Give them ONE way to do it

Last year, I was talking to a science teacher who was new to the profession. She had been a scientist, so her content knowledge was strong, but had some understandable pedagogy struggles.

In a physical science class, she was teaching 8th grade students to write chemical formulas and name compounds. To be fair, this is a challenge now matter how long you have been teaching. It is a complex thing because the rules are different for covalent compounds than they are for ionic, so you have to teach them to identify which one it is first. Then, there are slight differences between binary ionic and polyatomic ionic. It's a lot for an 8th grader to grasp, and the order you teach it is makes a big difference, which a new teacher might not fully appreciate. But the part that stood out most in our conversation was this.

"I gave them so many ways to do it. Why can't they do it?"

I said, "Oh, heavens no. Just give them one good method."

Why are we inclined to give students too many choices, and why is that misguided?

Why do we do it?

1. Let start with this. We're Americans. We think choice is our birthright. If you've been to a grocery store lately, you know we are inundated with lots of choice. No longer do you choose between Heinz or Hunt's ketchup. Now, there are at least 7 brands, but even within one of the brands, there are added features - Want it spicy? You can have it with jalapeño or sriracha. Like to mix it with mayo? You no longer have to do that yourself. Less salt, half the sugar, thicker, made with mushrooms (or even bananas rather than tomatoes) - the choices are endless. 

2. We've bought in to "buy-in." We've been told at many PD training sessions that students will do better if we earn their approval, and choices are the key to that. We were trained to give them assignment bingo cards and let them choose which row to complete. If they choose, we are told, they will be more likely to buy in to the assignment. They never address the fact that there is no evidence that students will perform better or learn more if they are "bought in." We kind of just accept it on vibes. I'm not against some controlled choice. I used to say, "you can express this in a video or as a live presentation."

3. We like choice, so we reason they will like it too. As adults, we usually do prefer to decide how we want to express the knowledge we have. I'll address this later, but adults aren't kids. What we like isn't always what they like.

4. We think it will lead to deeper thinking. Surely, we reason, if kids have multiple methods that lead to the same conclusion, they will have to think deeply about what the best way is to reach that conclusion. 

Why Is it Misguided?  Why Should We Limit Choice?

1. Novice learners cannot discern which choice is best. They just don't know enough about the topic to decide whether solving a math problem by cross multiplying is better than using an algebraic method. Down the road, they might have a favorite method, but when they are first learning it, they don't know which one is easier for them. Often, they don't understand that we have taught multiple methods. They just try to do what they remember the teacher showing them in class and end up blending all methods into one, which definitely does not work. 

2. Kids aren't adults. I know that's surprising, but it's true. Often, educators and those in charge of education policy make decisions based on what works for the adult brain, but kid brains are NOT just smaller versions of ours. They think more concretely than we do, lacking the fine grained ability to discern nuance. Kids often want the security of knowing they are doing the assignment the way the teacher wants it. Choosing what to do or how to do it takes additional time, and they aren't sure if they are choosing the best way. 

3. Choice takes up room in working memory. I buried the lead here, but in my opinion, this is the big one. Working memory (what we are able to hold in conscious processing) is limited. The typical classroom is an assault on working memory. Sights, sounds, other people's conversations, the buzzing of phone alerts, etc. fill up space that we need for thinking deeply, solving problems, and doing the work of learning. Choice may seem appealing, but for the student, it is just one more thing that has to be processed while they are attempting to learn. To decide which method is best for writing a chemical formula, they have to think about both methods (which they JUST learned, so they are not yet in long term memory) simultaneously and compare and contrast them and then must use whichever method they chose. It's just too much.

As a science teacher, the argument I heard most for anyone's favored method of teaching or assessment or anything else in the classroom was that I should be "teaching them to think like scientists." But it's not making them think like scientists. It's preventing them from developing the knowledge and skills necessary to think like scientists later. When current scientists were the age of your students, they did not think like they do now. It took years of knowledge building and practice with fundamental skills before they could begin the work of synthesizing all of that into a way of thinking.

As American, adults we often think choice is always good. We think options lead to deeper thinking. Sometimes?  Maybe. If the learner is already an expert in the discipline and has enough knowledge in their long term memory to lean on that his working memory won't be full. For novice learners? Never.  

Give them the best possible way.  Save nuance for later - much, much later.

A Note for the First Year Teacher as we Head into November

Hello first year teacher.  It's November. You have finished your first quarter and are heading towards the holiday season. I'm going to ask you some questions whose answers I already know.

Are you tired? Yes, of course you are. You've been putting all of your physical and mental energy into the last three months.

Were your kids chaotic because Friday was Halloween? Yes, of course they were. It's good that they'll do most of their sugar loading over the weekend, though.

Have you had a demoralizing parent conference? Probably so. It may be the only profession where they expect you to be just as skilled in your first year as you will be ten years later. But I hope you have had an encouraging one too.

