ACSI Nexus

I know I already posted this week, but since we are at the ACSI teacher convention, I thought I would discuss some of what I learned here.  This is really an act of public note taking more than anything, but it could potentially help you as well.  Who knows.  ACSI has invited us to tweet our thoughts and download their app, so I thought adding a little blogging to the technological mix couldn't hurt.  Also, it is helping me pay attention because two days in an uncomfortable chair in a darkened room can be taxing on the attention span.  We are also participating in a school scavenger hunt while we participate.  One of the challenges was to take a selfie of your scavenger team at the sign in table.  Here's my group Bluevengers  as well our librarian and English teacher husband wife team.  They appear to be psyched about Nexus Live.





Dr. Dan Egeler - A Pilgrimage to Servanthood:  Wearing the Mantle of Humility
Told story in which a monkey "rescues" a fish from the water and thought he had done a good thing.  What was right for the monkey wasn't right for the fish.  Servanthood is as important to leadership as any other quality, and it requires humility.  Humility is considered a virtue.  (Personal reaction:  That's supposed to be true, but I'm not sure it is in our culture.  We seem to think pride is a virtue and anything that humbles you is "shaming.")

Characteristics of a Christian Community
- hospitality
- gratitude
- truth telling
- promise keeping

Students need to connect to who the teacher is.  We must teach their head, their hands, and their hearts.  We do so with our hearts.  The heart provides the catalyst for the head and the hands to be effective.

Five Elements for a Pilgrimage to Servanthood
1.  Openness - the ability to welcome people into your presence and make them feel safe.  Don't form an opinion about an important matter until you have heard all the facts.

2.  Acceptance - the ability to communicate value, worth, and esteem to another person.  Who a person is now is different from who they will be.  The person you may be tempted to ignore or treat badly now may one day be a person you would be tempted to worship.  People are not mortals; they are eternal.  There are no neutral contacts.  We are either nudging people toward eternal horror or eternal splendor.

3.  Trust - the ability to build confidence in a relationship.  Both parties must believe that the other will not intentionally hurt them and that the other will act in their best interest.

4.  Learning - the ability to glean relevant information about, from, and with other people.  This does not come naturally to most people.  It requires trust and humility.  (Personal reflection:  You must learn from those who you want to teach.)  Those you think you have nothing to learn from, you may learn everything from if you have humility

5.  Understanding - the ability to see through others eyes. It requires the other four because there must be openness, acceptance, trust for people to open up to us.  Only when we learn from them will we have the ability to see through their eyes.

Cynthia Tobias - Motivating Students to Take Charge of Their Own Success
This is one of my favorites of the day.  Book:  The Way They Learn

"My first year of teaching, I was so excited that all my students would want to learn and think like me.  After all, I was a living example of how the way I think works."

I can help students figure out for themselves how they work, how they think, and how to be successful.

How to get the most of what you are learning:
1.  Know Your Strengths - Once you know them, you can make a plan for how to use them.

2.  Figure Out What You Need to Succeed - Come up with a plan.

3.  Prove That it Works - If you try your plan and it works, keep doing it.  If it doesn't work, don't do it again.

How Do You concentrate?  If you are physically uncomfortable, it is impossible to pay attention.  Whoever makes school furniture needs to know this.  The brain can only absorb what the seat can endure.  Sometimes it is as easy as changing the temperature of your classroom.  It's not always neurological.  Try some simple things just to make kids more comfortable.

"There are two kinds of people - morning people and those would like to shoot morning people."

How Do You Remember?
Auditory kids remember what they hear, but not necessarily what they hear from others but themselves.  Auditory kids need time to talk.  They will talk about what they are learning, but it will be mixed in with other things.  It doesn't count if you don't say it even if it has been on the board all week.

Visual learners look for minor flaws because they are easily distracted by visual cues.  Visual learners are more literal than most.  They will be focused by the stain on your tie or where you got your shoes.  They have a picture in their mind of everything.  Pause to give them time to picture your instructions.

Kinesthetic learners are born to move.  You need to allow them opportunities to move.  Put in a swivel chair or something they can bounce their feet on.  If you get them to sit still they will not be paying attention.  Adults have learned more subtle ways to move.  It not practical to expect someone to be still (unless they are in an MRI).

If you can do three things in every class, you will increase exponentially their ability to remember.
1.  Give them something to talk about.
2.  Give them something to visualize in their minds.
3.  Give them something to do.

How Do You Process Information?
Analytical thinkers will get their work the second they get back if they didn't call from their sick bed. They pay attention to every detail but miss the big picture.

Global thinkers will ask if you missed them the second they get back.  They pay attention to big picture, plot, and story.  They learn intuitively and are very creative, but they think they are dumb because school are not really designed for them.

School doesn't always bring out the best in us, but you are not at an ordinary school if you are a Christian educator.  You know how important it is to reach out to help every student learn.  Communicating ways they can be successful and confident is not as hard as it sounds.  Nobody likes to be analyzed, but everyone likes to be understood.  You do not have any students in your classroom by accident; God put them their for a purpose.

Jon Bergmann - Taking the Flipped Classroom to the Next Level
Book:  Flipped Learning

We have way too much "sit and give" and not enough active, engaged learning.  Flipping your classroom changes what happens IN the class.  Instead of sending them home to do the difficult cognitive tasks, they can do the lower parts of Bloom's taxonomy at home and do the harder parts while we are there to support them.  This puts the point of need with the right resource.

