Why I Wear It

This pendant is a small scale version of Ruth Bader Ginsburg's "dissent collar."  I bought it a few days after her death in 2020.  Since only the Trumpiest of MAGA folk would ever think of me as a liberal, it might seem strange that I would wear something that honors a woman with whom I disagreed so frequently.  I bought it and wear it to remind me of some things that I think are important in our divided culture.

1. I owe her a lot. Without Justice Ginsberg, my life as a female would be very different than it is.  I am a 48 year old single woman with no plans of marriage.  When I bought my home 18 years ago, I did not have to have my loan cosigned by my father or brother or any other man.  This was not true when Ruth was born and in fact, only became possible two years before I was born. Because of her work (and the work of others like her), I am able to live the life God has call me to live.  I wear this tribute to her to remind myself that I stand on the shoulders of giants.
2. She lived a life of thought.  I weirdly have a memory of the first time I heard of Ruth Bader Ginsberg.  As a college student home for the summer, I happened to be watching tv on the June day that Bill Clinton announced his nomination of the tiniest woman I had ever seen.  There are two things I most remember about his speech.  First, she had been unanimously approved to the position she had prior to her nomination to the Supreme Court.  While things were not quite as divisive then as they are today, that was still an unlikely feat; and it communicated to me how immensely qualified she must be.  The second thing I remember was that he described her as thoughtful, but he was using it in a different way than I had ever heard before.  I had only heard the word thoughtful as a synonym for caring. And while she certainly was that, he was using it to mean "full of thought."  He was describing her as an intelligent woman who put a great deal of thought into her rulings.  Since then, I have read some of her writings, and they are filled with deliberation rather than simple ideology.  I have so much respect for that, even when the end result of that thinking would be different than the end result of mine.  I don't want to be a person who just believes the party line without asking myself serious questions first, and I appreciate that about her character as well.
3. She lived a life of kindness and humor.  If you have never watched the segment that Stephen Colbert did with RBG, do yourself a favor and watch this 6 minute clip.  While Justice Ginsberg took her job very seriously, she didn't take herself too seriously.  She joked about her online cult following having dubbed her Notorious RBG, saying "It's not all packed auditoriums and standing ovations." Even the fact that she wore this "dissent collar" showed a subtle cheeky side to a serious thinker.  By all accounts, she was an extremely kind woman.  She did the work she did for the community and for those less fortunate than herself.  She said "To make life a little better for people less fortunate than you, that’s what I think a meaningful life is. One lives not just for oneself but for one’s community.”  Since she saw anger, envy, and resentment as a waste of energy, she invested in loving those around her, including those with whom she disagreed.
4. She showed us that an opponent was not an enemy.  This may be the most important reason I wear this necklace.  Do you know who the closest friends of the Ginsburg family were?  You may be shocked to find out that it was the Scalia family.  I don't mean they were generally cordial.  They bonded over their love of classical music and food.  Their families went on trips together.  There is legitimately an opera based on their friendship.  Most importantly, they both respected that the other was devoted to the constitution, in spite of the fact that they interpreted it in completely opposing ways.  I wear this tribute to a woman with whom I disagreed to remind myself that disagreement doesn't have to mean disrespect.

We are affected by the culture in which we live, but we are also responsible for creating it.  If we remember to be kind, humorous, full of thought, loving to those we disagree with, and remember that we leave a legacy for the future, we will live better lives.  

How can you remind yourself of these things today?  How can you communicate then to your students tomorrow?  

The Role of Optimism in The Classroom

I read a lot of education books, and some of them are better than others.  But, even a bad book usually has something good to take away from it.  That is the case with the book I've been reading recently.  It is called Quit Point.  I don't recommend this book as it is largely a touchy-feely 
"kids-will-be-motivated-if-you-let-them-do-what-they-want" message.  If you read this blog, you know that I did not respond well to that.  However, they nailed one thing.  Optimism is necessary for learning.

So I thought I would take this week to explore what optimism is and why it is a critical component of your classroom.

When we think of optimists, we usually think of glass half-full people.  That's not a terrible way to look at it, but it isn't really the definition.  The prefix "opt" has to do with vision (hence your eye doctor having a degree in optometry).  So, an optimist is really a person with a positive vision of the future.  They believe that, even if things are bad now, they will be better.  More importantly, they believe their actions can play a role in bringing about that better future.  

