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.  

Great Teachers Aren't Born

"I'm going to tell you everything you need to know about being a great teacher - steal. STEAL.  STEAL!"  Then, he left the stage.  That's how the great Harry Wong opened the day of professional development for this first-year teacher.  When he returned to the stage, he said, "Well, I told you I was going to tell you everything you needed to know.  I figured you could go home after that."  We spent the day laughing and learning from this tiny man who, at nearly 70 years of age, had more energy than anyone in the room.

Before there were Edu-celebrities, Harry Wong was one.  He didn't try to be. It didn't come from a fine-tuned marketing machine with social media support.  It came from being the real deal rather than a crafted persona, a truly influential person rather than "an influencer."  I know very few teachers who haven't had his seminal work The First Days of School somewhere in their education, whether in a college course on classroom management or required reading for their first-year training in a school or a gift from an administrator.  It is a practical book of techniques that have been tested "in the wild" and it has influenced me from year one.  From procedures for entering and exiting the classroom to attention-getting hand signals, Harry and Rosemary Wong have helped teachers create efficient classrooms and reduced stress for both teachers and students more than just about anyone in the last four decades.  But what makes that book so effective is that much of the writing was not done by the Wongs.  They collected and collated techniques teachers were already using to give younger teachers the wisdom of their experience.

Which brings me back to the day of professional development.  What he meant when he said, "Steal. Steal. Steal." was that teaching is improved by experience, but it doesn't always have to be your experience.  You can learn from the wisdom of others.  While I cannot find it attributed to him, I am 99% certain that I heard Harry Wong say that day, "Great teachers aren't born; they are made by the teacher next door."  (If I am wrong and someone else said it, please don't hold it against me.  It was 1998, and he may have attributed it to someone else that I just don't remember 26 years later.)  

It is true.  Teaching involves a thousand big and small activities every day.  They have to manage their classroom, plan lessons, do lunch duty, deliver lessons, grade homework, give feedback, write tests, create project rubrics, deal with emotional students (or parents), choose curriculum, etc.  Anyone who tries to do that alone with only the knowledge they acquired in college courses will quickly burn out.  Befriending the teacher next door and finding a co-conspirator is as important as preparing your learning activities.  Despite being with 30 to 130 people all day long, teaching can be a lonely job, and the only remedy for that is to spend time with other teachers.  No matter how good you are at this job, you need a mentor.  If the school assigns you one, that's great; but they may not be the person you naturally gravitate toward.  Find that person.  Go in their room, sit down, and start developing a relationship.  You need them. They need you.

Harry Wong passed last week, but his legacy did not.  His book will still be valuable to young teachers everywhere.  His videoed speeches will still engage and entertain while educating educators.  But if anything, his lesson to learn from the experienced teachers around you will continue to do good far beyond the 92 years of his life.  Rest in peace, Harry Wong.  We'll miss you.  

The Resurgence of Christian Anti-Intellectualism

Note:  This blog is usually about education, but this post is only tangential to that.  This is just something I have been mulling in recent weeks.

In the 80s, the American church went through a period of anti-intellectual elitism.  I was blessed enough to not know this until the mid-90s because it was not happening in my church.  I was spoiled by a smart pastor who preached intelligent, well-written sermons, some of which I can still remember today.  It wasn't until I was in a Christian college that I found out that most 80s kids were raised without any knowledge of how to think about Scripture.  They had never been taught how to tell what a verse meant, only how they felt about it.  Their pastors routinely said something along the lines of "Well, you may have a Ph.D., but I believe in WWJD."  I don't know if this was a backlash to evolution in science education or something else, but it made me sad to think that God had gifted people with charisma and communication skills only to have them use those talents to denigrate the intellectual gifts God gave to others.  Instead of exhorting them to use those powerful gifts as Daniel did, to glorify God and influence culture, these ministers mocked the gifts that God meant for them to use.  This led to a generation of therapeutic moralists, people who believed God wanted them to be happy and that being good would make them happy.  They didn't think about theological doctrines or context or meaning because that might interfere with how a verse made them feel about themselves (which was clearly the only thing God cared about).

Then, it seemed there was a time of change.  At least in my circles, pastors used sermons to appeal to doctors, lawyers, and academics to meet their world where it was and use their minds and credentials to bring light into dark places.  Leaders like Tim Keller and Christian colleges like Kings College in New York trained educated people to go into a variety of fields because their voices were needed there.  As I wrote last week, the vision of my Christian school is to help our students achieve academic excellence and develop their gifts while being grounded in God's word so that they can carry out the plan God has for them and to "impact their world for Christ" as our mission statement says.  The shift was to mock celebrities (which I am also not okay with because, again, these are people who could be very influential in the use of their gifts), but I hadn't heard an outright mockery of scientists and other academics for a while.  

I hadn't heard it, that is, until the pandemic.