Turning the Bloom's pyramid upside down is what you do to get a pHD.  If we make the pyramid a diamond, we will spend the majority of our class time on analysis and application.  The students will think the homework is easier, and then they will be excited that they don't have to listen to the teacher at school when they can interact with their friends.

Next steps:
1.  Rethink Classtime - Flipping is NOT about the videos.  It is about what you do in class.  There is a lot more time for guided practice, walking around checking in on your students, peer tutoring, lab time, small group work, debates, small projects.  It gives you class time back.  Trying to have them do something active every day is a mistake.  Use the class time for the best use, not just the fun use.  Don't feel guilty about using it the best way.

2.  Interactive Notebooks - Questions to answer about the video to keep them engaged while they are watching.  Include a link to the video, so they can use them at the same time.  Using a tracking tool (like EduCannon) will hold them accountable and give the teacher formative data.

3.  Flipping Leads to Mastery - It makes for a bit of chaos because everyone is on different pages at different times, but they are all progressing at their own rate.

4.  Flip Your Instructions - Put your instructions on video.  You won't have to use class time, and they will always have access to it.

5.  Time for student created content in the room.

6.  It gives kids choices.  If they prefer to read the textbook than to watch the video, let them (if the content is the same).  Be careful about giving them TOO many choices, but if they have the power to choose based on their method of learning, they will learn it better.

7.  The station model is like centers for elementary school.  The class is divided into three areas in the room.  It could be writing, research, and project work or whatever fits the lesson your are teaching.   It makes your class kind of a workshop.  Another version of this is the station rotation or In-Flip Model.  If your students can't watch videos at home, one of your stations could be the video.

8.  Choice boards - Give 2-3 choices using activities that cover Bloom's taxonomy in each of a few levels.  Giving them choice, even if it is just the order you do it in, is empowering.  Student Choice boards allow them to choose the input and the output while everyone has the same objective.  Choice days are days the students can choose.  Activity days are the days when everyone does the same thing together.

9.  Explore-Flip-Apply - They start with inquiry until they need help.  Then they get the video when they are ready for it or need it.

Challenging Thought:  The world has changed.  They have access to information like we can't even imagine.  Most of what we teach is on youtube.  We can be doing so much more than content delivery.  "If you could be replaced by a youtube video, you should be."


Kristin Barbour - Walk a Mile in Students’ Shoes: Differentiating Between Low Motivation, Curriculum Casualties, and Learning Disabilities
Science has been studying learning with brain in mind for 20 years.  We understand that learning disabilities are neurological, so they don't get better in a short period of time.  

Phases of the Learning Process
1.  Input:  perception  
2.  Elaboration:  processing, attaching meaning to the input, attaching a priority to it
3.  Output

Give students time and tools to help with identification.

Lots of kindergarten level examples that I am not taking notes on because if my physics students need a letter of the week, there are bigger problems than I have.

This workshop is a reproduction of the FAT City Workshop done decades ago, but she is not giving credit to Rick Lavoie, so I am going to.  I watched this video in 1997 in a college class.



Alan November - The Top Survival Skill for Teachers:  Critical Thinking Using the Web
If you ask kids, "do you know how to use Google," they will say yes.  However, they may not be using it effectively.  They don't know how to get the best quality of information.  

We should be balanced in our discussion of technology and acknowledge what can go wrong as well as what goes right.  Google's algorithm assigns the most points when the search term is in the web address.  It is not because it is the best information.  It is also geographically biased.  It places priority on sources closest to you.  This will keep you from getting information from sources near the source of the topic.  If you google Iran Hostage Crisis and use no sources from Iran, you are getting biased information.

When we teach kids about books. we teach them to understand the design of print; but we don't really do that with the internet.  If you are preparing students for universities, you must prepare them to find content on the web.  We should teach them to compare and contrast information.   They might be manipulated if they don't understand the structure.

If you want to know how Google works, Google the word google and operator.  You can get the google guide.  Not teaching kids to use the google operators is the equivalent of not teaching them the Dewey decimal system in the library.

Ways to understand information.  Use the site operators for searching.  Use easywhois to find out who owns the site.  Use the way back machine to find the original website when it was launched.  Use country codes to limit your search to those countries.  The internet gives the reader more tools to understand information, once you know how.  If you don't know how, it is phenomenally dangerous.  

The most powerful knowledge tool is Wolfram Alpha.  It is only vetted scholarly information.  "It is not like Google, where a twelve year old can give you constitutional law advice."

We should redesign our assignments so they can't look up the answers.  Watch the TED talk from the Wolframs as they discuss what Wolfram Alpha and like tools are going to do to education.  The problems we give kids need to catch up with the power of the information.  Instead of asking kids to compare the nutritional content of two foods, ask them to design a food plan for the space station.  Show kids a picture of a baseball field and ask them to design the perfect bundt because only a human can do that.

A lot of questions in life are not well organized.  They are messy.  Teachers should write messy problems.  Give them more information than they actually need to solve the problem.  Change the word solve to involve.  Solve means every student gets the same answer.  Involve means the student has to design the problem.  

Follow Jessica Caviness on twitter to see how you can make kids design problems.


Dr. Bill Brown - Effective or Defective?  Equipping Students for Lifelong Vision
All of the things we are learning converge when we think about the context of what we do.

The Bible opens and closes with humanity in close fellowship with God.  In between is the fall and God restoring what was lost.  