Have you had a demoralizing conversation with an experienced teacher? Probably so. Some of them are burned out but aren't aware of it. But I hope you have had a lot of encouraging ones too. 

Being new to anything is hard. You don't have routines and past experience to help you shortcut your thinking, so your working memory is at capacity most of the time.

The good news is:  It gets better.  Some of it takes a while, but I promise it does get better. 

• Some things get easier quickly, as you learn the names of students and get more comfortable with your daily routines.  
• Some things get better incrementally as you are better able to notice oncoming issues and head them off at the pass. You learn better classroom management techniques and employ them with more deft. You develop more efficient grading routines.
• Some things take a few years. Hold on for year three.  That's when you will realize that your content and pedagogy are firmly under your feet and you think less about them while you are teaching. That's when you are able to more fully engage with the students and fluidly teach at the same time.

The most important difference is that you will grow in confidence as you gain experience. After 25 years of teaching middle and high school, I was fully aware that there were things I didn't know and there were still things to learn, but I also knew when I was right and when it was okay to insist that students do what I wanted them to do. That's likely something you spend a lot of time questioning now, but you will spend much less time stressing over that as you gain experience.

If you change contexts, it might start over again - a little.  Teaching in a new school or taking on a new discipline means having less assistance from your habits and long term memory. But, you will hold your pedagogy knowledge and be able to catch on to new things more rapidly.  About 18 months ago, I began teaching indoor cycle classes at the YMCA. When I first started, I was constantly miscueing times and having songs end before I was done. I'm a sub, so I often attempt to mimic the instructor for whom I am subbing, but I have finally developed a style of my own.  Last Monday night, on the way out the door, one of the men who has been in many of my classes said, "She's getting harder," to which a lady replied, "I think she's just more confident that she was a year ago."  They were both right. Because I am more confident, I know how hard I can push a class (while still making the point that they are allowed to do whatever they want to) and when a break might be needed.

Thank you for choosing this profession, especially right now.  If you are in your first year, it means that you were a high school junior or senior during lock down and choose to major in education in 2021.  2021 - the hardest year experienced teachers ever had - and you choose to enter the profession then!  Good for you.  

Hang in there. View this year as an investment in your future years. It's an exhausting profession, but it is also an extremely rewarding one. Contrary to advice you may have been given, don't avoid the teacher's lounge; just find the right people in it. Befriend an experienced teacher (not one of the burned out ones, find someone who still has enthusiasm) and learn everything you can from them.  Don't be afraid to ask for help or admit when you don't know something. Whatever mistake you just made, someone else in your building has made it too, and they can give you advice about how to fix it.

Rest well during Thanksgiving and Christmas breaks. Don't be surprised if you get a little sick on the first days of the break; it's like your immune system knows you have time now. Occasionally, take a break by letting something take longer to grade than you want it to or by satisficing (making it good enough to suffice). Don't let perfect be the enemy of good. 

And keep telling yourself that you are learning this year, so you can teach in future years. 

Classroom Noise is Context Specific

Warning: This post is a little more rambling than intended. As often happens, I was working out some thoughts through my fingers. But I also wrote it at noon on a Thursday, when I had gotten up at 3:15 to go to work. If any of it seems really weird, please blame it on that.

Last Sunday, I showed up to church, as I do every week and 8:45 for the 9AM service. Instead of the usual off duty police officer directing traffic as I crossed Peace Street, there were two fire trucks.  Instead of people walking toward the building, there were people gathered in the parking lot. Instead of chirping birds, there was the unmistakable sound of a fire alarm.  

No worries. Everything is fine. There was a technical issue in the system that tripped the alarm, but it couldn't turned off by the firefighters, and the alarm system people were 40 minutes away.  My sweet pastor stayed calm as he attempted to develop a Plan B, but he finally recognized that there wasn't going to be one. Even if we attempted to have church in the parking lot, he said, "I can't compete with the fire alarm." He didn't want people focused on the sound, not the sermon (which was excellent, they live streamed the 11:00 service).

Later in the week, Carl Hendrick started a little bit of a hubbub on Twitter by posting a link to his blog post "Is a Noisy Classroom a Thinking Classroom?" As is always the case with Carl's blog, this post is a nuanced and thoughtful exploration of the idea that noise is more productive than silence when it comes to teaching and learning. 

As is always the case on Twitter, the response was anything but nuanced and thoughtful. The teachers who hate compliance ironically insisted that other teachers comply with their opinion that student voice is THE MOST IMPORTANT THING in education. And don't let this shock you, but many commenters had not read the article and responded only to the title (I'm sure that's the first time anyone has done that one Twitter). 

