The Best Tool I Was Not Using

Lesson design involves dozens of considerations.  Do I start with bellwork?  If so, is it better to use it for pre-questioning or retrieval?  Do I hook students with a demonstration or story, or will that be a seductive detail?  What are the best ways to encode information and engage students in deep thinking?  Does my school expect me to use digital tools?  If so, which ones are best?  How do get and give feedback in efficient ways?

There’s a lot to think about, so when I find a way to involve students, engage in formative assessment, provide feedback, and serve as retrieval - all in one tool, I am interested. And, if that tool can be simple and inexpensive, consider me VERY interested.  

The tool in this case is the mini-whiteboard.  While I had used them occasionally in the past, I was mostly using them at the end of a unit to prepare for tests.  It took class time to pass them out and collect them, and I was only getting an idea of their thinking the day before the unit test.  

Near the end of last year, I observed a colleague who kept mini-whiteboards out on student desks at all times and used them daily.  He told me he had been using them as retrieval practice for the past two years, but until I observed him, I didn’t know how much more he was getting from them than that.  He began class by having them answer an introductory question as a hook for his introduction.  In the middle of a lesson on animal behavior, he said, “On your whiteboard, write what you think will happen next,” scanning the room for insightful answers and misconceptions.  At the end of class, he asked a few retrieval questions about the most important items he wanted them to have in long-term memory.  I was sold.   

This year, I began with whiteboards and markers on every table.  I explained what they would be used for, and that they should not just be drawing pictures on them (I’m not against doodling, but it was going to get expensive if they were using the markers for that every class period).  I start nearly every lesson with a question that either activates what I want to in their schema or assesses the prerequisite knowledge for the skill I’m about to teach.  When I feel their attention flagging, I ask a few “whiteboard questions” because just the act of getting the boards out makes them more alert.  That is also the point where I am able to identify if they’ve been tracking with me.  I recently identified a few misconceptions in my first period class when six students wrote the same wrong answer.  I was then able to avoid that misconception for the rest of the day, so it had been valuable feedback for me. 

The best part of using mini-whiteboards in my class is that I get a visible answer from every student rather than just the one student I would have called on in the past.  Misconceptions may have existed in past years without my knowledge because the students who held them might not have answered.  Hearing from everyone has increased my ability to be a responsive teacher.

Small Acts Add Up

Recently, I read Drew Dyck's book, Just Show Up, and I have found its message so important that I keep buying copies and giving them away to people who either need to take its message to heart or already embody it.  

In it, Drew talks about the fact that we, as American Christians, are given a very performative message for our entire lives.  We are told that we are meant to save the world.  In churches with a politically conservative bent, phrases like "take back our country" and "culture warrior" are used.  More progressive churches tend to use words like impact, save, and justice.  But the message is the same.  We are meant to change the world.  But scripture doesn't talk about that.  It talks about faithfulness.  It talks about self-control.  It talks about local activity and taking care of family.  While Peter and Paul traveled extensively, most ancient Christians did not.  The point Drew makes is that if each of us, every one, were faithful in our own context, that would, in fact, change the world because we would all be effecting our part of it.  

This week, at a funeral, I was reminded of an example of this in action.  A family friend from the church I grew up in died from a massive stroke last week.  At his funeral, a middle-aged woman got up to speak.  Through tears, she talked about how this couple came and picked her up for church every week - Sunday morning, Sunday evening, and Wednesday night for years (not to mention special events, choir practice, and talent competitions).  After she moved out of her childhood home, they continued to pick up her mother every time she wanted to come to church.  A ride is a small thing, but the consistency with which they did it was anything but.  This girl got Christian community and Biblical training she would not have had if they had not been faithful in this small, local act.  

There are people with big needs in our world, and it is right that we address them.  But, when we do, it is often a one-time (or perhaps annual) fundraiser or service event.  Meanwhile, all around us are small but constant needs.  Needs for rides, for a place to stay, for electric bills, for car repair, for study help - needs for encouraging words or someone to sit with at lunch.  Look around, and you will see them.  

When the woman with the issue of blood reached out to touch the hem of Jesus' garment, He was on his way to the home of Jairus, to heal his daughter (and ultimately raise her from death).  He allowed Himself to be "distracted" by the common and unclean woman right in front of Him.  You may be on your way to do something big while passing by many other needs.  Don't move so fast that you cannot see and pause to meet those "smaller" needs around you.  Chances are that you will have more impact on the life of one person than you could ever have doing "something big."  If we all took care of the small needs around us, there would be fewer of the big needs.  This was the call of the early church, who "devoted themselves to the apostles' teaching and to fellowship, to the breaking of bread and to prayer" and who "sold property and possessions to give to anyone who had need."  When they took care of each other consistently, they were "changing the world."  They were just doing it one family at a time.

Calm Dark Time - You Don't Know You Need It, But You Do

School is both a marathon and a sprint.  There are things that are happening in every class every moment of the day.  You are always preparing for a coming test or project, and there aren't enough days to spend time taking a moment to breathe.