If your mission statement doesn't line up with God is doing, let God get in the way of your mission statement.  You are where you are for a reason.  What part is God giving you to play in His movement in whatever area you are in?  You are part of the big plan of God.  Bigger is not better; better is better.  

How can we measure our effectiveness?  You measure it 5, 10, 15 years after they leave.  Are they still walking with Christ?  Ask them if they were prepared for the world they are now facing?  They need to know that you will never become in the future what you are not becoming today.  We must educate for the world as it is becoming.  

Agendas are short sighted activities to accomplish near sighted goals.  Visions are expansive plans to achieve ambitious aspirations.  We should be vision driven, not agenda driven.  The only true vision is the one that God has, and we are part of that.  How are you communicating vision to your students, your community, your faculty, and your staff?  You don't necessarily have a Biblical worldview just because you know the Bible.  You have to learn to think worldviewishly.  Don't fill a bucket; light a fire.  There is no safe place in the world where you aren't going to be bombarded with alternate views.  We must prepare our kids to hold on to their faith in the face of opposition.  

Know God
Know God's Word
Know God's World

Don't let them think being a Christian is knowing how to follow the rules.  We need to equip and mentor them with God's word.

Action Steps:  Be More Intentional
1.  Develop or affirm your mission statement
2.  Make sure everyone knows your vision.
3.  Survey your parent and alumni to see if you are accomplishing your mission and vision.
4.  Your own walk is crucial.  You can't give away what you do not have (It's like measles).

Times are tough.  There is every reason in the world to give up - but no reason in heaven.


A tweet from another conference attender: 
Monica Remer ‏@MonicaRemer  3m

3 minutes ago

#NEXUS15 if you are different in ways that do not matter then you are just weird.

Dr. Venard Gant - Head, Hands, Heart:  Three Dimensional Education
Let's view Christian education in an expanded light.  If we as Christians are the light of the world, shouldn't our education also be light?  Can we take Christian education and expand it from a defensive posture to an offensive posture?  Rather than protect them from the darkness, we should prepare them to make a difference in the darkness.

I always ask the question "why you?" when I go into a classroom.  I always know the answer is I Peter 2:9 - because you are a chosen generation, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a peculiar people.  He called you out so you may show his marvelous light.  Is our posture causing us to underperform.

The buzz word is to provide students with a "world class education."  That's the best they can come up with.  Their best line should be our baseline.  We want to give them a "Kingdom class education."  

Education should be in three dimensions, not just the two that the world focuses on.  The world focuses on the head and the hand, but they don't get a return on their investment if they leave out the heart dimension.

The facts of God's world should be integrated with the truth from God's word.  If you have worldly content devoid of God's context, it will inevitably lead to wrong conclusions.  For that reason, we must be students of the Word because His Word is truth.  We are also empowered by God's Spirit.  What do we do with this power?  Without his power, the best we can be is influential.  With the Spirit of God on your credentials and pedagogy, you can be impactful.  

God isn't limited to working in only favorable circumstances.  He can work with all children.  We don't want to communicate that the best God can do is teaching children who are highly educable.  It would be nice if we had kids who don't need grace and kids who don't sin.  They are not beyond God's ability.

We are equipped with God's love.  The words on the page are powerless to transmit life.  When we take the stuff of the curriculum and make it a living curriculum through your love, you can impart life.  

There are no children or families that are beyond the scope of God's power.  We take the cards no one else wants and give them a kingdom class education so that they will walk out saying, "The Lord - He is God."


Dr. Kevin Washburn - Fueling Learning:  Sparking Curiosity in the 21st Century Classroom
This is the speaker I have most been looking forward to hearing.

You don't start from a place of know-how.  You start from a place of curiosity.  Intelligence gets an awful lot of press, but even Albert Einstein put more importance on curiosity than intelligence.

Learning is movement, and movement requires energy.  The same neural network that is active when you take a physical step toward a goal is active when you learn something.  The brain interprets learning a movement.  

Curiosity drives interest, excitement, and exploration.  It is a hunger to know.  It is sad to realize that all children are curious, but most students are not.  What are schools doing to take away their curiosity?  One of the things technology provides us is the opportunity for self directed learning, but they won't do it if they aren't curious.  

Engagement does not equal curiosity.  Looking at cat videos online is engaging, but it isn't sparking the curiosity we are looking for.  How do we make them curious?

Atmosphere - Curiosity thrives in atmospheres of freedom where adults respond positively to student questions.  If your students have a fear of asking questions, they aren't free.  Curiosity is caught through conversation.  Respond to children with questions. This requires attentiveness to every situation to see where you can take advantage of moments.  How adults respond to children influences how curious they become.  Think about what you are communicating to the child by the way you respond to a question.

Model Curiosity - Show them that you are trying to figure out things.  Tell them what you are wondering about.  Show them the process of seeking information for personal interest.  When students are in the midst of learning, model questions with them.  What new questions can we ask now that we have information.

Encourage Curiosity Even When it Goes Off Track - Curiosity is more critical to their development than the material.  Coverage can be the enemy of learning.  Work in time for the questions they may have.  Question and support rather than directing and explaining.  When you start explaining, the child stops thinking.  Be cautious with cautions because we need more freedom to their questions.

Don't Try to Make Your Classroom Foolproof - You can't learn resilience through easy success.  You learn it by regrouping after a setback.  If you are trying to overcome an intelligence deficit, realize that that is only half of the formula.  The other half is a combination of curiosity and resilience.

