone else notes (unless you were absent or looking to see if your own notes are missing something).  I know it takes more work, but if you care about learning, it is the only way.

Why I Wear It

This pendant is a small scale version of Ruth Bader Ginsburg's "dissent collar."  I bought it a few days after her death in 2020.  Since only the Trumpiest of MAGA folk would ever think of me as a liberal, it might seem strange that I would wear something that honors a woman with whom I disagreed so frequently.  I bought it and wear it to remind me of some things that I think are important in our divided culture.

1. I owe her a lot. Without Justice Ginsberg, my life as a female would be very different than it is.  I am a 48 year old single woman with no plans of marriage.  When I bought my home 18 years ago, I did not have to have my loan cosigned by my father or brother or any other man.  This was not true when Ruth was born and in fact, only became possible two years before I was born. Because of her work (and the work of others like her), I am able to live the life God has call me to live.  I wear this tribute to her to remind myself that I stand on the shoulders of giants.
2. She lived a life of thought.  I weirdly have a memory of the first time I heard of Ruth Bader Ginsberg.  As a college student home for the summer, I happened to be watching tv on the June day that Bill Clinton announced his nomination of the tiniest woman I had ever seen.  There are two things I most remember about his speech.  First, she had been unanimously approved to the position she had prior to her nomination to the Supreme Court.  While things were not quite as divisive then as they are today, that was still an unlikely feat; and it communicated to me how immensely qualified she must be.  The second thing I remember was that he described her as thoughtful, but he was using it in a different way than I had ever heard before.  I had only heard the word thoughtful as a synonym for caring. And while she certainly was that, he was using it to mean "full of thought."  He was describing her as an intelligent woman who put a great deal of thought into her rulings.  Since then, I have read some of her writings, and they are filled with deliberation rather than simple ideology.  I have so much respect for that, even when the end result of that thinking would be different than the end result of mine.  I don't want to be a person who just believes the party line without asking myself serious questions first, and I appreciate that about her character as well.
3. She lived a life of kindness and humor.  If you have never watched the segment that Stephen Colbert did with RBG, do yourself a favor and watch this 6 minute clip.  While Justice Ginsberg took her job very seriously, she didn't take herself too seriously.  She joked about her online cult following having dubbed her Notorious RBG, saying "It's not all packed auditoriums and standing ovations." Even the fact that she wore this "dissent collar" showed a subtle cheeky side to a serious thinker.  By all accounts, she was an extremely kind woman.  She did the work she did for the community and for those less fortunate than herself.  She said "To make life a little better for people less fortunate than you, that’s what I think a meaningful life is. One lives not just for oneself but for one’s community.”  Since she saw anger, envy, and resentment as a waste of energy, she invested in loving those around her, including those with whom she disagreed.
4. She showed us that an opponent was not an enemy.  This may be the most important reason I wear this necklace.  Do you know who the closest friends of the Ginsburg family were?  You may be shocked to find out that it was the Scalia family.  I don't mean they were generally cordial.  They bonded over their love of classical music and food.  Their families went on trips together.  There is legitimately an opera based on their friendship.  Most importantly, they both respected that the other was devoted to the constitution, in spite of the fact that they interpreted it in completely opposing ways.  I wear this tribute to a woman with whom I disagreed to remind myself that disagreement doesn't have to mean disrespect.

We are affected by the culture in which we live, but we are also responsible for creating it.  If we remember to be kind, humorous, full of thought, loving to those we disagree with, and remember that we leave a legacy for the future, we will live better lives.  

How can you remind yourself of these things today?  How can you communicate then to your students tomorrow?  

The Role of Optimism in The Classroom

I read a lot of education books, and some of them are better than others.  But, even a bad book usually has something good to take away from it.  That is the case with the book I've been reading recently.  It is called Quit Point.  I don't recommend this book as it is largely a touchy-feely 
"kids-will-be-motivated-if-you-let-them-do-what-they-want" message.  If you read this blog, you know that I did not respond well to that.  However, they nailed one thing.  Optimism is necessary for learning.

So I thought I would take this week to explore what optimism is and why it is a critical component of your classroom.

