Making Things Clearer - Not as Straightforward as it Seems

In the publishing of the book Show Your Work: Teaching Smarter With the Science of Learning, I'm learning a lot about the writing and publishing processes. I'm learning even more about the re-writing process. Two weeks ago, I got back all of my copyedited pages and had to accept or reject them and answer questions.

Copy editors do not play, y'all. The form they sent me said it had had a "medium" amount of editing. Then, each chapter I opened had anywhere between 75 and 175 changes or queries, leaving me to wonder what a heavy amount of editing would look like. Most of the edits were small - removing a space, adding a comma, or changing a capital letter to a lowercase one.  Some were citations I had forgotten to include or changes made to fit their publishing style (the MLA I learned in high school is less useful than I was led to believe).

The edits that made me laugh the most were the ones that asked if I would like to "use the expanded version for clarity." This was the automatic note any time there was an acronym.  For the most part, that makes sense. Jargon isn't accessible to most people, so if you are referencing a study done at the NIH or by the APA, it is obviously better to spell out National Institute of Health and American Psychological Association. It helps people determine the credibility of the source.

But, there are exceptions. When I was asked if I wanted to use the expanded version of SAT, I had to respond that I didn't think it would be clearer if I said Scholastic Aptitude Test as most people walk around with a vision of the SAT easily accessible in their minds and would actually have to take a beat to translate the expanded version back into the acronym for it to make sense to them. So we left that one alone. The same went for an interview I did with a biology teacher in which he talked about a question he asks students about ATP, the energy carrying molecules produced during cellular respiration.  If you remember this from biology at all, you definitely only remember it as ATP. So, when asked if I wanted to use the expanded version for clarity, I had to reply, "No, I think referring to it as adenosine triphosphate will make it less clear, so let's leave that one."

My point is not about publishing or acronyms. It's about making things clear. Our jobs as teachers is to take something that isn't easy to grasp and put it within reach. When a student first looks at the periodic table, it is just a jumble of letters and numbers arranged into a strange shape, but when they leave my 8th grade classroom, they should be able to interpret things like number of protons and number of neutrons from the numbers in the square as well as things like number of energy levels and number of valence electrons from the location on the table. My teaching about the periodic table should make the information clearer.

But much like the publishing discussion, there is often a way that seems right but ultimately is not. Explicit teaching vs. discovery learning gives us as an example of that. The theory behind discovery learning seems logical - students will remember things better if they figure it out themselves. And wouldn't it be lovely if that was how our brains actually worked? But they don't. Asking a student to compare the causes of the French and American revolutions when they haven't learned anything about them yet (but have access to Google) doesn't result in deeper learning about either revolution or the larger concept of revolutionary causes. Our working memories are too limited for that. (I'm not saying you shouldn't have projects or labs; I am a science teacher and had many of both - but it should come after students have learned a concept, not as a replacement for it.)

One of the things that makes teaching hard is that we often can't have one way of doing things. Some material will be clearer if reveal it one step at a time while other material may be clearer if we first show an entire worked example, giving students the broad view before the details. We cannot just choose one method and hope all content will fit that method. 

Even trickier, it is not always immediately evident when you have chosen correctly.  Sometimes, it is immediately obvious if you have chosen incorrectly. I once thought it would be good for my students to see the broad picture of bond types before we began learning about them.  I drew a spectrum on the board with "small electronegativity difference" on one left and "large electronegativity difference" on the right. I then proceeded to place covalent bonds, ionic bonds on the right, and polar covalent bonds in the middle along with their broad definitions and some examples. My students left that day completely overwhelmed and totally lost. The next day, I reassured them that I was going to teach each type individually and not to worry. But my hope that seeing the big picture would help them understand how the pieces fit together was not realized. The next year, I taught each type on its own and used my little spectrum drawing as a review/retrieval tool. "Where would covalent bonds go?" I asked, and they correctly answered that they would be where the electronegativity difference was small.  This way was obviously clearer, but I might not have known that if I hadn't tried it the other way.

So, sometimes, we are dealing with a process of trial and error. Sometimes, you can benefit from another teacher's experience.  And sometimes, you just have to use your best professional judgment and hope to be right. 

Give yourself a break. The best way to make things clear is often not clear itself.

Things (and People) Will Fail - What's Your Plan?

This week, a member at the Y came in talking about how much they had just spent repairing the top floor of their house. In their home, as in many newer constructions, the water heater was in the attic. As dozens of gallons of water flowed over the pan and down the walls of her house, the drywall buckled and the paint swelled, resulting in tens of thousands of dollars in damages.

The logic of putting it there has always eluded me, and it was a deal breaker when I was looking for my house. You water heater WILL fail. It's not a matter of if, but a matter of when. It needs to be in a place where damage can be minimized. There needs to be a plan for failure. And the pan is only a good plan if you catch it right away, which is unlikely if it is in the attic.