Question, Guide, Allow the Student to FIND the Answers because it produces more robust learning than explaining things to them.  Prompt and provide opportunities to spark curiosity.  Study how Rod Sterling got you to want to know things.  He raised questions in your minds before going to commercial.  Bring in an element of mystery to your class.  "Why do you think you have a radish?"

Allow students to generate and record questions.  As soon as you've got them asking questions, you've got them.  The quality of the question matters, so help them refine the questions.  It makes a difference in the brain's response if it is too challenging or too easy.  The right level of questions releases dopamine, which makes the brain happy and also makes better connections between brain cells.

Curiosity makes learning and recall stronger.  If the question is too simple, the brain doesn't care.  Keep encouraging the student to ask why questions until you get to an appropriate level.  Keep asking why - just like 4 year olds do.  Why and how questions produce more mystery than where, who, and what questions.
- If it is too simple, ask why.
- If it is too general, open or close it until you get to a good question.
- If it seems like the wrong question, contextualize it.

Curiosity doesn't deserve the bad reputation it gets.  It didn't kill the cat.  Curiosity drove Moses to an encounter with God.  He wondered about the burning bush.  

Eric Metaxas - Miracles
Author of Bonhoeffer -

What you are doing makes a huge difference.  You are probably not half as aware of it as I am.  You probably forget that all the curriculum stuff is periphery to the big questions.  Who am I?  Where do we come from?  Where are we going?  What is the meaning of life?  Only Christian education deals with those types of questions.  Others avoid the questions because the believe life doesn't have meaning, which is bleak.  The difference you are making is beyond belief.

At the heart of our teaching is the understanding that we are made in the image of God.  Others must look at their worldview, which is that we are here completely by accident.  If they really believed that, they would kill themselves or go insane.  The idea of meaning wouldn't even exist.  All your feelings would be meaningless.

Making it explicit is great, but even if you aren't making it explicit, the assumptions that you have impart things to them they won't get anywhere else.

The heroic is a concept missing from secular education but is central to Christian education.  God gives us examples throughout scripture.  Faith is not about principles or rules, even though those things are important.  It's about Jesus, who was a person who came to live among us.  We transmit what we believe through life with the people around us.  You draw people to Jesus by being like Jesus.  We are potentially a hero to those around us, whether we know it or not, which is why we should know it.

When we read biographies of inspiring people, we realize the power of what they did.  Those things are forgotten in our culture because we aren't being taught them any more.  

Without a Christian worldview, you have no basis for believing that racism is wrong or any other moral standard.  With a Christian worldview, the answer is the Imago Dei.  We've got to be able to call evil evil rather than letting things go, calling it culture.  Slavery was wrong even though it was culturally accepted.  Boys being raped in Afghanistan is evil whether or not it is their culture.  This is why moral relativism cannot work.  Truth is not relative; it is not a cultural construct.  WE HAVE TO COMMUNICATE THIS TO OUR STUDENTS.  

William Wilberforce is a hero we must know.  Dietrich Bonhoeffer is another one.  He said, "Silence in the face of evil is evil."  He stood up to the Nazi's.  The fact that his story ended badly doesn't mean he isn't a hero.  We must tell the stories of these people for others to be inspired by them. n't

Who are you affecting today?  What you do matters.  When you give young people stories of heroes and heroines, you are giving them something others do not have because we are so scared in our culture to say someone is better than others.  We are so afraid of offending people that we are afraid to give them heroes.  

God doesn't give you blessings for yourself.  He gives them to you so that you can bless others.  Greatness doesn't belong to a gender or a race.  IT ONLY BELONGS TO GOD.  

God calls us into all kinds of things because we need them all.


David Kinnaman - Why Our Students are Leaving the Church and What You Can Do About It as a Teacher
We want to understand through the lens of research what we can do about the trend of young people leaving the church.  

The top reasons of young people leaving the church is that the church is overprotective, sexually repressive, anti-science, exclusive, appeared to be doubtless, and provided shallow experiences.  

The world young people live in today is more complicated and complex than ever before.  Are we meeting the challenge of helping students deal with that complexity?  We have to be honest with ourselves about the students we have that are taking a journey away from faith.  Christians are viewed as irrelevant and extremist today.  

The way young people leave the faith fall into three categories
- Nomads - These are individuals who say they are still Christian, but they are not involved in any way with a church or Christian activities.  They got to church on Christmas and Easter only.
- Exiles - Faith doesn't fit with the place where they are in culture.
- Prodigals - These are individuals who say they are NO LONGER Christians.

We live in a complicated, accelerated culture.
The best human inventions in history are in our pockets.  Students spend 7 hours a day on some kind of media.  We have become hyperlinked, multi-careered.  Pop culture is our religion, but we crave meaning.  We are lonely participants who are addicted to media and grazing information.  

When Daniel lived in Babylon, he had be faithful in a different context.  We are living in digital Babylon.  Our students are living in a culture in which people are skeptical of scripture.  We must teach them that the Bible has a countercultural narrative.  Teach Ecclesiastes to a fame obsessed culture because it shows that the end of all their ambition is vanity.  The idol of our time is fitting in and being up to speed.  

Christian school students struggle with doubt more than public school students.  They are more likely to remain active in the church.  They seem to want more from their churches and to have a more integrated experience.  Within this context, effective Christian education will provide meaningful relationships, cultural discernment, leadership development, vocational discipleship, and a firsthand experience of Jesus.  

Millennials have been marketed to so much that they are skeptical.  They think of our outreach as something we are paid to do in order to get them on our side, not as a genuine effort at relationship.  

