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.)

Novice Learners - It Takes Courage

When was the last time you learned something new?  I don't mean a small change to what you already know.  I mean something totally new.  It was exhausting, right?  And you likely failed at it quite a few times before you started getting comfortable with it.  That's no big deal if the thing you tried was knitting or baking banana bread.  It might have been a little bigger deal if the thing you were learning was car repair.  But, what if there were actual stakes?  When being a novice learner also means something to your future, it is much more frightening and requires more courage to try.  For your students, this is a daily occurrence.

Regular readers of this blog know that I have recently started a new job at the YMCA.  Among other things, I enroll new members, sell guest passes, accept payments for personal training, activate scan cards, and try to solve membership related issues.  Personify, the computer software system used by the Y, is a complex array of fields that seems to have a language of its own.  If someone's child is not showing up related to their membership, they can't admit them to the drop in day care center.  Now that I know how to do that, it's a pretty easy fix, but the first time I tried it, I didn't realize I had to go to the finance screen to add it to their "order" because that's not an intuitive connection.  When someone comes in with a United Healthcare AARP card, there are about seven additional steps to making them a member, and it is important to do it correctly because it is the difference between a free membership and one that costs sixty dollars per month.  

The first few weeks, I did everything wrong.  Of course I did.  It was the first time I was doing it, and it was a little like trying to take a drink of water from a fire hydrant.  My coworkers were very kind and helpful, and my supervisor reminded me that there was no mistake I could make that couldn't be fixed.  Members were very patient when I told them it was my first week (I'd like to keep using that excuse for a couple of years).  But, I was struggling.  It's been a long time since I spent all day without any confidence in the next step of my work.

During that time, I happened to be reading the book Uprise, written by my friend, Kevin Washburn.  This book is about resilience, overcoming challenges, and growth.  The chapter on practice spoke to me during that week.  It's not like I didn't know that things get easier with practice.  After all, I have taught that concept to students for over two decades.  But there was something about seeing it in black and white that was especially encouraging.  So, I emailed Kevin to thank him for that part of his book.  In his reply, Kevin said he was involved in another writing project, and there was a line it it, "Have the courage to be a beginner."  Below you will see how much that statement meant to me.  I printed it, laminated it, and hung it on my refrigerator.

Last week, I reminded teachers that the students in front of them were novices and to plan for that.  Today, I want us to remember how hard learning new things is.  I want us to remember how difficult it would be to experience failure over and over as they work to become competent.  I want us to admire the courage of our students as they tackle all of this on a daily basis for years.

• Hold high standards - sure
• Include rigor in your lessons - yep
• Include problems that achieve the level of "desirable difficulty" - absolutely

But also

• Care enough to give them the base knowledge they need.
• Scaffold learning to help students achieve.
• Empathize with them as they persevere.

Have a great school year, everyone!

Don't Forget: They are Novice Learners

Did you ever help your dad with a home repair project?  Your part of the job probably wasn't big.  You might have been holding the flashlight or pulling a wire through a hole (because you could fit into a space that he couldn't).  He told you what to do, but you likely didn't understand it the first time.  This likely led to frustration on your dad's part and you feeling pretty dumb.  This is not just a common problem with dads and home repair; it's a problem any time someone who knows what they are doing VERY well tries to explain it to a novice.  This phenomenon is ominously called "The Curse of Expertise."

Expertise is a wonderful thing, and I've extolled its virtues many times, including last week's post.  The problem isn't that people have expertise; it's that they forgot what it was like before.  There is jargon that they use fluently, forgetting that many people don't know those terms. This is what happened when your dad told you to shine the light on the cam shaft, and you pointed it somewhere else.  It's what happens when doctors use abbreviations for the cardiac event you had or the treatment she wants to prescribe.  It's why you might think your child is speaking a foreign language when they excitedly talk about the video game they are obsessed with.  And it is why you often had difficulty processing the lectures of some of your college professors.  People simply forget that what is obvious to them is not obvious to those who have no achieved their level of familiarity with a topic.