Now take this thought into your classroom.  If a student who is struggling believes it will not get better, no matter what, you will have difficulty moving them forward.  If, however, they believe their actions can have a direct impact on their improvement, it will take only a little encouragement to get them to apply effective techniques for doing so.  

This is the basis of the popular Growth Mindset book by Carol Dweck.  She doesn't refer to it as optimism, but she devotes a lot of time to the idea that students who believe they can improve will improve more than those who believe their state is fixed.  

I'd like to offer an additional perspective.  Optimists and curiosity correlate.  I've never met a pessimist who asks a lot of questions.  Some of them think they know everything already; some just don't care to learn something new because they don't seen how it will benefit them.  Pay attention to the kids who ask the most interesting questions in class; and you will find they are the ones who find joy in learning and tend to have a positive view.  I don't know if one causes the other, but they are typically found together.  A person without curiosity can learn, but it is a burdensome process.  

If you want students to take joy in learning, foster their optimism and increase their curiosity.  How do you do that?  By showing yours.

What I Learned by NOT Achieving my Summer Goals

"If you never fail, you aren't setting big enough goals." 

- Jillian Michaels on The Biggest Loser

When I first started taking fitness classes at the Y, I had two goals:  Don't hurt yourself, and don't leave a class early.  After a couple of months, my planner personality kicked in, and I started setting real goals and tracking them on a spreadsheet that hangs on the side of my refrigerator.  For the first four seasons, I pretty much killed them.  This summer, I did not.  I met a few.  I fell just short on others.  And a few aren't even close.  So, this post will be a slightly self indulgent reflection on what I learned from the summer of not meeting all my goals.  Since it is an educator's blog, I'll make connections to setting and meeting (or not meeting) academic goals in the second half.

Setting the Goal Too Far Out Messes With Motivation

In the prior seasons, my goals were no more than 90 days out.  This one started the day after my birthday, and since I wasn't going back to school, I decided to make it end on the last day of August rather than when I reported back to school.  That made the time I was giving myself to reach the goals 105 days.  That sounded good because it gave me plenty of time to get stronger and increase weight and bike speed.  But in reality, it made me less motivated to increase weight because I'd have time to do that later.  And some of my goals are averages.  It turns out that it is really difficult to move an average up after day 70 or so.  Even if I spent all of the final month moving really fast on the bike, it wasn't going to move the average up by more than a minute amount.  Hence, I didn't have a ton of motivation to kill it in the latter parts of the summer.  Long term goals are fine, but the yearbook advisor in me should have known to put some  intermediate milestones in place as I pursued the larger aims.  

For the fall, I am going to set goals two weeks at a time.  I'll track a bunch of numbers.  At the end of two weeks, I'll choose a couple to improve on for the next two weeks.  It could be 5 more miles on the bike or a higher average speed.  It could be adding 5 pounds to my chest weight.  But, instead of a far away end goal, I'll be focusing on improvement in some area.

Failing in Part is Not Complete Failure

It is easy when looking at performance to focus on where we fell short.  That's natural, and may even be healthy as we set our next objective.  But, we should also take time to celebrate the good.  I didn't fail every aspect.  And even on those where I did fail, I made progress, got stronger, became healthier, and spent time with people I love while doing them.  That all has enormous value whether or not I hit my target numbers.  

Keep Moving Forward

Many of my goals are based on averages.  These were the ones that became really difficult to meet if I wasn't already there in August.  Budging an average up is just hard after a high number of days in the same way baseball players with long careers won't see as much movement in their batting average after each game like a rookie will.  But a few of my aims weren't averages.  I aim for a total distance on the bike, so even on my off days when my legs just wouldn't cooperate, I was adding miles to that total.  It may have been 9 miles when I wanted 12, but it was 9 more miles than it would have been if I hadn't come to class that day.

I have a cycle classmate named Wallace.  He is 80 years old.  A few days ago, he said, "Now, you are going to see that I am slack in all classes, not just yours." Oh, no, Wallace.  The last thing you are is slack.  Do you know how many people aren't even here?  That man is strong and healthy at 80 because he keeps going.  He may be a little slower than the person next to him (although, not always, I've seen him outperform people much younger than he is), but he is continuously moving forward.  Wallace is an inspiration, and I hope that I am still on the bike 32 years from now.