Be a learner.  Emphasize purity within culture while having proximity to culture.  Educate with young people.  Teach a right theology of sexuality, work, and influence.  Show how the Bible intersections with vocation and changes us as people.  Model discipleship in our lives.  Pray like we are exiles.

As much as we try not to be, we are part of the spirit of the age; so we have to work hard to examine our own hearts for the ways we are absorbing the culture of the age.  What traditions are we keeping that need to be rethought?  

Athletic Artists and Artistic Athletes

My role as yearbook teacher has given me a unique take on my school.  I am in and out of classes from Transitional Kindergarten through AP Biology.  I go to at least one or two games of every athletic team we have.  I have at least some communication with every teacher who works here, and I attend most events.  One of the most interesting things that I get to observe in this role is the variety of artistic opportunities we have.

My school offers visual art, dance, theater, band, strings, and chorus.  As other schools have cut some of their arts programs for budget purposes, we are trying to grow ours.  Our school's vision statement is, "Students at GRACE Christian School will be grounded in God's Word and challenged to achieve academic excellence as they prepare to use their gifts and abilities effectively to follow God's plan for their lives."  We don't believe that God made people the same, and we want our kids to seek out whatever gifts God has given them to use for His glory.

I teach both science and yearbook, and people always respond to that as though it is strange.  Apparently, I am supposed to be one dimensional.  Our AP Biology teacher also holds a history teaching degree, and he loves them both.  One of our earth science teachers also teaches history, and the other one also teaches Bible.  At one point, our math teacher took up Irish dance.  She eventually gave up math to teach dance full time, but our students were able to see that a person is not one thing.  We want our kids to have a well rounded view of the world and themselves.


As the person who photographs everything, I have had the opportunity to witness this in action.  Some of the leaders on our girls basketball team have also been the most devoted members of our chorus.  This violinist, who is one of the founding members of our strings group, is the same guy protecting our goal on the soccer field.  He understands that he can do both of those things well and not have sacrifice one for the other.  Much of the visual art that decorates our school halls and wins awards at competitions was made by runners and soccer players and volleyball girls.  We also have artists who excel academically or in more than one artistic endeavor.  My yearbook editor just completed her role as Badger in Wind in the Willows, excels in multiple AP classes, and is one of our most accomplished visual artists.  When a student graduates from GRACE, we hope that they have explored all kinds of activities and found Christ in all of them.  They are all reflections of God's creation, and we don't want them to limit themselves to one thing.

I understand the difficulties faced by schools who are wrestling with budget problems.  Financially, it is easy to say that the athletic programs bring in money and should be kept while the artistic programs do not.  I get that, but our students aren't numbers on a spreadsheet.  The contribution they will make to the world can't be measured that way.  The impact that the arts have on a student's brain will change them in ways that cannot be quantified.  I am proud that I have a school that knows this is important and funds our arts programs.  We even hold a pep rally for them.   Don't get me wrong; we still struggle with the balance between athletics and arts, just like other schools.  I think our struggle is often for a different reason, however.  We struggle with the fact that a student can't be in two places at once.  They can't be at cheer practice and play rehearsal at the same time.  While I know that is frustrating to both the coach and the director, I'll take that struggle any day over the struggle of cutting back.

Love reading.  Love computers.  Love music.  Love tennis.  Love fashion.  Love knitting.  Love math.  Love painting.  Love science.  Love Latin.  Love writing.  Love God and learn about him through all of these things because these are all reflections of His nature.

What's So Hard About Being a Good Teacher?

Recently, one of my more outspoken 8th graders said, "I don't get what's so hard about being a good teacher.  I mean, you just do it."  We were in the middle of a lesson on the periodic table, so I didn't have time to go into a soliloquy about the training and experience that brought me to the point where I am today.  I replied, "That's because you only see what happens in these 45 minutes." and of course followed up with, "Read my blog."

His question, however improperly timed, does reflect the thinking of many students (and probably parents and society at large).  It got me thinking about other comments I have heard.  A teacher friend of mine said her husband told her she wouldn't be so tired all the time if she had better boundaries between work and life.  Legislators in most states play political bingo with test scores and teacher pay and school assignment for students because they don't understand what goes into good teaching either.  At the risk of sounding defensive, I'm going to take it upon myself to explain what the big deal is.  What's so hard about being a good teacher?  My dear 8th grader, I'll give you four answers; but they won't even scratch the surface.

Answer one - Let's start with a teacher's education.  I hold a bachelor's degree in secondary science education with an emphasis in physics.  When I was in college I took all the teaching classes an education major has to take as well as two calculus courses, four biology classes and their labs, three chemistry class with two labs, earth science and its lab, and every physics course I could fit into the schedule.  I even pushed some of my general ed into the summer so that I could take Applied Thermodynamics and Modern Physics.  Since graduating from college, I have attended hundreds of hours of workshops, training seminars, and conventions.  I read articles on new educational research and books on neuroscience.  I follow Talks with Teachers on Twitter and participated in their Idea Lab.  I'm not complaining about ANY of this.  I love learning, and it's part of being good.  I wouldn't want a doctor who got his degree in 1998 to have learned none of the medical science that happened since then, and I wouldn't want my teaching to reflect only the information that was available then either.  Professional development is a good and enjoyable thing, but it is part one of the answer to your 8th grader question.  Good teaching is hard because you never stop developing it.