On Wednesday of this week, the Verizon network was down for over 8 hours. For many, this was a simple inconvenience, with the phone screen saying SOS for most of the day. For a few, it may have meant an inability to call for emergency services or run their business properly. But the issue I found the most interesting was experienced by some people whose cars were apparently tied to the Verizon network. Several Y members who owned Teslas were left unable to start their car. Having your car paired with your phone seems convenient until a failure occurs. Then, it is important to have a manual work-around (and I honestly have a hard time believing one doesn't exist).

The same is true of students. They will fail. It's not a matter of if, but when. 

I don't mean that every student will experience a failing grade, although some will. Failure means something different to everyone. But they will fail in some way, and it will vary among different students. There are students for whom a D is no big deal, but they feel morose if they lose a basketball game. There are students for whom a C+ is a slap in the face. I even had a student once who stood in my classroom screaming, "I failed. I failed!" if she made anything below a 96%. While she obviously had deeper issues that would interest a team of Viennese specialists, I had to be prepared to deal with fallout whenever I put in a grade. Otherwise, I would lose all of my class time to the inevitable melt down.

So, teachers, here's my advice. Put some thought now into how you will handle failure with your students. You can't possibly anticipate everything, but there are some pretty common ones you can expect. Do you teach juniors and seniors? Some will not get into their first choice college, and at least a couple won't even make it into their safety school. They are going to be understandably sad; but you can't turn your class into a therapy session. What will you do?  Do you teach freshmen? The homecoming dance may be their first experience of rejection from a romantic interest. You might remember how devastating that is. How do you plan to keep it from derailing everything you have planned for your students that day? 

The bad news is there is no way to avoid this. Students will fail at something. And, to be honest, that is a good and healthy thing. You want them to experience failure and learn coping skills when the stakes are low. Kids build resilience for adulthood by taking acceptable risks and learning to bounce back when things go sideways. 

The good news is that you are not the sole source of help for them. You have have resources. As you make a plan, think through which members of your school community might be helpful. You might have a great relationship with that child's parents and make a quick call. You might have a school counselor who can help. Your special needs teachers can teach you some tricks. Most schools have some "Barbara Howard" type teacher that just has the touch for calming kids down. Think about those resources as you anticipate the issues you might encounter with students. 

You will handle different situations and different students in different ways, of course. Just don't let the fact that failure happens take you by surprise. If you do, you will react rather than act, and you won't react in the most effective ways (which will then make a vicious circle because you will feel like you have failed. 

Can Prior Knowledge Interfere with New Learning?

This is not one of those posts where I ask a rhetorical question and then answer it. I won't be wrapping this one up with advice to teachers.  I am genuinely just musing here based on something I noticed last week that caused curiosity.

In my part of education land, we talk a lot about connecting new learning to prior knowledge. Out knowledge base is our already existing schema, and new learning finds a place to fit within it.  As Daniel Willingham tells us, we can only learn in relationship to what we already know. Prior knowledge enhances reading comprehension and problem solving; you can only think critically about things you know well.  This is all well established and backed by solid education research.  

Here's what I'm wondering, can new learning and old learning interfere with each other? In particular, I am thinking of things with a high degree of similarity. 

Let me explain what got me started thinking about this.

I attend a liturgical church. If you aren't familiar with that, it involves a fair amount of congregational participation during the service - prayers we say together, call and response, and recitation of the creed and the Lord's prayer - stuff like that, individual churches will vary). 

While all of it is printed in the bulletin, making it easy to read along, I decided that I wanted to memorize the things that are consistent every week. This includes, in my church, the: 

• Collect for Purity (easy to learn with a little retrieval practice)
• Lord's Prayer (I've known that one since I was in kindergarten)
• Confession of Sin (a little more retrieval - got it)
• Doxology (been singing that most of my life - check) 
• Nicene Creed (aye, there's the rub)

So, the Nicene Creed is the one that got me thinking about this.  I grew up reciting the Apostle's Creed, which is a lot shorter. But I don't think the length of the Nicene Creed made it difficult; I think it was that there are some similarities to the Apostles' Creed. Where they were similar, my brain wanted to race straight through the one I knew better.

For example:  The Apostle's Creed begins, "I believe in God, the Father almighty, maker of heaven and earth; and in Jesus Christ, his only Son, our Lord." The Nicene creed takes a little more time with the Father before moving on to the Son, so it begins, "We believe in one God, the Father, the almighty, maker of heaven and earth, of all that is, seen and unseen. We believe in one Lord, Jesus Christ, the only Son of God . . ." 

So, I did my retrieval practice work, and I had it down reasonably well.  By reasonably well, I mean I was slightly halting as I thought about whether the next line is "eternally begotten of the Father" or "of one being with the Father." But, I knew it well enough to say in a group without looking down to check the bulletin.

That is, until last week. On the final week every month, we use a different liturgy, known as a Morning Prayers service. That one uses the Apostles' Creed, the one I know so well I could probably rattle it off if you shook me awake in the morning and asked me to say it. Last week, the first week of the month, when we started the Nicene Creed, I completely fumbled it. 

