Range of Healthy Balance

When I was a kid, my parents told me that there was no such thing as a job description. "Whatever your boss asks you to do," they said, "that's your job description for that day. You should always be the best employee they have." Now, listen, they weren't advocating standing for abuse or doing things that made you feel morally compromised. They were just saying that you should always do your best to contribute to whatever team you were on and never to say, "That's not my job; someone else should do it."

Fast forward a few decades, and I find myself doing something rare - muting a phrase on Twitter because I couldn't believe educators were part of it. That phrase was "quiet quitting." For those of you who don't spend a lot of time on social media, let me explain what it means. Quiet quitting means doing exactly what you are contracted to do and not one iota more. That means no sponsoring a club unless it is specifically in your contract. It means no chaperoning dances or field trips. It means no staying after school to help tutor a struggling student. It means you come to school at your contracted time, teach your contracted classes, and go home at the end of your contracted day. It means you don't do any of the things that make you a teacher besides the actual act of teaching class. 

Do I understand why this happened? Of course I do. There are absolutely schools and districts who take advantage of their staff, working them to their breaking point and then just replacing them when they do. I'm not suggesting that anyone put up with that. But this is a coward's way out. Even the name implies that you know what you are doing is the equivalent of not doing your job at all.  Meanwhile, there is an attempt to make it sound virtuous - like you are protecting everyone in the future. In reality, the jobs you are refusing to do still have to get done, and someone will do them.  All you have accomplished is shifting responsibilities from your plate to theirs.

You absolutely need to set healthy boundaries about what time you are willing to answer e-mails and how many extracurricular activities you are willing to commit to. Of course, it is important that you have a life outside of school, so if you are grading until 9PM, something is wrong with someone's expectations. If you are going home at the end of the day and dissolving into a useless puddle, you are working too hard. Please don't think that because I am against one end of the spectrum that I am in favor of the other end.

What I am advocating for is an acceptable range - one where we model excellence to our students without compromising our own health. Because it is a range, there may be days or weeks that lean more heavily towards work - exam preparation week, for example. And there may be days when you have to say, "I'm showing a high quality science video because I couldn't finish grading yesterday afternoon and need the class time to do it today." In a range of healthy balance, you might sponsor a club, but you might limit how many times a month it meets. 

Quiet quitting is anything but quiet. It is about stamping your foot and throwing a tantrum to demand you be paid for anything outside of your contract hours, as though every item, duty, and meeting could be made a line in your contract. It's about going online to brag about how little you are doing and how the system won't keep you down.  A person with healthy balance takes a PTO day when they need some rest; a quiet quitter takes every single one just because they can and will squeeze the last one in during exam review if they have to. 

The quiet quitter isn't virtuous. They aren't making the system better. A person who wants to change things goes through a process, petitions their leaders, has difficult conversations. A person who goes on social media isn't getting something done; they are getting attention.  It's raising slacktivism to another level.

Teachers, as you return from break, you get to a bit of a reset. You can set new boundaries with your students, administrators, families, and yourself. Recognize every week is not going to be the same and every person is not going to be the same.  Find your balance range - not someone else's. 