Answer two - All the research says something different.  I was reading an article recently on the importance of homework.  It discussed the part of the brain that is activated when doing work independently after having left the environment in which you learned it.  Then I clicked on the related article, which was about how homework is the worst thing ever invented and why no one should ever be required to do it.  As I have mentioned in the past, I work in a school with a one to one program.  We've read a lot of research about millennial students and technology and the importance of collaboration and are all on board with our program.  Then, in the course of two days, we have read two articles about how technology is messing with our memories and why introverts are being harmed by the focus on collaboration.  What's a good teacher to do?  The research isn't wrong; it is just that we aren't working with widgets.  Every student responds differently to what we do, and only the lazy teacher responds with "teach to the middle."  We have to take in all this conflicting research and figure out a way to turn it into a lesson plan.  This would be like you, my 8th grade friend, trying to write one paper for five different teachers who all believe that good writing is something different.

Answer three - Your school community has specific expectations.  I won't re-hash my post on my school's mission statement.  You can find that by scrolling down to last week.  When I was in public school, spiritual inspiration was not an expectation.  It is here.  Some schools focus heavily on citizenship or service, and others are all about test scores.  Some care about getting grades posted within 24 hours while others want you to take the time to give deep and meaningful feedback.  Learning the expectations of your specific school community isn't easy; most don't post a list or anything.  You learn them at faculty meetings (meetings could be its own answer because there are so many of them).  The expectations of parents are also quite different than they were even a decade ago.  We live in an instant results, consumer driven, Yelp review kind of world.  So, my inquisitive 8th grade student, ask yourself if it would be hard to do well in my class if I had four conflicting expectations of you and graded you on all of them and posted your grades on twitter.

Answer four - All students are different.  I mentioned in answer two that every student responds differently to what we do.  Introverts need quiet time to think while extroverts need verbal processing.  Auditory learners find your diagrams distracting while visual learners can't learn without them.  The student with auditory processing disorder needs you to have lots of bright informational posters in the room while the ADHD student finds the same posters make it difficult to listen to you.  One student needs you to make constant eye contact while another would be riddled with anxiety if you looked in their direction.  All these students are in the same period and are expected to accomplish the same objectives.  Again, I hope you will not read this as a complaint.  I do not want Stepford Students.  It is a wonderful thing to have such a diverse group of people.  We all learn from each other's differences, and it is one of the things that makes my job so wonderful.  It is also one of the things that makes it hard to be good at.

Well, my 8th grade student, have you figured it out yet?  You see me standing in front of you talking as though I am coming up with things on the spot.  I've worked long and hard to make it look that way.  You see me answer your questions as though it didn't take years of training to have those answers and years of experience to learn how to put those answer on an 8th grade level for you.  You see me put a score on a test without any understanding of the years it has taken to build professional judgement about which error is worth 1 point off and which is worth only half a point off.  You see a test as though there is a printed book of tests I am copying.  (By the way, that book does exist, but you wouldn't be happy if I used it).  You don't know this, but you complimented me and all your teachers with your question because you implied that we make it look easy.  I hope this post helps answer your question.  Being a good teacher isn't easy, but as Tom Hanks says in the movie A League of Their Own, "It's the hard that makes it great."

Mission Statement Impossible

I don't remember if public schools have mission statements.  If they did when I was teaching in one, it certainly wasn't stated often.  The private Christian school I teach in now states it all the time and in many places.  Aside from the website, it is also talked about in meetings, devotions, paperwork, and brochures.  For a while, it was printed in six inch letters on a framed poster in the hallway, illuminated with art lighting.  This is our mission statement:

GRACE Christian School is a loving community that spiritually and academically equips, challenges, and inspires students to impact their world for Christ.

As a reader, that may not seem like a heavy statement.  It is only one sentence, after all.  It could be printed on a coffee mug.  However, if it is your mission, it is actually impossible.  Think about what it means.  Our school's goal is not only to prepare students for their academic careers by teaching them the material they will need for college or careers, but we are also supposed to challenge them academically.  On top of that, we are to inspire them academically so that they will want to learn now and for the rest of their lives.  That's just the academic part of our mission.  We are also supposed to equip, challenge, and inspire them spiritually.  This is not a small thing.  We are supposed to live as examples, teach them about God and interpreting scripture, teach them to apply the Bible to their lives and the material they study, and inspire them to impact their world for Jesus Christ.  On top of that, we have to be in community and loving while we do it.  This is a heavy responsibility to carry on a daily basis (no wonder we are all so tired).

Here's the part I think I'm actually qualified to do alone - Academically challenge.  My training and experience to this point have given me the skills to challenge most students on most levels.  Given that I just used the word most twice, maybe I'm not qualified to do that part alone.  I know I can't academically equip them alone because I can't teach everything.  We probably are qualified as a group to academically equip them, but not as individuals.  I guess that means it is good we have each other.

As for inspiration - that happens through magic I think.  I don't really mean magic; I just mean that whatever causes inspiration isn't something I can plan.  God uses things I can't predict to light a spark.  Most recently, a parent told me that a project I assigned the kids three years ago (one that I didn't consider particularly important at the time) has led to their daughter pursuing a science career.  That doesn't mean I don't work hard at trying to inspire my students, just that I can't guarantee that anything I do will make it happen.  

As for our being a loving community - ask anyone who has ever gotten sick or injured at GRACE.  Our people rally with meals, fund raising, visiting, and whatever help may be needed.  We laugh with each other, cry with each other, enjoy each other, pray with each other, and just generally do life together.  That is our loving community.  