Anyway, as I was reading all of these posts about noise, I couldn't help but think about the cancelled church service.  When John said he couldn't compete with the alarm, it was because he knew people wouldn't be able to think about his words while something else filled, not just their ears, but their working memory. I also thought about my own classroom as both a full time teacher and as a substitute and how there are times when I need students to hush and concentrate on what I am saying and other times when they should be talking through the assignment. I also came into the profession at the time the idea of a the noisy classroom was being push hard, principals saying they wanted to hear kids voices as they walked by your classroom because "whoever was doing the talking was doing the learning." This is a sentence I could easily believe if I didn't know better since I have talked out loud to myself since I was a toddler, and I sometimes don't think something is real until I have heard myself say it out loud. 

So, I was thinking a lot this week about the question of whether a noisy classroom is a thinking classroom.

If you have met, me you will not be surprised by my conclusion - the answer to the question "Is a Noisy Classroom a Thinking Classroom?" is . . . "It depends."  It depends on the type of thinking expected and on the quality (and quantity) of the noise.

Type of Thinking Expected

I once had a group of 9 students who were sitting stone cold silent in my classroom.  I don't mean it was kind of quiet. I mean it was a graveyard level of quiet. I said to them, "Y'all are creeping me out.  Why is it so quiet in here?"  They acted like I was crazy for suggesting that they should be talking . . . in class.  But there was a reason their silences was surprising - they were supposed to be working on a group project together.  Since they had not yet settled on a solution to the problem they were attempting to solve, I expected to hear suggestions and discussions of whether or not those suggestions would work.  Instead all of them were claiming to be "researching the problem."  I could see their computer screens, so I knew they weren't actually researching.  This was a case in which silence was not golden and was not a sign of internal thinking.  It was a sign of students who didn't want to work at that moment.  In this case, a noisier classroom would have shown more thought than a silent one.

However, there are times when this is not the case. I was recently substituting in a math classroom.  Students had been given math problems to solve as retrieval practice, and it could only be retrieval if they did it on their own, using their own brains. About a third of the class started talking about fantasy football.  About a third started talking to each other about how to do the problems. The final third was attempting to work on the problems on their own, but it was difficult for them to tune out the other conversations.  If one of those principals from the 90s who expected to hear student voices as they walked by bothered to enter the room, they would have known that this was not productive noise. It was noise that was preventing the objective from being achieved by most of the students in the room.  In this case, the sound of silence would have resulted in more thinking.

Zero teachers have ever said, "Let's have a noisy exam because that will show more thinking," but there is an equal number of zero teachers who have said, "Silence in the lab!" unless there was an emergency where instructions needed to be heard. A quiet foreign language classroom might indicate lack of learning as you would expect speech, but it might also indicate that they are reading in that language and need quiet to process the syntax. Context matters in many education discussions, and this is certainly one of them.

Quality of Sound

Most experienced teachers can quickly discern the difference between productive and unproductive sound, but it is hard to describe.  When it shifts in the middle of class, they know.  It isn't a super power; the two just sound different.  And it ins't necessarily about the decibel level.  It's about what the sound . . . sounds like.  Sorry, I know that isn't the most helpful sentence, but I can't think of another way to put it.  

There are sounds that happen during dissection labs that are good, like  "Hey, hand me that scalpel" and "Do I cut this way?" There are sounds that are bad, like "Ouch." and "Oh, no, I shouldn't have cut there." Those are pretty obvious, but you can also tell without hearing words when the conversation has shifted to evening plans and tv shows and sports. I don't know how to explain it, but it has a different tone.   Teachers can tell the difference between those tones in the same way moms can differentiate a baby's hungry cry from his full diaper cry.

Quantity of Sound

Even productive noise can become unproductive when it reaches a threshold level. I'm not sure I have research to back this claim up, but I think loud noises or noises that occur closer to ones head take up more space in working memory. My purely anecdotal example of this occurs regularly during my job at the Y.  There is music playing in the lobby all of the time.  Which is fine until I need to concentrate. If I answer the phone and someone with a thick accent asks me a question, I have to turn the music down to process what they are asking. When swim team practice ends and a gaggle of loud, wet kids enter the lobby all at once, I have a hard time carrying out even relatively routine tasks. You might think this is just because I am middle aged, but I experienced it when I was younger as well.  In my junior and senior year of college, I was a janitor in an arena. None of my maintenance tasks during an event required high levels of concentration, but some of them became very difficult when a loud band was performing. A few times, despite my youth, I opted to wear earplugs, just so I could perform relatively simple tasks.  If the fire alarm at the church had been half the volume, John might have been able to hold our attention.  

Education isn't simple:

Okay, I know I've wandered around a bit here (I did warn you up front). My point is this.  A noisy classroom is sometimes a thinking classroom, provided that the quality and quantity of noise match the expected type of thinking for the assigned task.  A quiet classroom is sometimes a thinking classroom if the silence is needed for concentrating on complex or individual work.  Trying to cover something as complicated as education with a blanket statement that should apply at all times is a fool's errand.

