Don't Fear Classroom Rules - Boundaries Enable Freedom

Freedom!  As Americans, we cling to it, almost to the point of idolatry (I could take the word almost out of that sentence, actually). We write about it. We sing about it. We claim it dramatically on social media. But do we understand it? A quick search of the definition results in answers about lack of restraint or the ability to act without anyone controlling you.

There's got to me more to it than this, right? I mean, I appreciate that no one has put me in restraints, but is that really something to sing about? That's a definition built around a negative - from FROM something. There's got to be a deeper meaning for freedom, doesn't there - something that indicates freedom FOR something? 

Where do you go for meaning beyond the definition? A philosophy site, of course. According to the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, freedom is about acting in a way that allows you to achieve a fundamental purpose. 

Okay, now we are talking, I like this. It allows me to look toward something and act in a way that can get me to that purpose. But, I think there might be some friction with the dictionary definition. If there are no restraints AT ALL, can I really act in a way that will allow me to achieve a purpose? Might the road to that purpose need some guardrails?  I think it does. Let me give a few non-school examples before I get to the classroom implications.

Singing as a group - Imagine a setting in which groups of people sing together. That could be a school choir. It could be New Year's Eve when everyone pretends to know the words to "Auld Lang Syne." It could be church. 

Let's go with that last one. Church is a place where I have a purpose and would like to achieve it without restraint, right? My purpose - worship the Creator. What church would want to restrain that? Well . . . Let's think about what it would be like if every member decided to sing whatever song was in their heart at that moment or even if we all sang the same song but felt unrestrained when it comes to speed and rhythm. The resulting cacophony would not result in ANY of us achieving our purpose of worshiping the Creator. We need the restraints imposed by the musical director to actually achieve freedom in the sense of achieving purpose.

Playgrounds - Have you ever been on a playground without fences? You probably haven't. Maybe if you were Generation X (we were a bit feral), but even then, there was probably some limit - a tree line or some hedges to indicate a boundary. What's the purpose we want kids to achieve on the playground? Obviously, it is playing, freely engaging with other kids in games and physical activities.

For years, I've heard about a sociological study of playgrounds. I tried pretty hard to find the source, but I couldn't. That may be because it is referenced in so many places that those hits rise to the top and overwhelm the actual study. Or it could be because it is apocryphal. Who knows. Feel free to take it with a grain of salt, but as we say in the church, "It'll preach," so I'm going to use it anyway.

According to the story, researchers wanted to compare how kids behave with and without boundaries. So, they put kids on a playground that had no fence or boundary indicating where the playground ended. The kids huddled in the center of the area. They didn't explore or run around. They then erected a fence and put the same kids on the playground. The kids roamed about the space, running from corner to corner and playing throughout the entire space, including right up against the fence. Their conclusion was that the boundaries indicated where safety was. Without them, the kids didn't know where they were safe. With them, they knew they could go right up to a certain line and be fine.

Roadways - Driving was once thought of as the ultimate freedom; it's why teenagers were so keen on getting their license. While that has changed a bit, it's still a rite of passage the first time your parents hand you the keys to the car and you go out on your own or with your friends. My GenX purpose would have been to get to the mall; yours might be different.

Now, imagine you take the car to a place where the road has no rules. No speed limits or lane markings, no stop signs and intersections, and no expectation that all drivers will drive on the right side of the road (or the left if you live in one of those places). Does this imagine scenario make you feel free? "Whoo Hoo! We an get to the mall any way we want at any speed! Why even have a road? We can just go in a straight line from here to there!" Just thinking about it gives me a little anxiety. Far from freely achieving our purpose, we would be in the ultimate traffic jam, all cars pointed in a different direction and getting in each other's way.

So, it seems, complete lack of restraint doesn't lead to the deeper freedom of achieving a purpose, especially in a group setting where everyone's lack of restraint would interfere with that of the others in the group.

And now, we arrive at the education part of this blog. Classrooms are groups of people who want to achieve a purpose. 

Rules: Some of the more hippy-dippy types in education world would have you believe classroom rules stifle creativity and limit learning. But it's actually the opposite. Just like the playground fence, classroom rules show students the area within which they can explore, both physically and academically. The kid who throws things at a classmate isn't being creative and free. He's taking away the freedom of others to achieve the class' purpose. A kid yelling things out in the middle of class may feel unrestrained himself, but he is restraining others. 