When we think of optimists, we usually think of glass half-full people.  That's not a terrible way to look at it, but it isn't really the definition.  The prefix "opt" has to do with vision (hence your eye doctor having a degree in optometry).  So, an optimist is really a person with a positive vision of the future.  They believe that, even if things are bad now, they will be better.  More importantly, they believe their actions can play a role in bringing about that better future.  

Now take this thought into your classroom.  If a student who is struggling believes it will not get better, no matter what, you will have difficulty moving them forward.  If, however, they believe their actions can have a direct impact on their improvement, it will take only a little encouragement to get them to apply effective techniques for doing so.  

This is the basis of the popular Growth Mindset book by Carol Dweck.  She doesn't refer to it as optimism, but she devotes a lot of time to the idea that students who believe they can improve will improve more than those who believe their state is fixed.  

I'd like to offer an additional perspective.  Optimists and curiosity correlate.  I've never met a pessimist who asks a lot of questions.  Some of them think they know everything already; some just don't care to learn something new because they don't seen how it will benefit them.  Pay attention to the kids who ask the most interesting questions in class; and you will find they are the ones who find joy in learning and tend to have a positive view.  I don't know if one causes the other, but they are typically found together.  A person without curiosity can learn, but it is a burdensome process.  

If you want students to take joy in learning, foster their optimism and increase their curiosity.  How do you do that?  By showing yours.

What I Learned by NOT Achieving my Summer Goals

"If you never fail, you aren't setting big enough goals." 

- Jillian Michaels on The Biggest Loser

When I first started taking fitness classes at the Y, I had two goals:  Don't hurt yourself, and don't leave a class early.  After a couple of months, my planner personality kicked in, and I started setting real goals and tracking them on a spreadsheet that hangs on the side of my refrigerator.  For the first four seasons, I pretty much killed them.  This summer, I did not.  I met a few.  I fell just short on others.  And a few aren't even close.  So, this post will be a slightly self indulgent reflection on what I learned from the summer of not meeting all my goals.  Since it is an educator's blog, I'll make connections to setting and meeting (or not meeting) academic goals in the second half.

Setting the Goal Too Far Out Messes With Motivation

In the prior seasons, my goals were no more than 90 days out.  This one started the day after my birthday, and since I wasn't going back to school, I decided to make it end on the last day of August rather than when I reported back to school.  That made the time I was giving myself to reach the goals 105 days.  That sounded good because it gave me plenty of time to get stronger and increase weight and bike speed.  But in reality, it made me less motivated to increase weight because I'd have time to do that later.  And some of my goals are averages.  It turns out that it is really difficult to move an average up after day 70 or so.  Even if I spent all of the final month moving really fast on the bike, it wasn't going to move the average up by more than a minute amount.  Hence, I didn't have a ton of motivation to kill it in the latter parts of the summer.  Long term goals are fine, but the yearbook advisor in me should have known to put some  intermediate milestones in place as I pursued the larger aims.  

For the fall, I am going to set goals two weeks at a time.  I'll track a bunch of numbers.  At the end of two weeks, I'll choose a couple to improve on for the next two weeks.  It could be 5 more miles on the bike or a higher average speed.  It could be adding 5 pounds to my chest weight.  But, instead of a far away end goal, I'll be focusing on improvement in some area.

Failing in Part is Not Complete Failure

It is easy when looking at performance to focus on where we fell short.  That's natural, and may even be healthy as we set our next objective.  But, we should also take time to celebrate the good.  I didn't fail every aspect.  And even on those where I did fail, I made progress, got stronger, became healthier, and spent time with people I love while doing them.  That all has enormous value whether or not I hit my target numbers.  

Keep Moving Forward

Many of my goals are based on averages.  These were the ones that became really difficult to meet if I wasn't already there in August.  Budging an average up is just hard after a high number of days in the same way baseball players with long careers won't see as much movement in their batting average after each game like a rookie will.  But a few of my aims weren't averages.  I aim for a total distance on the bike, so even on my off days when my legs just wouldn't cooperate, I was adding miles to that total.  It may have been 9 miles when I wanted 12, but it was 9 more miles than it would have been if I hadn't come to class that day.

