What We Don't Know

As I wrap up my classroom teaching career, I find myself a little nostalgic.  As a result, I've been telling students and colleagues a lot of stories about my early years.  That has left me thinking quite a bit about the things I didn't know when I started.  As I have tried to convey to my students for years, you have to keep an open mind about things because you don't know where they will lead.  Allow me a little self-indulgence while I describe a few that have come to mind recently.

When I entered college, I wanted to teach physics.  Just physics.  I had only recently taken it in high school and fallen in love with it, so that's what I wanted to teach.  My advisors kept saying to me, "That job does not exist.  There is nowhere that has a position where you teach physics all day, so you have to be able to teach other things."  My degree plan included three courses in chemistry and their labs as well as four lecture/lab combinations in biology, and had reasonably good attitudes about most of those.  But, the class I was snotty about was earth science.  While I liked Dr. Meleen, I just didn't care about rocks.  If you want a textbook in good condition, you can have mine because I rarely opened it.  After doing my student teaching in physics, chemistry, and physical science, I had to defend it to a panel of three.  One of those three people was my earth science professor.  After I talked about what I had learned in my classroom experiences, he told me that he was going on a partial sabbatical for the following year and wondered if I would be interested in teaching the lab section of the course for a year.  Since I was very interested in paying rent for the year, I accepted immediately.  But, yikes!  I was now going to teach the very course I had blown off.  I remember calling my mom the day before I started in a panic, saying, "But I don't know anything about rocks."  It didn't take long to figure it out because I am, above all else, a learner.  But it was a big lesson for me in keeping an open mind.  

I've been packing up things from my classroom for a couple of weeks now, and one of those things is my calculator.  That little device is twice as old as the students I teach, and I have used it to calculate scores for every test of my career, including last week's exams.  My trusty TI-81 is likely on its last legs.  I'll be sad when it finally dies.  Much like my proofreading sweater, high school backpack, and penny loafers, I won't be able to bring myself to toss it out and will place it on a shelf as a piece of objet d'art.  I've lived a lot of life with that calculator since I got in in the 10th grade.  But here's what I thought about this week.  I didn't want to buy that calculator.  It was the first year that graphing calculators had become available, and the school required it for Algebra II.  I was resistant because they were so expensive.  When they told me that I would not be able to pass Algebra II without it, I had to wonder how people had passed it the year before, when they didn't exist.  This calculator that I now love is something I didn't want to have.

There's so much we don't know before it happens.  I didn't know I would love physics before I took it and almost didn't take the honors section.  I gave up the chance to take art with one of the best art teachers in the region because I was intimidated.  I didn't know I would love putting together yearbooks.  I didn't know I would one day teach students over a computer screen.  I didn't know that attending the Learning and the Brain conference would one day lead me to an interest in teaching teachers or writing a book.  I didn't know joining the Y after I gave up the yearbook would lead to a change of mission in my life.  

We can't see the future.  We can barely see one or two steps ahead of our own feet.  But, as I've written in quite a few yearbooks recently, "Keep looking to the Lord, and he'll lead you in the way you are supposed to go."  He knows what we don't know.

This Becoming is Harder Than it Seems

I decided a couple of weeks ago that I wanted to see what music I would hear if I let randomness decide.  I put my iPod on shuffle and left it there.  As a result, I've heard some Christmas songs and skipped through a few things I don't remember purchasing.  But I've also heard some songs that I love and had forgotten about.  

One of them is a Michael W. Smith song called "Place in This World."  If you are younger than I am, you may not even know this song as it came out in 1990.  I had it on cassette tape back then and listened to it until I wore that part of the tape out.  It had become clear that I was not going to be an astronaut as I was already taller than their height limit with no sign of slowing down.  I had not yet found my love of physics, so I didn't know what the future looked like.  The line in this song that most resonated with me was "A heart that's hopeful, a head that's full of dreams, but this becoming is harder than it seems."

As I listened to it in my car this morning, I had many of the same thoughts I had back in the early 90s.  I don't know what happens next at 47 any more than I did at 17.  (And it is all the more jarring after 21 years of knowing exactly what I would be doing from day to day and year to year.)  I have to trust God for that every bit as much now as I did then.  And, I also thought of my students.  They are in the same position I was at that age.  Modern life doesn't make it easier; in fact, in many ways, it makes it harder.  They have more access to information, which seems like it would be helpful; but it can bring about a form of cognitive overload called choice fatigue.  Previous generations may have had to choose between college and a job or the military.  If they went to college, they likely had only one or two options.  Now, students apply to many colleges, and if the one they most want defers them, they are left with many choices they consider disappointments.  They are told all of their eggs rest in this basket even though we know God's plan for them will not be thwarted by one decision.  It's a lot of pressure, and it is worse than it was when we were kids.  Some of them become practically paralyzed with indecision.