Education isn't simple enough to have one answer to most questions.  Most questions are context specific. There isn't an answer that covers all situations, so decide at the lesson planning stage whether or not this is a quiet day or a productive noise day. Then communicate to your students what that means and what you expect to hear or not hear. 

Lessons in Working Memory Challenges

Last week, I got an unplanned lesson in the challenges of working memory overload.  

The instructor for the weight lifting class my friend and I regularly take was out of town, and the substitute he had that night is not my cup of tea.  We decided that, instead of taking a class, we would work out on side by side treadmills.  She's training for a marathon, so she would be able to run while I walked and experimented with inclines.

Now, the Y has some fancy treadmills with fans and touchscreens that allow you to access Netflix, TV, even Facebook and Twitter.  Then, I noticed you could play Solitaire.  I thought, "that might make for an interesting distraction."  

Well, I was right, it was a distraction.  It was also the most difficult game of Solitaire I have ever played.  I said to my friend, "This is like a cognitive test where they put you under some kind of stress and see if you can still complete a task."  The combination of pain in my glutes from the incline, difficulty keeping pace from a constant elevated speed, and leaning in to move the cards on the screen made for a working memory overload like I haven't experienced in quite some time.

Then end result was that I didn't do either the workout or the game very well.  While I was quite sore the next day, it wouldn't make for a very efficient workout on a regular basis.  And the game, well, I wasn't going to be winning any championships there either.  

This got me thinking about teachers I have seen (and been) trying to get kids to do two things at the same time.  It may seem like playing a video while kids work on a paper will be helpful, but the reality is that they won't get much out of the video, and they won't give you their best work on a paper.  I have found that students working on a paper in a quiet study hall still don't get much done because there people next to them for a task that really requires focused alone time.  

One of the things that was most difficult for me during the hybrid year of the pandemic was working memory overload. In the beginning, I would reach cognitive load by 8AM because of the multitude of unfamiliar procedures in using technology to both broadcast my classroom to those at home and show what needed to be shown to those in the room.  While that got easier with time and practice, I was still dividing my working memory between those on the screen and those physically in front of me.  It's why this model, while needed at the time, was unsustainable for future years.  You just cannot maintain a split focus and do either thing particularly well.  

As the great Ron Swanson said to Leslie Knope, "Don't half-ass two things. Whole-ass one thing."

This week, I got two more lessons, this time from tests.  I was helping out in a room where kids with accommodations take their exams.  Some of them are not required to fill in the scan card, so the adults in the room transfer their answers from the test to the card.  As I was doing that, I encountered a matching section with 10 options.  You may know that the scancard only has A through E, so there were also choices labeled AA (which is not possible to bubble on a scan card), AB, AC, AD, and AE.  

This was hard for me to fill in, and all I was doing was transferring their answers.  I was not a kid under stress, attempting to go back and forth between the test and the card while making sure to fill in both A and C on the same line.  I kept thinking, "How hard would it have been to have two matching sections with A through E on both of them?"  

The answer is that it wouldn't have been hard.  This teacher just didn't think of that.  

Another exam was made using College Board questions for an AP test, and this is not the fault of the teacher.  When a teacher chooses questions from AP Classroom, the formatting is preset and unalterable.  This results in images that take up a full page.  While that might sound nice, it means that the question the student is answering is on a different page than the source they must reference to answer it.  It also often meant having a question on the bottom of the page with the answer choices on the top of the next page (and depending on how it was printed, the student might have to flip the page over to get to the choices.  Again, I was having difficulty, and all I was asked to do was transfer the answers from the test to the scan sheet.  

College Board, it is almost 2025, and you make gajillions of dollars!  How about investing some of it in giving the teacher edit ability over their tests rather than dumping it all into AI grading?  It will cost less, give teachers more agency, and not result in a working memory nightmare for students.  (Not to mention it would slow the progression of AI making us less human, which we will regret but refuse to see because convenience is our national religion.  Okay, anti AI rant over for the moment.)

When we start approaching students with working memory in mind, we do things differently.  

• We intentionally stop talking when we want them to concentrate on solving a problem.  
• We don't put something on the screen while we are saying the same thing out loud. We put them up separately.
• We don't expect them to remember multi-step instructions and carry them out simultaneously. We put the instructions on the board or on a paper handout.
• We don't put an un-needed image on our slides just to have an image (or gifs that repeatedly take up space in their brains).  We do put helpful images that make our point clearer.
• We do give appropriate wait time between asking a question an expecting an answer.
• We format tests (when we have the ability to) in such a way that the student doesn't have to switch his focus back and forth between question, choices, and resources.
• And we, in the name of all that is holy, do not put more than 5 options in a matching section when they are expected to fill out a 5 space scantron.