When Circumstances Change, It's Okay for the Goal to Change Too

Goals are tricky because they require us to project into the future.  And the truth is that we don't know what the future holds.  We have a decent grip a few days out, but we can't know whether we will get sick or experience an emotional upheaval or injury during the next month.  As a result, we often set unrealistic goals.  It didn't scare me to have a few off days.  That can happen from not eating enough calories before the workout or not getting enough sleep the night before.  But then, I got a summer cold followed by a particularly heavy cycle (perimenopause was the opposite of what I expected, y'all) that turned a couple off days into a couple of off weeks.  Rather than change my goals, I thought I could ramp back up and make up for the off weeks.  To make up for the losses in averages, I would have had to perform farther above average than I am actually capable of.  I would have been much better off resetting the goals instead of insisting on the delusion that I could reach them.  Then, once I got to the place where reaching them was mathematically impossible, I had no motivation to do toe-pushups in the morning or an extra set of crunches in the evening.  

In his book Uprise, Kevin Washburn advises having an A goal (the one you can reach if all circumstances are ideal), a B goal (the one you will be happy with if the weather messes with your run), and a C goal (the one you can find satisfactory even if everything goes wrong).  I sometimes have those for individual classes, but I've never thought to have them for the entire season.  I'm hoping my two week interval system will allow for this as I will only be focused on improvement, and the C goal can be improving by a small amount while still being improvement.

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As promised, there are connections to education.

Setting the Goal Too Far Out Messes With Motivation

At the beginning of the school year, I often asked student what their academic goals were, and I learned that students are very broad in their thinking.  They say they want to make an A for the semester.  The semester that starts in August ends in December.  The young brain is simply not equipped to motivate itself for a goal that far out.  Meanwhile, I have found their practice to be remarkably short sighted, only willing to study for a test if it is less than three days away or work on that which is due tomorrow.  I ran into this with my study skills class when I tried to get them to devote some time to studying for the test they had that Friday while also putting some time into making flashcards for their finals.  They didn't want to do it because it wasn't "next."

Teachers should encourage students to set some intermediate goals for the sake of continuous motivation. It's up to you and them what that looks like. Perhaps, like my workout schedule, they should have something to improve on every week or two.  Perhaps, they should focus on the next thing out and one more thing.  Perhaps there should be a reading or study time schedule that they can mark off to show their progress visually.  But don't rely on willpower to get them to the end of the semester.

Failing in Part is Not Complete Failure

I remember the only time I failed a physics quiz in high school.  I remember the three Cs I made in college classes (Chemistry 201,  Human Anatomy and Physiology, and Ecology).  I can tell you about projects I have tried at school that went very wrong - In fact, I'll be speaking about one of those failures at a conference in October.  The reason I can tell you about those times is that they were rare.  Overall, I was a very successful student.  

When good students fail, it is traumatic.  Unlike students who regularly perform at low levels, they simply don't have the coping skills to deal with failing a quiz or performing worse than usual on a test.  But it is going to happen, and teachers are going to have to support them through it.  It is important to remind them of a few things.  

1. A bump in the road is just that, and they should keep their eyes on the prize and stay on track.  
2. They have a strong record of success and will continue to have one.  This one quiz is the story they'll tell later because it was so rare. 
3. Grades are not their identity. 

Keep Moving Forward

When I tried to get back on track after my few "off weeks," I made the mistake of thinking I could make up for it by really over performing in a way I wasn't actually capable of.  I would have been much better off just getting back to normal, allowing the average to be slightly less.  Students are sometimes like this too.  If they did poorly on one test, they try to aim at 100 on the next one or even ask for extra credit work. A student who has consistently made Bs is not likely to find a 100 realistic, and they set themselves up for disappointment.  They would be better off acknowledging what they have learned from the situation and getting back into a normal routine of studying than they would be trying to make a "New Year's resolution" type effort just after their setback.  I often told students that it was called an average for a reason.

When Circumstances Change, It's Okay for the Goal to Change Too

I have taught many excellent students who had difficulty recovering from concussions, grief, or mono.  While we as teachers work with them the best we can, we also cannot just give a student an A.  We can extend deadlines and reduce load, but to require nothing of them and give a grade for that nothing is not something a person with integrity can do.  The circumstances have changed, and it is okay for the goal to change with it.  