Unless, that is, you teach a class where it is possible.  When I was the yearbook advisor, the work of completing the book wrapped up in mid-March.  After that, we had work to do for marketing and sales and some planning to do for the following year, but we certainly had a less hectic pace during the fourth quarter of the year, so once a week, we had something called "Calm Dark Time."  There is one set of lights on in the back of the room for those who might have something they want to read or work on, but they are also allowed to nap, play quietly on their computer, draw pictures, etc.  Basically, if it is calm, they can do it.

This actually started by accident.  There was a day I had a migraine headache and had turned half the lights in the room off during the previous class period.  When the staff came in, they said, "This is great.  Can we leave it this way?"  I was happy to keep the light stimulation on my still-hurting head low, so I agreed.  It was amazing how the low light in the room lowered everyone's volume and everyone's sense of pressure.  On the way out, I overheard students saying, "That was great.  I wish we could do that sometimes."  And so we did.

When I gave up the yearbook last year, I thought I might not ever again experience the glory of Calm Dark Time.  There aren't enough days in the year to take off a day in physics or middle school science.  But in giving up the yearbook, I took on another elective course - Middle School Study Skills.  It meets for a block on Tuesdays and a 44-minute class period every other Friday.  One week, our lesson was on the importance of rest for your brain, so I explained Calm Dark Time to them, and we did it.  I wasn't sure how this would go with 7th and 8th-grade students, but it was amazing.  There were moments when I almost forgot they were in the room.  Once again, they recognized its benefit.  On the way out the door, one of them said, "Wow, I really do feel better now" and one boy thanked me as he left.  I decided then that we would do it during each of the Friday periods, when they might need to unwind a bit from the events of the week and take a moment to just breathe.  I have also included it a little bit in my community-building period (35 minutes on Wednesdays) if I felt that they would benefit from some down time.  

A little rest time is supported by cognitive science, psychology, and biology.  It is also Biblical.  God modeled a day of rest.  Is it because He needed it?  No, of course not.  It is because he knew we needed it.  He wanted us to trust Him by putting our time of productivity on pause and allowing him to provide.  We live in a world that is very focused on information input and product output, but it has robbed us of time to reflect, integrate, and rest.  You may not be in a position to have a quiet class period of Calm Dark Time.  As I already said, I don't do this in my academically focused classes.  But, you might be able to pause for one minute and say, "Hey everybody, close your eyes.  Take a deep breath in.  Hold it.  Let it out.  Okay, let's get back to work."  That small moment could be exactly what the hippocampus in your students' brains needs.

Study Skills - MS

Teaching Awe - Why Do You Love It?

Last week, I talked about joyful learning.  This week, I would like to address something our curriculum-driven, standards-obsessed educational culture has forgotten.  We learn best those things about which we are curious.  I'm not advocating for student-driven, personalized learning.  I'm suggesting that part of our pedagogy needs to be stoking curiosity by revealing those parts of our disciplines that are awe-inspiring.

When I took physics, I spent every day in awe.  Was it because my physics teacher did something dramatic?  Sometimes.  But often, it was the physics itself.  Knowing how the world worked made me happy in ways I didn't yet understand.  It was the first time math had made sense to me as expressions of relationships between real things.  I didn't love history, but the best history teachers I have told amazing stories of people from the past and then showed the themes that keep repeating about how we treat each other and those we consider unlike ourselves.  Trigonometry was the first math class I took that I actually looked forward to.  There was something about the relationships shown in the unit circle that thrilled me.  I'm sure there were people who enjoyed different parts of different classes; the same things don't appeal to all of us.

I want my students to understand that physics is a way of knowing something real about the world and that we have used it, not just to advance society by inventing new things, but also to understand without need to turn that knowledge into a commodity.  

My advice to teachers is this.  When lesson planning, of course, you have to think about curriculum and standards, but take a moment to look at what you are teaching and remember what made you love it.  You chose to teach math or literature or band or computer science for a reason.  Give students a glimpse of that by telling a story or showing your own amazement.  My physics classes are currently in a chapter on sound waves.  While talking about wavelength and frequency and amplitude, I find it important to take a day and talk about how our ears process it.  This is not in the curriculum.  No physics standards says, "students will understand how the human ear processes sound waves," but I think it is amazing that we have structures in our ears that turn patterns of pressure differences into electrical signals.  Even more amazing is the fact that we do not yet have a full understanding of how these structures function.  Perhaps one of my students will be the person who figures that out, but even if that doesn't happen, I want them all to want to know.  I want them all to be curious about things we have not figured out.  

It's easy in science because it is almost all revealing of some underlying principle that is neat to know.  But perhaps there is something about how poetry is structured that you find amazing.  Perhaps there is a historical figure who inspires you.  Perhaps the way colors blend in a painting takes you to your happy place.  Show students that.

If you want students to score well on standardized tests, stick to the book standards.  If you want kids to be lifelong learners, show them the awe of your discipline.  By the way, they'll do better on tests too because they'll be more likely to follow you down a rabbit hole and learn things they hadn't planned to.