If you have been guilty of this (and Lord knows, I HAVE BEEN), a new semester is upon you.  This isn't about shame.  You know better now, so you can do better now.  Put the past behind you and forge ahead with working memory challenges in mind.

Say to yourself, "I will not ask my students to walk quickly up a hill while playing a game of solitaire."

Music Is Powerful - Which is Why it is NOT Good for Everything

If you asked the students I have taught in the last few years, they would probably tell you that I don't like music.  That is simply not true.  I love music.  It's a gift of God and a uniquely human skill.  And, it is powerful.

Music has the power to alter your emotional state and change the way you think.  There is a 95% chance I will cry when I hear the lyrics "Tears stream down your face when you lose something you cannot replace" from the song "Fix You" by Coldplay.  I have sobbed during indoor cycle classes when Jay played "Bridge Over Troubled Water" or "One Moment in Time."  I had my thinking influenced in a profound way by Matt sharing "Flower in the Gun" on his Facebook page.  I can't help but dance along with "Boogie Shoes."

There aren't many things that can evoke a memory like a song from your childhood.  I will never hear "Twist and Shout" without seeing Ferris Bueller on a parade float.  The same goes for Michael J. Fox playing an electric guitar to "Johnny B Goode" in Back to the Future.  And if you really want to take me to my childhood, put on "Hey, Mickey."  I'll be back at Skate Town before Tony Basil gets to the lyrics.  If you play "Can't Fight This Feeling Anymore," I may not be mentally present with you for a few minutes.

Music is powerful.

Like all things powerful, we have to be careful how we use it.  

The reason my students would say I don't like it is that I had a blanket rule that they could not put on headphones and listen to music while they worked, and I strongly advised them against listening to it while they studied for tests.  

Part of what makes music so powerful is that it takes up a lot of space in your brain.  That's why you want to use it when you are working out.  It distracts your from thinking, "This is really painful, and I would like to stop."  It is great for keeping you motivated during mundane tasks, like dishes and yard work.  Even much of your driving life is filled with music, but you can observe its power when you are driving somewhere unfamiliar and need to concentrate on finding your next turn.  You turn the music down to free up space in your working memory.

We obviously don't want our students limiting their working memory or the transfer of information to long term memory while they are studying or writing an essay or trying to perform a complex math skill.  The best place for music during study is break times.  I advise my students to do their work in 20-25 minute chunks with 5 minute breaks.  This takes advantage of focused and diffuse thinking and allows information time to offload from the hippocampus to the neocortex.  That five minute break is also a great time to reward yourself, and person who likes music can reward themselves by listening to their favorite five minute song.  It will boost their mood and re-energize them for the next 25 minutes session.  

And, when they finish studying, have a dance party in the kitchen.  Create a memory for that song to invoke later.

Bonus Thought:  The power of music can be useful for studying in one way.  Set the content to music, and you'll never forget it.  (Think the alphabet song.)

Some of My Favorite Teachers (They Don't Teach in School)

When I joined the YMCA in March, I knew I was going to be a novice learner in a way I had not been in quite some time.  I've been teaching the same things for 25 years, and even the learning I've been doing about cognitive science was a form of learning with which I am quite familiar (academic learning from reading and listening).  Learning about physical things was going to be very different, and it's not an area in which my klutzy self has ever had much confidence.  I was excited to try new things and learn, but I also knew I was going to be pretty bad at things for quite a while.  (I will talk more about this in my  Thanksgiving post, but one of the great things was the first time I walked into Cardio Kickboxing and asked Matt if there was anything I needed to know.  His answer was "First of all, don't take yourself too seriously.  That was very helpful.)  

So, I knew this would be a learning challenge.  What I did not know was what an exceptional group of educators I was about to meet.  

As a person who reads educational research, listens to evidence-based education podcasts, attends Learning and the Brain conferences about cognitive science, and then teaches teachers how to improve their teaching, my brain is always noticing HOW I am being taught, not just WHAT I am being taught.  Seeing these concepts applied to non-academic teaching has been especially interesting, so let me tell you about those whose classes I take regularly.

 

Liz K - Meet the Queen of Clarity.  According to my friend John Amarode's book, Clarity for Learning, students should know three things at the outset of a learning activity - what they are doing, why they are doing it, and how they will know when they have achieved success.  I take Liz's spin class on Monday nights, and she tells us what each challenge will involve and how it will help us.  She gives feedback as we do it, so we know exactly where we are.  She explains where the pace is most important and where the tension is most important.  She uses the tools on the bikes to help us set a standard for ourselves and then match or beat it on the next challenge.  I always know exactly what benefit I will get from each thing Liz asks us to do, which is motivating because what she is asking us to do, climbing a hill on high tension or sprinting at over 100rpm, is usually kind of painful.