It seems there is nothing that we won't make political.  Taking precautions against getting a virus shouldn't be political, but there are people who thrive on chaos and, thus, foment division about things we should all be united about.  In order to make it an "us vs. them" situation, there were some who insisted on painting epidemiologists as stupid and/or self-serving.  Men and women who have learned and forgotten more science than I have ever learned are being called stupid by high school dropouts and self-serving by megachurch pastors.  Then, it stopped being directed at the one man who had the audacity to publically question a questionable statement and became directed at all scientists.  Nurses are being told to change out of their scrubs before leaving the hospital and are being escorted by security to their cars because of dangerous protesters.  Doctors who are destroying their own health for the sake of ours are being accused of diagnosing patients out of greed.  There is a church in California whose pastor has screamed at the top of his voice that anyone entering his church with a mask will be turned away.  (As Jesus would?  Wait, that doesn't sound right.)

As a science teacher and a Christian, this resurgence of anti-education among American church leaders is heartbreaking.  At a time when we most need these people and their work, influential leaders of the church should not be looking down on them.   I'm not saying everyone has to agree.  Even among scientists, there will be differences in interpretation.  I'm not saying science isn't sometimes flawed.  It is a field of study being carried out by fallen human beings, so of course, there are errors.  I'm not trying to place the highly educated above anyone else, but it is crazy that anyone would put them under others in the name of faith.  

Christian school teachers, it is our responsibility to fight this.  When a student believes their Google search is more credible than the words of an expert, it is our job to push back.  When we teach students to analyze literature for meaning, we must make sure they understand how to do the same thing with God's word.  When we teach math and science, we must not say faith and science are different things that don't influence each other because that's just hiding from the hard work of grappling with difficult issues.  We must teach them that it is both academically important and God-honoring to dig into those issues and that they may spend years working on them.  When a student answers a question with the lazy answer "because God made it that way," it is critically important that we push through that and say, "Sure, but how did He make it that way?"  All Christian teachers, it is important that our students see our example as Christians who live by faith, but it is equally important that we model thirst for the knowledge God has given humankind.  We should never teach them to ignore God's gifts.  

Don't Feed the Crazy

Conspiracy theories have been around for as long as I can remember, but something has changed.  

We've stopped recognizing them as crazy.  We've started engaging them as though they deserve our attention.  We've started sharing them without regard to their impact.  Instead of rolling our eyes at the weird uncle who says crazy things at Thanksgiving, we hit share on his post, and because we aren't as crazy as he is, our friends interpret the statement as more credible than they would have it had come from him.  You may have shared it sarcastically or because you thought it was funny without really believing it, but your friends are going to do with it whatever they will.  Social media didn't create spreading crazy ideas.  That's always been around.  However, when you had to say things out loud to share them, it took time to do and died faster because you might not remember to share it with the next set of people or you might think better of it before you had the opportunity.  The spread was relatively linear.  Email made it faster; I remember well the emails I got that started with, "I don't know if this is true, but just in case."  It made the spread faster, but because you had to type in email addresses, you might have shared it with a few dozen people.  If you chose to delete it, it was gone and likely didn't come back up; so the spread was faster than word of mouth, but it was still limited.  Social media has made it possible for a crazy thought to go from one keyboard to a worldwide trend in a matter of minutes.  

Why is this dangerous?  When you feed something, it grows.  When you keep feeding it, it can grow beyond control.  We talk about things going viral as though we aren't part of the spread, but if we hit share, we are part of the problem.  

When was the last time you read an entire article or watched an entire video before you hit the share button?  Most of us read the headline.  Did you check the source?  I don't mean your friend who shared it; I mean the actual source.  Did it come from a credible source, or is it just someone's blog?  (Yes, I'm aware of the irony that I'm writing this on a blog, but I make no effort to make this site look like a news source.)  Do you look at more than the title of the site?  Frontline Doctors sounds like a legitimate source until you remember that it is the home of the crazy lady who believes cervical cancer is caused by dream sex with demons.  Have you asked someone with some degree of expertise, like my friend who sent me a video to ask if I had an explanation for why the snow turned black in the crazy lady's "experiment"?

It seems like I'm asking you to do a lot of work.  I'm not.  In fact, you can do less work.  Don't hit share.  If you do not know something is true, just don't share it.  Otherwise, don't kid yourself; you are just a gossip.  If you haven't looked into the source and don't wish to, just keep scrolling.  You do not have to share something just because you paused at the headline.  You don't even have to reply to your grandma on Facebook with the counter-argument.  Stuff will go away faster if more people ignore it than it will if you engage with it, causing people to dig in their heels.  Every time you reply, it brings the crazy thing back into someone's newsfeed and makes it seem debatable.  If it is crazy, nothing better can happen to it than for it to get no likes, no comments, and no shares.

In short, stop feeding the crazy, and it will die.  Keep feeding it, and it grows.