I haven't yet addressed the spiritual part of our mission.  That is because only God can accomplish the spiritual equipping, challenging, and inspiring.  Again, we may work hard at planning chapel services, mission trips, community service opportunities, and the Biblical integration of our lessons; but we cannot turn that into spiritual inspiration.  Only God can do that.  We can using challenging words, but only God turns that into a challenge in their hearts.  As teachers at GRACE, we MUST lean on God because our mission cannot be fulfilled in human power.  We hope our students see us pursuing God to fulfill this mission and, thereby, follow that example.  In the end, that is how we spiritually equip them, by showing them our dependance on Him.

Podcast Recommendations

If you read my blog during the summer, you know I walked.  I walked a lot.  I walked 530 miles during the summer.  I knew I would get bored with music playlists in that time, so I listened to podcasts instead.  I thought I'd use this week's posts to make some recommendations.

Stuff You Should Know - Did you ever wonder how Twinkies are made or why you can't see the seam on a Muppet?  Do you ever think about why we have headstones or how earwax gets out of your ear?  If you like to learn about anything and everything, this is the podcast for you.  Two guys who are employed by http://www.howstuffworks.com compile available research on a given topic and spend 30 to 40 minutes telling you about it.  They are pretty even handed on controversial issues, doing their best to present both sides even though they usually will tell you their personal opinions.  If you just like learning, this is an enjoyable way to spend an hour.

TED Radio Hour - This is an NPR show, and it took me a while to get on board with it.  I used to think that I could just listen to TED Talks without needing NPR to put them together for me.  I am now, however, fully on board.  Guy Raz hosts an hour on a certain topic and interviews the TED speaker, so you get a much fuller picture.  If you have ever had a question you wished you could ask a TED speaker after listening to their talk, Guy asks those questions.  This has actually become one of my favorites.

StoryCorps - This is also an NPR show. According to their website, "StoryCorps’ mission is to provide people of all backgrounds and beliefs with the opportunity to record, share and preserve the stories of our lives. We do this to remind one another of our shared humanity, to strengthen and build the connections between people, to teach the value of listening, and to weave into the fabric of our culture the understanding that everyone’s story matters. At the same time, we are creating an invaluable archive for future generations."  As a teacher, I would like to make an assignment in my classroom using the Story Corp format.  This would be a fabulous project for all you history teachers out there (or English teachers).


Renewing Your Mind - RC Sproul gives the deepest presentation of theology I've ever heard.  He's a gifted teacher, who explains deep issues in an accessible way.  

Let My People Think - Ravi Zacharias is an evangelist, apologist, and teacher.  He wants to help thinking people believe and believing people think.  He is a living testimony that it doesn't have to be one or the other.  He is enjoyable to listen to, and this podcast is only 15 minutes long (for all of you ADD listeners).

Truth For Life - Alistair Begg may be my favorite person to listen to.  His Scottish accent makes you feel smarter just listening to it.  His delightful charm makes you forget you are getting deep insight from the Bible.  

The Village Church - Matt Chandler clearly grew up in church.  He references songs you will only remember if you went to Sunday School as a child.  He speaks difficult truth in a gracious way, and he isn't afraid to tell you about his own difficulties.

Ask Me Another - This is a quiz show from NPR.  I have found myself laughing out loud while walking down the street.  People in their cars probably wonder what the crazy lady is laughing at.  It's hard to explain; you will just have to listen to find out.

This American Life - Story telling is a rapidly diminishing art in the modern western world.  Ira Glass still has it.  He can make you stay in your car for 15 minutes after you pulled into the drive way at home because you want to know how the story will end.  Having the podcast eliminates this problem.  I have loved this show for years.

Study is a Verb - Do Something

My kids are taking chapter tests today, so I thought I would take this opportunity to share some study habits that I have gleaned from 17 years of being a pretty good student and 17 years of teaching all kinds of students.  I just read that sentence and realized that I have been teaching for the same number of years I was a students.  That makes me feel really old.  Yikes.

1.  Study is a verb - I have watched students "study" and wondered what benefit they could possibly be getting from it.  Here's how it works.  They take out their notes.  They stare at the page.  Their eyes get blurry, and they can't see any more.  This changes nothing.  To study effectively means you have to DO something.  Highlighting, flashcards, asking yourself questions - These are ways of interacting with the material.  Staring at it is not.  All my other advice comes from this.

2.  Organize Your Time and Space - Some people are natural organizers.  They love folders and tabs and calendars.  Office Depot is their happy place and color coded is their favorite phrase in the English language.  Others are a hot mess when it comes to organization.  They have to turn their backpack upside down and shake it to find a pencil.  Then, there are the ADHD kids, who tell me that  they shouldn't have to be organized.  "Oh, no," I tell them.  "It's far more important that you be organized than anyone else."  The natural organizers are already there in their minds.  If your mind isn't naturally organized, you really need to organize your environment to compensate for that.  If your homework is always in the same spot, you won't have to remember where you put it.

It is also important to organize your time.  This is harder for students than organizing their space.  You can see the space, and it is always in the same place.  Time is so fluid and so easily filled with whatever comes along that organizing it can be difficult.  I suggest having an ideal plan at the beginning of each week but to leave in a little flex time.  Things are going to come up that mess with the ideal.  This is only a problem if there is nowhere to put the new activity.  It may also require reorganizing as time goes on.