Liz also exhibits and instills a Growth Mindset.  Most of the instructors at the YMCA do, but I have noticed it in Liz's class at a particularly high level.  I even have her quoted on my classroom bulletin board.  She says, "Don't say, 'No, I can't,' until you have said, 'Yes, I'll try.'"  (By the way, teachers, if you want a great book on growth mindset, please pick up Andrew Watson's Learning Grows. He does a great job of making a readable summary of the history of this research;  it is more than just Carol Dweck.). Liz gives us a chance to beat our own best during each class, but she supports us even if we don't. She'll say, "Did you meet your goal?  If not, did you stay motivated the whole time?  That's what the goal is for."  Every class starts with the same speech, "If you've got something to sweat about, go ahead and crank up that level. Go for a PR. If, however, just getting here was a workout, guess what? You are already cycling. You've achieved that just by being here."  

I frequently think back to a day in May when I had experienced a particularly rough day as a yearbook advisor, and I came to Liz's class feeling pretty low. I beat the crap out of the bike that night, putting every frustration of my day into the pedals.  When I met her 4-minute challenge, I got to end a day where I felt like I had not done anything right with a serious win.  Since then, I have pushed myself harder in spin classes than I previously had because I realized what I could do when I really wanted to.  I think about that day frequently because it was so helpful to me, so I try to think of ways to provide my students with a way to win as well.   

Jay C - I don't have a book to recommend on the Communication of Care, not because there isn't a lot of research on this very human aspect of education, but because no one has written a very readable book on the subject.  We all know that it is important for teachers to care about their students, but not all teachers (particularly teachers of older students) know how to communicate it that well.  Those teachers should come to the Y and watch Jay. When Jay starts teaching, we know that he cares about us. We know it even more than we know what speed we should be pedaling. He calls us by name and asks about our lives.  I ran into him at the water fountain a couple of days ago, and he said "I've been thinking about you this week" and told me how glad he was that I was in his class.  He frequently tells the class, "You all inspire me."  He shares stories about the music he is playing, and the stories are all about the humanity of the artists.  While you are in the toughest part of the workout, he shouts, "You are strong.  You are healthy.  You are a gift."  I have often thought that people walking by in the hall would get contact encouragement from this man.  

In April, I was still experimenting with classes and trying to figure out whose I wanted to take regularly.  I had taken Jay's classes 3 or 4 times when I came one evening feeling a little emotionally raw from the events of the week.  Near the end of the class, Jay told us an incredibly touching story about his son, who had witnessed a car accident that week.  He then played "Bridge Over Troubled Water," a song that has a 97% likelihood of making me cry on a normal day.  So, I am pedaling and sobbing and wiping sweat and tears from my face simultaneously.  Then (I'm not done), he said, "You know, there are a lot of people who feel like they don't have a bridge.  If that's you and you need a bridge, come up after class and we'll exchange numbers.  I'll be honored to be a bridge for you."  I knew then this was someone whose class I would never leave.  One evening, I asked him if he would pray for me about something, and he said, "Yes, let's do it right now" and pulled me aside to pray with me. I'm not the only one he has this effect on; a couple walked into class one afternoon with t-shirts that said "Jay's Jammers" and said they had taken his class when he taught in another city.  Imagine loving your exercise instructor so much that you have shirts made and then, when you happen to be in his town, you come to his class.  That doesn't just happen because an instructor teaches the technical aspects well or plays good music.  That happens because he communicates how much he cares in a genuine way.

Stacey A - Stacey is an exercise machine.  I take her outdoor spin class every Saturday, but I have also taken her cardio step class a few times, and she teaches a strength training class.  Although she says this isn't true, I feel like she would work out in the red zone for an hour if she weren't teaching.  She is a force to be reckoned with, and so is her class.  Whether it is an endurance ride or a challenge ride, I know she is going take me right to my maximum ability.  Just when I think I can't take one more minute at this pace, she'll say, "20 more seconds until recovery."  To educators, this is known as Desirable Difficulty - keeping people in the sweet spot where it is difficult enough to be worth doing but not so difficult that they give up.

For those who take her class regularly, Stacey remembers what we have said and checks in.  If she knows a person's dog has been sick, she will ask about it the next time she sees them.  If they've been on a trip, she asks about it.  One day, I told her I would leave 5 minutes early because I was going to experiment with taking two classes back to back.  The next time I saw her, she asked me how it went and whether I thought I would do it again.  Two months later, she asked me how it was going.

Stacey's great strength as a teacher is, not only pushing us to a place of "desirable difficulty," but giving us an intuitive sense of what that is.  (Teachers, if you want to know more about desirable difficulties in the classroom, see this list of research articles by Robert and Elizbeth Bjork on Google Scholar.) Our bikes come with color zones that are meant to let us know how hard we are working out, but if we haven't set the numbers accurately or don't know what it should be, the colors won't mean anything.  She describes what we should be feeling at each stage.  Because of Stacey's descriptions (Green should feel like work, but you can still breathe; at yellow, your mouth will be open.  Red is all you've got; if you don't feel the need for a break, you weren't in your red zone), I could know how hard I was working on any bike, choreograph my own workout, or adjust my input number if I don't feel the way I should feel in each zone.  I have adjusted my input number twice as I've gotten stronger based on her descriptions.