Procedures and Routines: When everyone is on the same page about how class starts, you can immediately start achieving your purposes for the day. Without standardized procedures, you have kids hanging out in the hall, gathering around one desk to look at that one guy's phone, and asking, "What are we doing today?" If they know the procedure, however, most of them get started. You have to redirect a few, of course, but it is easier than the cat herding experience of getting the all going. 

Assignment Guidelines and Limited Choice: If you just say "Do a project" to students, you won't get creativity. You'll get an overwhelmed child who doesn't know what to do next. Given a choice between three options, they'll choose one and start thinking of ideas for how to execute it. Given a choice of 300 things, they'll spend an entire class period staring at the list. The complete lack of restraint prevents them from achieving purpose rather than enabling creativity. 

Memorized content: I know how many people think having kids memorize things is a horrifying use of their brain, especially in the age of instant access to information, yada yada yada. And of course, there are ways to make memorization torturous. But the truth is that having basic content already embedded in your brain enables creativity because you are able to use the freed up space in your working memory to make new connections within the content. 

This is not just true of academic content. There are examples in fine arts classes as well. Dance allows you to express creative movement, but if you move in ways that are against "the rules" of your body, it will also allow to injure yourself in creative ways. You need to have those body rules memorized so your brain can access them DURING the movement. In a play, everyone needs to have the script memorized. There can then be creativity within that script for vocalization, blocking, facial expressions and body movement, but if everyone is "doing their own script," the purpose of putting on the play will not be achieved. The visual arts are restrained, in part, by the rules of chemistry. Certain paints simply don't mix. Attempting to mix them isn't creative; it's disastrous for your project. 

As the school year starts and you go over your classroom guidelines, don't be afraid to boldly assert your rules. They may not align with the dictionary definition of freedom, but they enable to the deeper, truer definition. They allow students to achieve their purpose. And isn't that what we are there for?

Getting Started Right

How do you start your day? Some people begin with prayer or meditation. Others listen to a song to either hype or calm them On Thursday mornings, I scan in a couple of hundred people at the Y who begin with a workout. Whatever people choose to do sets the tone for their day. As people leave the Y on Thursday mornings at six, I say, "Have a great day. You got it started well."

The same is true of the school year. How you start matters. It sets the tone for your year, so be intentional about it.

What do you do on the first day of school?

Let's look at a few online stereotypes.

• Relationships First - There are the "relationships first" people. They spend the first weeks of school doing icebreakers and team building activities. They play a lot of games before they ever teach the first iota of subject area content. 
• Let's Get Started - Then, there are the teachers who jump into content with barely a moment of introduction. "In this class, we work." is the opening sentence. The kids in this room have homework on the first night of school.
• Procedure Practice - These are the people who came of age in the Harry Wong era. They spend the first days of school going over the syllabus and practicing procedures over and over again until they are tight as a drum.

Like all stereotypes, few real people fit neatly into these categories. Most of us have some blend of setting expectations, trying to learn kids names, and doing something fun that is also related to our content.

I did want to get to content quickly, but I knew procedures mattered to a smoothly functioning classroom, so I tried to get through the rules/syllabus stuff as quickly as was effective and move into a content based introductory activity. 

I'm not here to tell you which kind of person to be. There are many variables involved in what might make the best choice for your class. If you teach art, it probably looks different than if you algebra. If you teach an introductory class, like Spanish I, it might look different than if you teach AP Literature. If you feel like a fraud trying to do an icebreaker than you would hate doing in a faculty meeting, that's going to land like a lead balloon with your students. 

My advice to you as the new school year begins is to be intentional. Realize that the first day will set the tone. If you do not intend to move forward as "the fun teacher," don't set that expectation by doing fun activities. If you expect adherence to procedures for the rest of the year, you will have to teach them on the first day, but it might be wiser to teach them as you do them rather than attempt an isolated "procedures lesson." It is important that you know their names, but there are ways to do that without spending the first 45 minutes of your class time on it (Hint: HW Assignment One can be for them to submit a video on your school LSM in which they introduce themselves and tell you about their goals - which has the added bonus of them pronouncing their own name, eliminating the awkwardness of you mispronouncing it in addition to showing that they are properly enrolled and logged in on the system).

Those first days matter. They matter a lot. And they determine what kids will expect from the rest of their time with you. So sit down and give it a lot of thought. What are you trying to communicate? Make the days activities about that.