3.  Study in Blocks - Remember when your teachers told you not to wait to study until the night before the test.  You ignored them; everyone does.  It turns out that they knew what they were talking about.  Research shows that you remember best the things you study at the beginning and the end of a study session.  Studying in one long block means there is only one beginning and end.  Breaking that up over several nights makes multiple beginnings and endings.  If it is too late for that and you only have one night.  Take a 2 minute break every 30 minutes.  It is enough time for your brain to think you have begun a new session.  The strange result of one study showed that studying in different places might help as well (although no one is sure why), so studying one night in the kitchen and another in the living room may actually help.

4.  Take a Moment to Acknowledge Anxiety - Being nervous about tests is normal, but does it affect your performance on the test.  It does if you just try to pretend it isn't there.  An experiment was done in which two similar classes took tests.  In one classroom, students were given three minutes before the test started to write about how they felt going into the tests.  The other just began taking it as normal.  The group that was given a chance to share their frustrations and fears scored an average of 5% higher on the test than the others did.  The thinking is that putting it on paper frees your mind from focusing on it during the test, allowing you to shut off the internal dialogue.

5.  Allow Minimal Distraction - The world is filled with distractions.  We cannot eliminate them entirely - and we shouldn't.  The mind actually needs some stimulation, or it will create its own.  However, distractions that interfere with your ability to focus should be reduced as much as possible. That might mean muting the computer, so it doesn't beep every time a message is sent.  My students believe it is rude not to respond immediately to a chat message.  I tell them to make their google chat status "I'm studying for the next hour."  Then, it is rude for someone to chat them but not rude for them to wait to reply.  The phone can be put in another room.

A note about music.  Some people do benefit from playing music while they are studying.  It helps block out the little sounds, like buzzing lights and ticking clocks.  Before you says, "See, mom!  I told you music helps," be aware that not all types of music helps.  It is unlikely that your favorite song is helping you focus.  Be aware of when it is helping and when it is hurting.  If you are singing along, you are not studying.  If you are dancing around, you are probably not studying (Some people do need to move in order to think, so you will be aware if that is you).  I keep a TV on with the volume low, but I make sure it is a rerun of something I've seen before.  That keeps my brain from attending to it.

6.  Teach to Learn - If you are explaining something to someone else, you will know whether or not you understand it.  If you are an auditory learner, hearing yourself say it out loud will be like sitting in class again.  If you are verbal processor, saying it out loud will make it more real to you.  You can teach another person, but if one is not available, you can teach a stuffed animal, a doll, or a chair.  The key is to do it out loud.  It forces focus in a way silent studying doesn't.

7.  MAKE Flashcards - We are a one to one school.  We do a lot of things with technology, and I know there are online flashcard sites.  Those are great and should be used, but I want to make a plea for the good old fashioned flashcard.  Your senses are the pathways by which information enters your brain.  Using an online card site uses only one - sight.  When you hand make a flash card and then use it properly, you use sight (to get the information), muscle memory (from writing), sight again (from look at the card), speech (by saying it out loud), and hearing (by saying it out loud).  You also get a little bit of tactile because holding the card is different from not holding one.  I've got my doubts that scented markers would help, but they certainly could not hurt.  The more pathways the information has to get into your brain, the better you will remember it.

8.  Pray - I asked my students a few weeks ago if they prayed before a test.  Many of them said yes (or at least that they prayed during the test if it was getting hard).  When I asked if they prayed before they studied, no one said yes.  God cares about your learning and talks much of wisdom and knowledge in scripture.  He even says in James, "If anyone lacks wisdom, he should ask."  Why wouldn't we ask for help in making our study time efficient and effective?

Changing Your Plans - That's Life

Teachers live by plans.  Day plans, unit plans, lesson plans, year long course maps, curriculum guides, etc.  We submit plans for review and approval, and most of us plan about a week ahead (Note:  if you are new teacher reading this, don't feel bad.  You are probably planning two hours ahead.  If you get a whole day ahead, pat yourself on the back.)

Because we make so many plans, we tend to get very attached to them.  Then, there is a fire drill or a pep rally we forgot was coming.  Half our class is out on a field trip we didn't know about or leaves early for a swim meet.  The thing it took me longest to learn as a new teacher was how long things would take.  I would have a plan I thought was a class period only to have it last twenty minutes (or three days).  It was just impossible to know how long something was going to take if I had never done it before.  What happens to your plans then?

Our plans are lovely ideals of how a lesson will go, but they are just that.  They are ideals.  We don't live in an ideal world.  Stuff is going to happen.  Equipment is going to break.  Projector bulbs are going to burn out.  How you react to those things sets an example for your students.  You don't want them to wig out, so you shouldn't either.  You want them to be flexible, so you have to model flexibility.

As you get farther along in teaching, you get better at predicting how long things will take.  Every class is different though.  What took two days with last year's physics class might take three days this year.  The kids are different, and you may have explained it a little differently.  You get better at predicting the rabbit trails.  For example, when I teach about the ear, I know to expect questions about ears popping on planes and tubes and now can work in time for those questions.  No matter how long you teach, you will still encounter times when you just can't stick to the plan.

Don't be afraid to regroup.  You want to teach, not just cover the material in the curriculum.  If your students aren't getting the material, push the test out a day.  Every year, I walk this line.  I realize that there may be a chapter I don't get to do (or that I have to combine two chapters at the end and just teach the essentials from that chapter).  It has taken me a long time to come to this conclusion, but I believe it is right.  I would rather teach the things I do get to well than get to everything by doing it badly.