Matt M - I don't have words to describe what an incredible teacher Matt is.  He has an extraordinary ability to accept me exactly where I am with whatever I have the ability to do (or not do) while simultaneously challenging me to do more.  That's a pretty special gift.  I also just enjoy watching him teach because he gets all lit up inside in a way that shines through his eyes, so it makes me feel happy, like I'm sitting in a window with sunlight coming through it.

I assume Matt doesn't spend his free time reading books about Cognitive Load and working memory (teachers, the best one you can read is Learning Begins by my friend, Andrew Watson), yet he manages cognitive load like a professional educator by teaching each part of a move in slow steps before speeding it up.  I'm willing to bet he hasn't studied up on the last decade of research into Modeling and Scaffolding, yet every kickboxing and weightlifting class is filled with those exact techniques. Every week, in his Cardio Kickboxing class, Matt stops and watches us do a combination without his cues, joking that we won't need him anymore.  He doesn't know it, but this is our most powerful educational tool, Active Retrieval Practice (teachers, pick up Pooja Agarwal's book Powerful Teaching or go to her website, for more on this important concept).  Matt is a joy to learn from, so I take his classes whenever I can, hoping he doesn't get tired of seeing me.

These four aren't the only teachers I have had at the YMCA who use sound educational practices.  Gwen tells us "Get your mind right" to remind us of the purpose of what we are doing.  Greg uses imagery like "your feet should feel like you're scraping gum off your shoe" and "it should feel like you've got half a Snickers bar under your tire" to make these abstract concepts into concrete thoughts in our minds.  Julie takes up space in our working memories by telling dad jokes, so we don't have room in it for thoughts of quitting (distraction is just filling working memory).  Thomas gets off his bike and walks around, an act of formative assessment. There are more, but I didn't want this post to be a mile long, so I only thoroughly discussed those whose classes I take every week.  These outstanding educators may not teach in school, but they are amazing and impactful teachers nonetheless.  

I Literally Just Told You

I spend a lot of my day repeating myself.  I repeat information.  I repeat student's names to get their attention.  I repeat directions over and over and over and over.  While part of this is an issue of attention and listening (particularly when they are just ignoring their own name), some of the problem is also with the mystery of our memories.  The combination of our working memory and how we encode information creates a challenge for teachers as we try to put things into their long-term memories.  

During the pandemic, I discovered a love for British game/panel shows on YouTube.  There's one I am not sure will last long, but it has an interesting premise.  It's called "I Literally Just Told You."  All of the questions in the show are being written live and are about the episode you are watching.  For example, they introduce each contestant as you would on any show, and then the first question might be, "How many children does Darren have?" or "What does Lisa do for a living?"  You would think that, knowing the premise of the show, the contestant might pay really good attention during those introductions.  They might, but they certainly don't remember it sixty seconds later when they are asked.  

Our memories are complex and often paradoxical.  We can be singing an 80s song in our heads, flawlessly remembering every lyric from four decades ago, while walking into the bedroom, only to realize that we have no idea why we walked into the bedroom.  Did I need shoes?  Was I going to make the bed?  Is there a book in here that I want to take to school with me?  I have no idea, but I am still singing "Secrets stolen from deep inside, the second hand unwinds . . ." from Cyndi Lauper's early career while I can't remember the thought I had just twenty seconds ago.  Clearly, recency alone is not what our memories need.

If you attend church, can you summarize last week's sermon?  Your minister worked hard on it.  He structured it in such a way that he hoped would help you remember.  Chances are, it was filled with really important things that struck you upon hearing them.  What about last night's news broadcast.  There was an awful lot of important stuff in there; big things are happening in the world.  Yet, the importance of those story details is not enough for your memory to store it.

For a while, researchers thought memory was related to emotion because of the involvement of the amygdala and because we obviously remember emotional moments vividly (weddings, funerals, where you were when you heard of a tragedy).  Yet, most of what we want to remember and want our students to remember is not inherently emotional.  How would I attach emotion to balancing chemical equations or the quadratic formula?  And, even if I could, is it good for kids?  They are already walking around in an emotional soup, and it may not be ethical for me to add to that.

Could it be frequency?  Maybe I remember the song lyrics because I've heard them so many times.  TV commercials certainly rely on that.  Maybe all the repeating I do is valuable after all, even if it drains my energy.  But . . . ask anyone who has been in a play, having read and heard the lines at every rehearsal doesn't help them on "crash and burn day," the first rehearsal where they are required to be off book.  