School is starting soon in most of the United States.  Every student in front of you will be a novice in the thing you are teaching.  Remember that when planning your lessons.  There is a certain amount of pre-requisite knowledge you might assume they have - if it was something they were taught last year - but it's a good idea to check.  When you are planning to present new information, slow down and think about the terms you are going to use.  When you teach gas laws, you are going to use the word "pressure" a lot.  They know the word, but are you sure they know what it is in context?  When you are going to teach solving a multi-step problem, make sure you are giving equal attention to each step with novice learners.  There are steps involved in solving Doppler problems in physics that I can carry out unconsciously on my way to a more complex step, but I should not skip them while teaching juniors how to solve them because, if I do, they won't know why I chose the minus sign instead of the plus sign and assume all problems involve subtraction.  Part of good pedagogy is figuring out what students don't know.  Some knowledge is foundational, and we can't just move forward as if they had known it, or the knowledge we are trying to build will be shallow and best (or completely collapse at worst).

Adapting to their knowledge gaps will take extra time.  I know there is a lot of pressure to get in all of our curriculum, but that should not be accomplished at the expense of learning.  I would much rather have students learn well the things they have learned while having to omit a chapter at the end of the semester than to "cover" everything without their actually learning it.

Be Confident in Your Expertise

I've written several posts over the years about the death of expertise and why it matters.  The reason I wanted to write about it again is that I've seen a disturbing trend in education, a sort of populist approach that reduces teachers to facilitators.  

It started by asking students to teach themselves, reducing the role of the teacher to facilitator.  If you are in the world of education, you have been encouraged to stop being the "sage on the stage" in favor of bing the "guide on the side."  If you aren't in education, you might not know these pithy rhyming phrases, but you might have heard your child's teachers talk about being self-guided, using inquiry methods, or using a constructivist approach.  It all means the same thing - the blind leading the blind while the teacher looks on.  

It might have died the inevitable death of most educational fads had it not been for parents with strong opinions who could find a blog to back them up (yes, I'm aware of the irony here).  My most recent school principal has a degree in curriculum, but she found herself in meetings where she had to defend our curriculum choices to people who read an article on parents.net.schoolstuff.something.  In a world where "elitism" is being progressively looked down on, my ill informed opinion is equal to your highly trained expertise.

Because I am scared of getting caught in traffic jams on my way to work, I leave far to early and end up sitting in the parking lot for 15-20 minutes before my shift.  I usually read in the car, but on Thursday, I found myself fascinated by the landscapers and tree trimmers keeping the area around the outdoor pool maintained.  

The first thing I noticed were the amazing tools these guys have.  I don't know what to call the saw that looks like a very large electric turkey knife, but the blade is as long as I am tall.  And it must be incredibly sharp because they run it along the surface of dense trees and bushes with heavy wood branches, and it cuts through them like they are made of something no more substantial than butter. I don't have access to a tool like that because I don't need it and because it would be dangerous if I tried to use it without expertise.

The second thing I noticed was what they did after running the saw along the surface.  They reached out and shook the bushes.  I don't mean a little vibration.  The entire bush was vigorously shaken.  As an outside observer, it appeared to me to be a violent force, and I wondered why it was necessary.  Then, I watched as they cleaned up all of the leaves and sticks that had been loosened and dropped out of the plant.  If they had not shaken it, it would have looked fine that day, but when the newly detached leaves dried up and turned brown, the trees would have looked worse than before.  They knew exactly what to do to make the pants look better that before and thrive without leaving the waste behind.

Because they are equipped, trained, and experienced, they have both tools and expertise I do not have.  This meant that the way they did their job looked strange to me, but it was the right way to do it.

Teachers do things that may look odd to the outside observer.  Students, parents, and people on the internet have a lot of ideas about education.  I have been in conversations with people who have very strong opinions about what teachers should do, in spite of their not having been in a classroom since 1968.  They think that, because they went to school, they know how school should look.  But that would be a little like me thinking I could inform an auto mechanic on the best way to fix my car just because I know how to drive.

Even within the field, there are varying types of expertise.  I may observe teaching methods that I do not know in disciplines other than my own.  I don't have the first clue how to teach computer coding or foreign language, but the experts in those fields are trained in that kind of pedagogy and can make decisions with a different kind of professional judgment than I have.

Some teachers are shy about asserting their professional judgment, especially in meetings with particularly forceful parents.  Some teachers go too far the other way, believing they should never have to explain themselves to anyone outside their area of expertise.  Neither of these is the right approach.  You make the decisions you do for a reason, and you should be happy to share those reasons because they come from a good place.  You can be open to input without caving to everyone who disagrees.

Teachers, as the school year is about to begin, let me encourage you all to find the confidence to make strong decisions, explain them well, and stand your ground because you have skills, tools, and expertise those arguing with you do not possess.