The "Easy" Teacher and the Paradox of Motivation and Anxiety

Every Thursday, I receive an email newsletter from Peps McCrae, called "Evidence Snacks." If you aren't enrolled, go do it now. They are short, and they are fantastic.  The one a week ago was about motivation, a complex subject that benefits all teachers and students.  There's a part that has stuck with me because it's a bit of a paradox. As a physics enthusiast, I love a good paradox. Here's the summary. If you are familiar with Growth Mindset, it will sound familiar.  If a student engages in a task and is successful, they will motivated only if they "attribute their success to their own effort, ability, and approach."  If they attribute that success to anything external (the test was easy, the teacher likes me, or luck), they have no reason to feel more motivated because those factors are not within their control. I know you aren't seeing the paradox yet because it wasn't in the email; it was in my mind. His newsletter was about motivation, and this post is largely going to be about anxiety, but the two are related, so let me walk you through my thought process. Teachers and schools are currently dealing with an anxiety crisis in students. If you look at the data on reported anxiety levels, it remains pretty flat up until 2012-2015, depending on age group, when it makes an upward shift. The graph then increases in slope in 2020 due largely to pandemic concerns.  What happened in the time between those years? The smart phone became ubiquitous.  It was invented earlier, but for a while, it was only in the hands of wealthier adults, mostly businessmen (remember calling the Blackberry a "crackberry" and people wondering whether President Obama would be allowed to use his?). Around 2012, we started putting them in the hands of 16 year olds so they could call their parents if they were in a car accident or had an emergency. Each year after that, the age started getting lower and lower and the anxiety in younger kids (sadly, not shown in this graph) started climbing. Schools can't really address the source of the problem (24/7 access to social media and constant distraction) because we don't control when students are given these things. We can make rules restricting their usage at the school, but that is only minimally helpful to the anxiety problem if they are on them the rest of the hours of the day and losing sleep as a result.  So, we look for other ways to reduce their anxiety - things we can control at school.   Maybe if we didn't give them homework, they would have some down time, so school start setting stricter limits on the assignments teachers can give. Does it help? No. They have test anxiety because they didn't properly prepare for it with deliberate practice.  Also, they don't tend to use their down time as down time. They either schedule something else or hop on their phone, exacerbating the problem. Maybe we include breathing exercises in PE. It certainly doesn't hurt, but it's effects are rather temporary. It doesn't result in much meaningful reduction of anxiety after the few minutes they have done it. Feel free to do it, but don't expect massive results. Maybe we should make the tests easier, so they feel more successful. Here's where Peps' newsletter came to my mind and created a paradox. (Oooh, if it ever becomes a thing, we have to call it the Peps Paradox.) Making it easier will make them less motivated, especially if they know we have made it easier.  The best way to deal with anxiety isn't breathing exercises (again, I'm not saying not to do them); it isn't to have lots of free time (anxiety lives in our heads and we tend to ruminate on it when we aren't doing other things); it isn't even a trip to the spa (nice, but temporary help at best).   The best way to deal with anxiety is to reflect on the success you have had overcoming difficult things. It reminds you that you are stronger than you feel you are. When you have one of those weeks where it seems like there is a test in every class, reminding yourself that it didn't kill you trains your brain to fear it less the next time. It helps to reflect on what made you successful - you studied with good techniques, you spaced out your study time over several days instead of cramming. You paid attention in class instead of playing games on your computer. If, according to the studies cited in Peps' newsletter, a student attributes their success on a test to the test being easy, they will not feel good about their success, and they will have no ability to reflect on their strength. Thus, motivation will not be increased and anxiety will not be decreased.  Teachers, don't misread me.  I am not saying to go out and overwhelm the working memories of students in the name of rigor. I am not telling you to be mean to them.  I am saying that, if you believe lowering your standards will help them with their motivation or their anxiety, it will not. Don't fall into the trap of thinking you can help by being an "easy" teacher. Continue to hold the same standards you did before, but then walk students through the process of reflecting on the fact that they CAN and DID do hard things.

Professional Judgment - Don't Trade It In

I sat in a conference with a parent who was known to be particularly difficult. You know the type, the one who challenges everything the teacher does, knows she is right, and sees no nuance. She had a copy of my most recent test and was challenging questions that I had gone over in class after the tests were graded because if I had, in her words "felt the need to reteach it, you must know you didn't teach it well the first time." While I think that would be a valid practice, it wasn't why I went over frequently missed questions. I went over frequently missed questions because I wanted to students to engage in a little metacognition. I asked questions like "Why did you think the answer was B?" and explained the misconception that might have led to that choice and explaining the thinking that led to the correct answer.

She said that I should throw out any question missed by a large number of students, so I explained my process.  When I ran the tests through the scantron (which she also didn't like that I used), it told me how many students missed each question (one of the reasons I continued to use that type of test). If a question exceeded a certain number, I went to the question and the key and asked myself several questions.

1. Was the key marked correctly?  We do make mistakes, and if I marked the key incorrectly, I will immediately give everyone credit for that question.
2. Did I actually teach that this year?  Experienced teachers do pull up their old tests and edit them rather than creating new ones each time, and sometimes, changes to the calendar or interruptions to the routine mean I could have skipped something in class but forgotten to remove it from the test.  I would obviously throw that question out for everyone.
3. Was the question and answer list fairly worded? It doesn't happen very often, but every once in a while, I would be making the key for a test and think, "Was I half asleep when I wrote this question?  It doesn't make sense."  When that happened, everyone got credit for that one too.

If the answer to all of these questions was yes, then the question remained no matter how many of them got it wrong. This mom stopped me at the word remained and said, "Well, I imagine the students would have a different perspective than you do on that."  Of course they would. They were in the 8th grade, and I had been teaching for 15 years; we had a different perspective on EVERYTHING. It's their job to complain and pushback on anything they don't like, and it is my job to understand that what they want and what they need are two different things.  

I said to her, "I know they do, but I'm not going to trade 15 years of professional judgment built by experience to middle schoolers." That mom didn't speak to me for 3 months. (Oh, by the way, at some point during all of this, the dad popped up and said, "She didn't miss this question anyway, so we should probably move on." AARGH!)

In the age of populism, this problem has only increased. In the same way everyone was an armchair epidemiologist in 2020, everyone who reads an education blog is ready to challenge curriculum. They will sit across from someone with a PhD in curriculum design and say, "but this website says this book is better." We all (and I am including myself) decide we are qualified to counter arguments if we have done an hour of internet research. A man I encountered at the gym recently told me that he "know more than most doctors" because he read "five very long books" on nutrition and cancer.  He was saying this to a woman who has been seeing doctors at Johns Hopkins, Duke, and MD Anderson - three of the best cancer treatment institutions on the planet, but he thought he was qualified to overrule their judgment.

And now, as it always seems to these days, AI enters the discussion. Teachers everywhere are being asked to sacrifice their judgment to a machine.  

• Is the machine an expert on their subject? No. It's been fed a lot of websites.
• Does the machine know anything about their students? No. 
• Has the machine given an exam before? Of course not.
• Is the machine trained using only high quality sources? No. It is trained on every source - good, bad, and ugly. Right and wrong. Every source on the scale of credible to nutjob is represented in equal measure.