This example from the great Daniel Willingham's book, Why Don't Students Like School? shows that frequency is also not enough for your memory.  Which drawing of a penny represents the way an actual penny looks?  There are a few I am certain are wrong.  I know Lincoln does not face left.  But is the year on the left or right?  Yikes!  I am far less sure of that.  I think the motto is on the top, but aren't there some coins where it isn't?  If you are interested, the correct one is G, but the point Willingham is making is that seeing a penny thousands of times doesn't mean you remember its details.

So, how does memory work?  I'd encourage you to read Why Don't Students Like School for the best explanation (or watch Daniel Willingham's TikTok videos (you know I saw them on YouTube) in which he talks about study skills.), but I'll summarize it with this sentence.  We remember what we put effort into thinking about.  As he says it, "Memory is the residue of thought."

Asking your students to think about the material means asking questions.  "Family VIIA is the most reactive non-metal family" is much easier to remember if you understand that each member of that family has 7 valence electrons and only needs one more to fulfill its stability requirements.  So, when I ask students this question in a retrieval activity, I should follow up by asking, "Why is that true?"  Why questions automatically require students to put thought into the meaning of the fact.  It is also helpful to put a fact in the context of relationships.  If family VIIA is the most reactive non-metal family for that reason, what would be the most reactive metal family?  Is the reason the same?  Sort of, so now let's think about the difference.  

This takes a lot of time, and you can't do it with everything you teach.  But if there are things that are going to come up again that you want them to remember and use, invest the time.

As for the directions you keep repeating, write them on the board.  Then, just point back to it when they ask you to repeat it again.

Working Out and Working Memory

I joined the YMCA about a month ago.  While I know how obnoxious it is to talk about your workouts at the gym all of the time, I keep seeing things that align with education and cognitive science and can't help but make these connections.  So, I'll try to do it sparingly, but you should expect that there will be more posts making the connections between fitness classes and academic classes.

The first thing to jump out at me at indoor cycling classes was the power of social norms, but I'll write about that some other time.  The one that has struck me over and over again is the connection to working memory.  For those that don't know, working memory is what you can hold in your conscious mind simultaneously, and for most of us, it is about four items.    

I've taken spin classes from five or six different instructors, and while they all have a slightly different approach, one thing they all talk about is form.  You get a better workout if you have your body positioned correctly and use your muscles in the correct way.  But problems can arise when these instructions are delivered in a rapid-fire way.  "Hands light on the handlebars, elbows bent, shoulders relaxed, abs tight, not hunched over, feet horizontal, legs moving in a smooth circle" is a lot to process at once.  By the time I get to the direction of my feet, I've forgotten that my elbows are supposed to be bent.  One day, this will all be one chunk in my mind, labeled "riding posture," but it isn't yet.  A better approach might be for those teachers to focus on the legs and feet at the beginning and then wait until after the warm-up or after the first song to address your upper body.  This might sound weird, but a poster on the wall with a picture of a rider in proper form or some basic reminders like "elbows bent, feet flat" could be useful as well.

Academic teachers, we can learn from this.  When you deliver instructions, do you say a lot of them quickly?  If so, it is unlikely that students remember the first or second step by the time you get to the last step.  Better to give only a couple at a time, letting them get those down before you deliver the next ones.  Or perhaps you could project the instructions, so they have something to refer back to when they have forgotten what comes next.  For those who teach young kids who have not yet learned to read or English language novices, a picture of what you want (seated student with a pencil, a sheet of paper, and a calculator) would be helpful to their working memories.  The picture is also easier to remember and doesn't require your presence or repetition the way verbal instructions do.

I have one instructor who described a working memory scenario without realizing it.  She said, "Can you stay at 90 RPMs?  Not go above it or below it but stay at it?  Can you stay at the point where it is just hard but not your maximum?  When you are at maximum work, you are less likely to quit, but when you get down to where you are working hard but don't have the mental distraction of all-out effort, you are more likely to quit."  What she described as "the mental distraction of all-out effort" really means full working memory.  When you are working right at the limit of cognitive load, you don't have the mental space to think about what it would take to quit or pay attention to the clock.  When you have backed down to 85% of your maximum, you have freed up the space to wonder about how much longer you have.  

This is instructive to academic teachers as well.  Some people use cognitive load theory to assert that we should make things easier for students or reduce the rigor of our classes.  That is not, however, what the theory implies.  Understanding cognitive load and working memory should help us to identify the perfect level of load.  There is a sweet spot where we keep our students working RIGHT AT or just below their maximum capacity.  If we are too far below it, they have the space for their minds to wander and consider quitting because it is uncomfortable.  If we are above it, they are incapable of sustained work, and they give up.  Learning, at its best, is difficult but not impossible.  

I'll talk more about working memory and cognitive load in the future, but for now, let's remember the lessons from working out and find the best ways to deliver instruction at the right level for our students to learn.