Have a great year!

Why You Should Show Your Work

Note: I promise that I won't make every post about my book from now on, but since it officially comes out next week (August 6), I wanted to explain its title and why I think it is important to let students see behind the curtain of your methods.

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If you were going to write an SNL type skit that included stereotypical teacher/student interactions, at least one would be a teacher telling a student "You didn't show your work. You must show your work." It annoys students who believe that they should get full points if the answer is correct. But, because you can arrive at right answers using wrong methods, teachers insist. 

(Hint to students: It also means that if you get the answer wrong, the teacher can give you credit for what you did right and help you diagnose where you went wrong.)

Yet, for generations, teachers have not reciprocated. We have asked students to go along for the ride on any and every pedagogical flight of fancy we have. Not only is it a little condescending to expect students to just trust us, it is also counterproductive with a generation that values authenticity and transparency. Yesterday, I was having a conversation with a local judge. She said that she had even used it as an example in a speech to other judges at a conference. She said, "Just like a child should show their work on math problems, we need to show ours by explaining the decision making process behind our rulings."

So, when I decided to write a book about how I and other teachers used the science of learning in our classrooms, I could think of no better title than Show Your Work. In a recent podcast interview, Gene Tavernetti asked me if I taught students about the science of learning, and my answer was that I had to hold myself back from oversharing about all of the things I was learning about it. Part of the reason for that is that I share everything I'm learning with everyone everywhere, whether that is students, other teachers, friends, or random people on the street. But it is also because I truly believe that showing kids how their brain learns will help their brains learn more.

So, I want to make a case for why teachers should show their work to students whenever possible.

1. Modeling - As I said earlier, we ask students to show their work, justify their answers, and elaborate on their thinking all of the time. It's our default with them. We need to set the example. If they only see the end result of our thinking, it is the equivalent of our showing them a final answer without showing how we got to it. We should model for them the things we expect from them.
2. Motivation - There's a lot of talk in education circles about motivation. In most discussions, it seems like an elusive thing that will require us finding a magic gemstone in a forest. But, in real life, we know that success breeds motivation which breeds more success, creating an awesome cycle. When we explain the methods that lead to success and the reasons they work, students are more likely to do them and create that cycle.
3. You have a good reason  - If you use something in your classroom that kids and their parents aren't used to, you open the door to criticism. "Other teachers aren't doing that; why is it such a big deal for you?" and "I'm sure you have your reasons, but my son doesn't want to . . ." But you will get much less pushback if you have taken the time to show your work. If you say, "I know this may seem a little weird, but I use mini-whiteboards to make sure everyone's answer is heard instead of the kids with their hands up," they usually understand that. If you say, "Retrieval helps strengthen the neurons that aid in memory formation. I'm happy to send you a link to the study," you establish credibility with both students and parents. Your are no longer the weird teacher doing the thing we don't understand; you are the go to source for questions about learning. We can't give our students a reason for every tiny thing, but when it comes to the big stuff, why wouldn't we want to say, "Yes, I do have a reason, and it's a good one. Let me tell you about it."
4. You have an answer - Early in my career, I got the dreaded question often - "When are we ever going to use this in real life?" No answer I gave was satisfying because I was trying to make it about the content. But, no matter how much we love our content, it's only part of the point. After a few years, I started saying, "It's about learning how to learn, not about the content." I got a little better result from that, but they still weren't really satisfied by it. After I discovered the science of learning, I had an analogy - muscle training. While the brain is not a muscle, there are enough similarities to make it a reasonable analogy to use with students. I would ask them, "When you lift a weight, do you say, 'When am I ever going to put a weigh here in real life?'" Of course, the answer was no. When I asked why they did it, they replied that it was to make their muscles stronger; it wasn't about needing to put a weight on a shelf. "When you learn, you strengthen the brain cells that make it easier to learn the next thing," I said. Eventually, I put this explanation in my first day of school speech, and I stopped getting this question from that point on. I had given the answer. 

Showing your work doesn't take a lot of time. As kids are getting out their markers and whiteboards, you explain why this is a practice you find to be effective. Then, you start asking retrieval questions. Sending an email to parents that explains your practices (especially the ones they might not be expecting) and your reasons will save you time in the long run because you won't have to answer as many of those questons individually. 

As you learn about learning, establish your credibility. Show your enthusiasm, and show your work.