A friend of mine did an experiment with one of the AI platforms last week.  She put in her midterm exam and asked it how long it would take students to complete. She doesn't need to ask it this. She has given nearly the same exam (tweaked for the reasons discussed early) for several years, and she knows that the first student will turn it in somewhere around the 65 minutes mark and the last last student will finish it just before the 90 minute allotment is up). The AI told her it would take 90 to 120 minutes for students to complete it. The next day, she fed the exact same test into the same program and asked it the same question, and it said it would take an hour. 

Is this a hallucination (the cutsie name we give for when AI lies by making up crap that doesn't exist)?  No, it just doesn't know. And that would be fine if it just said so, but it won't. 

I'm not saying you should never seek out the wisdom of another mind, but it should be a mind that is at least as wise as yours. 

Students don't qualify; they simply don't know what they don't know.  A student once told me that the biology teacher next door to me was "asking questions that didn't need to be asked." I said, "I'm sorry, but your are a high school freshman; you aren't qualified to make that judgment. You don't know what needs to be asked." AI doesn't qualify either.  It is the digital equivalent of your worst friend - the one who thinks they know everything, never admits when they don't, and just guesses.  Think about that friend; do you go to them for advice?  Of course you don't; you know you have better judgment than that friend.

Teachers, trust yourself.  Seek advice from those whose judgment you trust. Incorporate their input into your thinking.  But don't trade in your professional judgment to anyone or anything with less wisdom than you.

What's Your Plan?

Welcome back from Thanksgiving!

If you a secondary teacher in most American schools, you are probably shifting your attention to wrapping up the semester and exam preparation. For some of you, exams will take place before Christmas, and for others, it will be one of the first things you do after returning from break.

Either way, it is time to start preparing students. They need to training in the art of preparing for something a few weeks away while simultaneously accomplishing the things they need to do today. And if your students are anything like mine were, they resist it pretty hard. A student once complained to me that "no adult has to plan for long term and short term at the same time."  I asked her if her parents went grocery shopping every day. She looked at me like I was crazy and said, "Of course not." I told her that meant her parents were having to think about both dinner tonight and what they might need for the rest of the month while they were shopping. I was also the yearbook advisor at the time, so I asked her if she thought I only took photographs the week before a page deadline.  Again, that would be crazy. I had to plan my days (what games I would attend, who I needed to track down to get another shot of) each day and week because there would be a deadline in December where those pages needed to be finished. 

In short, independent planning for both the short term and the long term is a life skill that will serve you from now until you die, so it's a little bit important, student resistance not withstanding. Their resistance doesn't make for a losing battle, just one you need to start early and keep emphasizing throughout the year. 

So, how do you build independence in students? In my study skills class, I handed out a paper calendar and had them fill out the big dates (exams, known test dates, etc.) as well as the things that were specific to them (athletic practice, play rehearsal, choir performance). I wanted them to get a realistic view of the limitations of their time.  Then, I asked them to realistically plan for where they could fit study time in for the exam. "But that's still 2 weeks away," one of them said. "I have this test to study for before then."  I reminded them that the entire reason we were doing this was to allow them to plan for both. Obviously, the days before that test should have their study time focused on those chapters, but they should also fit in about 20 minutes making flashcards or working on their study guide for the exam in that same class.

Recently, I was listening to the Good Faith podcast, and there were two guests who talked about anxiety prevention and building independence in young people.  They were  Kara Powell of the Fuller Youth Institute and Sara Billups - Author of Nervous Systems. They both referenced Lisa Damour, so I may be misattributing what any of them said to one of the others.

Sara Billups, I believe, discussed empowering kids while also guiding them, starting with three words - "What's Your Plan?" She said starting this way communicates to them that they have the ability to make a plan and is motivating. It doesn't mean you won't have to help them adjust an unwise plan, but if you start with the plan they made themselves, they will resist less. It also gives you a place to start from in guiding them to build independence. After they have told you the plan, you can say, "Why do you think that is the best thing to start with?" or "Do you remember that you have a volleyball tryout that afternoon? Are you sure you will have the energy for what you have planned after that?" Kara Powell recommended asking more questions than making statements. Statements feel like being dictated to, which we all naturally resist. Questions feel like we are choosing something. Even if the end result is the same, the second builds independence while the first reinforces dependence.

I recently interviewed the mom of three of my former students for a book I am writing about study habits. She said, "Looking back on it, I wish I had sometimes let them follow through on a less than wise plan so they could tie the consequence to the choice." It's natural for adults to want to prevent a negative consequence they can see coming. And, of course, if it is something major, we should - you don't let your child learned not to play in traffic using the method of natural consequences. But if the result is one failed quiz or one day of miserable exhaustion from staying up too late, it might be worth the investment. (This, by the way, is another example of adults balancing the short term and the long term together.) 

Growing up isn't easy. And, let's face it - not all adults have mastered it either. Helping kids navigate the process of becoming independent learners and functioning adults takes time, effort, care, and patience. It also takes teamwork.