So, my musing is this. Did one week of reverting back to the well known creed interfere with my ability to retrieve the one I know less well?  Will this change once I know it better? Is my already existing schema preventing attachment because they are too similar and trying to occupy the same cognitive space? Is there research on this, or is it too weirdly specific for an adequate experiment? 

So help me, Daniel Willingham, I don't know the answer to any of these questions, but I am going to spend some time this week retrieving the Nicene Creed so I don't feel so lost again this Sunday.

Positively Realistic

I fought the dryer, and the dryer won. I'm gutted. I really believed I could repair the broken belt. I found a YouTube video, and everything worked exactly like his until I got to putting the belt around the pulley.  I fought and and fought. I cut my thumb and had a massive bruise on one forearm and the other shoulder. I tried it with mom pressing on a crowbar to get the wheel into position. I tried tipping the machine on its back for easier access to the parts, but that just made it more difficult because the belt placement was no longer benefitted by gravity but rather falling behind the drum because of gravity. Tipping it over also meant that I had disconnected it from the vent, and you have to be a master yogi to fold yourself over to attach that and then climb out overtop of the dryer. (Note to the people who make these: Why do they need to be two inches from the floor? And can the tube be about six inches longer?) Anyway, after trying for weeks and using different methods, my mom stopped me while I was trapped in the space between the dryer and the wall and said, "Will you let us buy you a dryer." I said yes, but I hate that what should have been a $20 job became a replacement. I don't like admitting defeat. 

But, at some point, we all have to admit defeat. We have to recognize that there are things we cannot do. In spite of the messaging we got from children's television in the 80s and the proliferation of athletic clothing with Philippians 4:13 printed on it, we have limitations. It's part of our design as human beings. There are certain attributes that belong only to God. Omniscience, omnipotence, omnipresence and the like are not something we can achieve. We tried at the tower of Babel, and we seem to be trying again with AI, but no matter how far we advance technologically, we will remain limited.

Why am I talking about this on an education blog?  Well, partly because I needed to work through the hit to my pride from not being able to repair the dryer, but more importantly, we need to be realistic with students.

People who enter the education field tend to be idealistic. And, in an effort to support kids and their dreams, we get even more idealistic with them. That seems loving, but there reaches a point where it isn't. When we support things that cannot happen, we set kids up for disappointment and failure. There's a commercial on television where kids are asked what they want to be when they grow up. Most say doctors or lawyers, but one sweet little girls says she wants to be a unicorn. Now, she's about 4 in this commercial, so I think playing along with the understanding that it is make-believe is totally fine. But, as she gets older, telling her "if you can dream it, youe can be it" is not. 

It's totally fine to have dreams that are long shots. I'm not saying to crush the dreams of a kid whose ambition it to be a professional athlete. There are people who achieve that goal, and they were all at one point, children with a dream. I am saying that it is good to encourage that child to have a back up plan because the percentage of talented athletes that become professionals is small, and some of them sustain career ending injuries. People with back up plans are resilient. People without back up plans often wander aimlessly for years. 

My childhood dream was to pilot the space shuttle. I paid attention in math and science; I went to Space Camp; I somehow got my hands on an application for the Air Force Academy and started filling it out in the 4th grade. When I was 13, it became clear that this was not going to happen. First, I was taller than NASA's heigh limit (yes, at 13). Second, I have both eyesight and equilibrium issues.  While the eyesight could have been corrected, the balance and the height were insurmountable problems. Well meaning adults in my life told me not to give up on this dream. Some said, "You'll be so good that they'll change the height rules for you." Apparently, they didn't understand the constrictive nature of spacecraft. Several went as far as to say that God would not let me want something this much if it weren't His plan for me (Now, that's dangerous counsel if ever I heard it). Thankfully, I had other, more realistic, adults around me that said, "Well, you obviously love science. What kinds of jobs might allow you to use that?" I kicked around veterinary medicine, pharmaceuticals, and physical therapy until I walked into Mr. Barbara's physics class and decided I basically wanted to be him, a person who made people love subjects most were afraid of. After 25 years of science teaching, I achieved a lot of things, but my favorite was always when a kid came into the meet and greet saying that they didn't like science leave at the end of the year excited to learn more science.

I'm not advocating for pessimism. I'm not suggesting that negativity is best. I'm advocating for realism with a positive tone.  When a student shares their dream, you can be positive and say "What's your plan for making that happen?" As they tell you their plan, you can layer in nuances and back up plans without being a dream crusher. If a student has come to the realization that they can't be the thing they thought they could, be sympathetic. "I know how hard it must be to realize that, but you have a purpose. What did you love about . . .? How might you still have a job that utilizes that part?"  

Whether a glass is half empty or half full doesn't depend on your mindset. It depends on what direction you are pouring the water. If you are drinking from it, the last thing you did was remove water, so you made it half empty. If you are pouring water into it, the last thing you did was add water, so you made it half full.  Helping kids pour water back into their cup after a setback doesn't happen by being blindly positive. But it can happen by helping them find an achievable dream that still incorporates their "why" from their prior goals. It's both realistic and positive.

I don't believe in resolutions, but since it is January, let's make one. Let's resolve to be positively realistic with students.