If you know a teenager, pray for them.  "This becoming is harder than it seems" is just as true now as it was when Michael W Smith wrote it.  And they likely still feel this:

"If there are millions down on their knees

Among the many, can You still hear me?
Hear me asking, "Where do I belong?"
Is there a vision that I can call my own?
Show me, I'm

Looking for a reason

Roaming through the night to find
My place in this world
My place in this world
Not a lot to lean on
I need Your light to help me find
My place in this world."

Pray for them to know God can still hear them.  Pray for to find that reason.  Pray for God to give them the light they need.  Pray for them to learn to trust Him in the process.

Pressing On to What Lies Ahead

The proofreading sweater is now in retirement.  Yesterday was my final yearbook deadline - not just of the year.  It was my last ever yearbook deadline.  In my Thanksgiving post last November, I wrote about 18 years of being the yearbook advisor and why it was time for me to hand it over to someone else.  In that post, I promised to talk about what happens next.  

Let me go back to April of 2022 when I began thinking about this.  Our school has grown dramatically over the past 18 years, and when we got an email about our growing enrollment, I recognized that the methods I have used to make the yearbook all these years were not going to be scalable to this size.  One sleepless night, I had the thought, "In a few years, it may be time to pass this on to someone who can delegate better than I can."  Within a few weeks, I was thinking that perhaps this should happen sooner rather than later.  I wanted to make sure I stopped while I still loved doing it (If that sounds strange, listen to this episode of the TED radio hour in which Daniel Kahneman discusses the Peak End phenomenon of our memories).

But I am not a person who walks away from things easily, and I'm a pretty reflective person (hence this blog).  So, I started thinking about what I have loved about doing the yearbook all these years.  What things do I get from it that I don't want to lose?  There are a number of small things, but there were ultimately two major ones.  

1. Connections with many teachers - Our school is currently on two campuses, with our TK through 6th grade located down the hill about a quarter of a mile from our 7th through 12th grades.  While we have occasional large group meetings, most faculty are not well-connected with those on the other campus.  Because I might pop into a room with my camera at any time and send email requests for photos, I have more knowledge of what is happening in classrooms than most, and it is part of why I love the school so much.
2. Legacy contribution - Teaching is about projecting something into the future.  While we obviously do that with our students, it is important to think about the future of the school itself.  I have been at GRACE for 20 years, and preserving our memories in the yearbook has made me feel that I was making a tangible contribution to the school's legacy.

These were both things that I didn't want to lose, but I was uncertain about how I would maintain those things as I moved forward.  In the midst of all of this musing, I was having an email conversation with our academic dean about doing some presentations on cognitive science with our teachers for professional development.  It was then that the penny dropped, and I realized that this was how I could keep dual campus connections and make a contribution that would carry forward.  

I ran this by a couple of colleagues to see if they thought I was crazy, and they were excited about it.  I carefully crafted an email to my principal with all of these notions, thinking she would be shocked.  Her reply was two sentences - "Sounds great. I'll start working on it."  I ended the year with a pep in my step as I was having new ideas about how to pursue this new role - even though we haven't fully fleshed out what it will be.

This will begin, in part, after spring break.  I will spend six Tuesday afternoons presenting professional development sessions based on the things I learned at a Learning and the Brain conference about the science of learning, and the librarian and I are going to purge and reorganize our professional development books to make the shelf more user-friendly.  Since I won't constantly be heading out to games and events every afternoon, I have joined the Y (I've been going for two weeks now, and I sense blog posts with fitness class analogies in the works).

Next year, I will begin making resource recommendations to my colleagues (and by "begin," I mean "continue" because I've been doing that for years - it will just be official now).  I will teach a study skills elective using the works of Barbara Oakley and Daniel Willingham.  I will observe anyone who will let me and talk through cognitive science-based pedagogy with them.  I hope to make monthly presentations in faculty meetings on a variety of topics, starting with Working Memory and Cognitive Load.  I was also thinking it might be a good idea to send parents some tools to help their kids with studying.  There may be a few other things in the works as well.  If you think that sounds like a lot, I assure you, it won't add up to the amount of work I've been putting into the yearbook.

I will always be grateful for the 18 years I have spent advising the yearbook, but I am happy to press on to what lies ahead, empowering teachers in their decisions with knowledge of research and making kids better learners by showing them how their brains work.