I have a cycle classmate named Wallace.  He is 80 years old.  A few days ago, he said, "Now, you are going to see that I am slack in all classes, not just yours." Oh, no, Wallace.  The last thing you are is slack.  Do you know how many people aren't even here?  That man is strong and healthy at 80 because he keeps going.  He may be a little slower than the person next to him (although, not always, I've seen him outperform people much younger than he is), but he is continuously moving forward.  Wallace is an inspiration, and I hope that I am still on the bike 32 years from now.

When Circumstances Change, It's Okay for the Goal to Change Too

Goals are tricky because they require us to project into the future.  And the truth is that we don't know what the future holds.  We have a decent grip a few days out, but we can't know whether we will get sick or experience an emotional upheaval or injury during the next month.  As a result, we often set unrealistic goals.  It didn't scare me to have a few off days.  That can happen from not eating enough calories before the workout or not getting enough sleep the night before.  But then, I got a summer cold followed by a particularly heavy cycle (perimenopause was the opposite of what I expected, y'all) that turned a couple off days into a couple of off weeks.  Rather than change my goals, I thought I could ramp back up and make up for the off weeks.  To make up for the losses in averages, I would have had to perform farther above average than I am actually capable of.  I would have been much better off resetting the goals instead of insisting on the delusion that I could reach them.  Then, once I got to the place where reaching them was mathematically impossible, I had no motivation to do toe-pushups in the morning or an extra set of crunches in the evening.  

In his book Uprise, Kevin Washburn advises having an A goal (the one you can reach if all circumstances are ideal), a B goal (the one you will be happy with if the weather messes with your run), and a C goal (the one you can find satisfactory even if everything goes wrong).  I sometimes have those for individual classes, but I've never thought to have them for the entire season.  I'm hoping my two week interval system will allow for this as I will only be focused on improvement, and the C goal can be improving by a small amount while still being improvement.

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As promised, there are connections to education.

Setting the Goal Too Far Out Messes With Motivation

At the beginning of the school year, I often asked student what their academic goals were, and I learned that students are very broad in their thinking.  They say they want to make an A for the semester.  The semester that starts in August ends in December.  The young brain is simply not equipped to motivate itself for a goal that far out.  Meanwhile, I have found their practice to be remarkably short sighted, only willing to study for a test if it is less than three days away or work on that which is due tomorrow.  I ran into this with my study skills class when I tried to get them to devote some time to studying for the test they had that Friday while also putting some time into making flashcards for their finals.  They didn't want to do it because it wasn't "next."

Teachers should encourage students to set some intermediate goals for the sake of continuous motivation. It's up to you and them what that looks like. Perhaps, like my workout schedule, they should have something to improve on every week or two.  Perhaps, they should focus on the next thing out and one more thing.  Perhaps there should be a reading or study time schedule that they can mark off to show their progress visually.  But don't rely on willpower to get them to the end of the semester.

Failing in Part is Not Complete Failure

I remember the only time I failed a physics quiz in high school.  I remember the three Cs I made in college classes (Chemistry 201,  Human Anatomy and Physiology, and Ecology).  I can tell you about projects I have tried at school that went very wrong - In fact, I'll be speaking about one of those failures at a conference in October.  The reason I can tell you about those times is that they were rare.  Overall, I was a very successful student.  

When good students fail, it is traumatic.  Unlike students who regularly perform at low levels, they simply don't have the coping skills to deal with failing a quiz or performing worse than usual on a test.  But it is going to happen, and teachers are going to have to support them through it.  It is important to remind them of a few things.  

1. A bump in the road is just that, and they should keep their eyes on the prize and stay on track.  
2. They have a strong record of success and will continue to have one.  This one quiz is the story they'll tell later because it was so rare. 
3. Grades are not their identity. 

Keep Moving Forward

When I tried to get back on track after my few "off weeks," I made the mistake of thinking I could make up for it by really over performing in a way I wasn't actually capable of.  I would have been much better off just getting back to normal, allowing the average to be slightly less.  Students are sometimes like this too.  If they did poorly on one test, they try to aim at 100 on the next one or even ask for extra credit work. A student who has consistently made Bs is not likely to find a 100 realistic, and they set themselves up for disappointment.  They would be better off acknowledging what they have learned from the situation and getting back into a normal routine of studying than they would be trying to make a "New Year's resolution" type effort just after their setback.  I often told students that it was called an average for a reason.

When Circumstances Change, It's Okay for the Goal to Change Too

I have taught many excellent students who had difficulty recovering from concussions, grief, or mono.  While we as teachers work with them the best we can, we also cannot just give a student an A.  We can extend deadlines and reduce load, but to require nothing of them and give a grade for that nothing is not something a person with integrity can do.  The circumstances have changed, and it is okay for the goal to change with it.  

Several years ago, I had a student who had traditionally been a straight A student fall dramatically after being diagnosed with chronic fatigue syndrome.  This messed with her head.  She said to me, "If I don't make As, who am I."  We had a discussion about making your identity something more permanent and important than a letter at the top of a paper, and I prayed for her to find her worth as an image bearer of her Creator. But I also understood that she was used to a life where it was fairly easy to reach her grade goals, so this felt like academic whiplash.  If I had this to do over, I would follow up the spiritual conversation with a practical plan, asking what might be a realistic grade for her to aim at in her current circumstances now that the ideal was unattainable.  

I have always said that I would rather my students aim high and miss than to aim low and hit their targets, but when that happens, it still feels like failure.  Reacting to our students with empathy gives them a safe place to land, recover from the wounds of failure, and launch again.  That kind of resilience does not get built in those who always achieve success.  It is only built by failing and learning from that failure.

Music Is Powerful - Which is Why it is NOT Good for Everything

If you asked the students I have taught in the last few years, they would probably tell you that I don't like music.  That is simply not true.  I love music.  It's a gift of God and a uniquely human skill.  And, it is powerful.

Music has the power to alter your emotional state and change the way you think.  There is a 95% chance I will cry when I hear the lyrics "Tears stream down your face when you lose something you cannot replace" from the song "Fix You" by Coldplay.  I have sobbed during indoor cycle classes when Jay played "Bridge Over Troubled Water" or "One Moment in Time."  I had my thinking influenced in a profound way by Matt sharing "Flower in the Gun" on his Facebook page.  I can't help but dance along with "Boogie Shoes."

There aren't many things that can evoke a memory like a song from your childhood.  I will never hear "Twist and Shout" without seeing Ferris Bueller on a parade float.  The same goes for Michael J. Fox playing an electric guitar to "Johnny B Goode" in Back to the Future.  And if you really want to take me to my childhood, put on "Hey, Mickey."  I'll be back at Skate Town before Tony Basil gets to the lyrics.  If you play "Can't Fight This Feeling Anymore," I may not be mentally present with you for a few minutes.

Music is powerful.

Like all things powerful, we have to be careful how we use it.  

The reason my students would say I don't like it is that I had a blanket rule that they could not put on headphones and listen to music while they worked, and I strongly advised them against listening to it while they studied for tests.  

Part of what makes music so powerful is that it takes up a lot of space in your brain.  That's why you want to use it when you are working out.  It distracts your from thinking, "This is really painful, and I would like to stop."  It is great for keeping you motivated during mundane tasks, like dishes and yard work.  Even much of your driving life is filled with music, but you can observe its power when you are driving somewhere unfamiliar and need to concentrate on finding your next turn.  You turn the music down to free up space in your working memory.

We obviously don't want our students limiting their working memory or the transfer of information to long term memory while they are studying or writing an essay or trying to perform a complex math skill.  The best place for music during study is break times.  I advise my students to do their work in 20-25 minute chunks with 5 minute breaks.  This takes advantage of focused and diffuse thinking and allows information time to offload from the hippocampus to the neocortex.  That five minute break is also a great time to reward yourself, and person who likes music can reward themselves by listening to their favorite five minute song.  It will boost their mood and re-energize them for the next 25 minutes session.  

And, when they finish studying, have a dance party in the kitchen.  Create a memory for that song to invoke later.

Bonus Thought:  The power of music can be useful for studying in one way.  Set the content to music, and you'll never forget it.  (Think the alphabet song.)