Several years ago, I had a student who had traditionally been a straight A student fall dramatically after being diagnosed with chronic fatigue syndrome.  This messed with her head.  She said to me, "If I don't make As, who am I."  We had a discussion about making your identity something more permanent and important than a letter at the top of a paper, and I prayed for her to find her worth as an image bearer of her Creator. But I also understood that she was used to a life where it was fairly easy to reach her grade goals, so this felt like academic whiplash.  If I had this to do over, I would follow up the spiritual conversation with a practical plan, asking what might be a realistic grade for her to aim at in her current circumstances now that the ideal was unattainable.  

I have always said that I would rather my students aim high and miss than to aim low and hit their targets, but when that happens, it still feels like failure.  Reacting to our students with empathy gives them a safe place to land, recover from the wounds of failure, and launch again.  That kind of resilience does not get built in those who always achieve success.  It is only built by failing and learning from that failure.

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.)

Novice Learners - It Takes Courage

When was the last time you learned something new?  I don't mean a small change to what you already know.  I mean something totally new.  It was exhausting, right?  And you likely failed at it quite a few times before you started getting comfortable with it.  That's no big deal if the thing you tried was knitting or baking banana bread.  It might have been a little bigger deal if the thing you were learning was car repair.  But, what if there were actual stakes?  When being a novice learner also means something to your future, it is much more frightening and requires more courage to try.  For your students, this is a daily occurrence.

Regular readers of this blog know that I have recently started a new job at the YMCA.  Among other things, I enroll new members, sell guest passes, accept payments for personal training, activate scan cards, and try to solve membership related issues.  Personify, the computer software system used by the Y, is a complex array of fields that seems to have a language of its own.  If someone's child is not showing up related to their membership, they can't admit them to the drop in day care center.  Now that I know how to do that, it's a pretty easy fix, but the first time I tried it, I didn't realize I had to go to the finance screen to add it to their "order" because that's not an intuitive connection.  When someone comes in with a United Healthcare AARP card, there are about seven additional steps to making them a member, and it is important to do it correctly because it is the difference between a free membership and one that costs sixty dollars per month.  

The first few weeks, I did everything wrong.  Of course I did.  It was the first time I was doing it, and it was a little like trying to take a drink of water from a fire hydrant.  My coworkers were very kind and helpful, and my supervisor reminded me that there was no mistake I could make that couldn't be fixed.  Members were very patient when I told them it was my first week (I'd like to keep using that excuse for a couple of years).  But, I was struggling.  It's been a long time since I spent all day without any confidence in the next step of my work.

During that time, I happened to be reading the book Uprise, written by my friend, Kevin Washburn.  This book is about resilience, overcoming challenges, and growth.  The chapter on practice spoke to me during that week.  It's not like I didn't know that things get easier with practice.  After all, I have taught that concept to students for over two decades.  But there was something about seeing it in black and white that was especially encouraging.  So, I emailed Kevin to thank him for that part of his book.  In his reply, Kevin said he was involved in another writing project, and there was a line it it, "Have the courage to be a beginner."  Below you will see how much that statement meant to me.  I printed it, laminated it, and hung it on my refrigerator.

Last week, I reminded teachers that the students in front of them were novices and to plan for that.  Today, I want us to remember how hard learning new things is.  I want us to remember how difficult it would be to experience failure over and over as they work to become competent.  I want us to admire the courage of our students as they tackle all of this on a daily basis for years.

• Hold high standards - sure
• Include rigor in your lessons - yep
• Include problems that achieve the level of "desirable difficulty" - absolutely

But also

• Care enough to give them the base knowledge they need.
• Scaffold learning to help students achieve.
• Empathize with them as they persevere.

Have a great school year, everyone!

Don't Forget: They are Novice Learners

Did you ever help your dad with a home repair project?  Your part of the job probably wasn't big.  You might have been holding the flashlight or pulling a wire through a hole (because you could fit into a space that he couldn't).  He told you what to do, but you likely didn't understand it the first time.  This likely led to frustration on your dad's part and you feeling pretty dumb.  This is not just a common problem with dads and home repair; it's a problem any time someone who knows what they are doing VERY well tries to explain it to a novice.  This phenomenon is ominously called "The Curse of Expertise."

Expertise is a wonderful thing, and I've extolled its virtues many times, including last week's post.  The problem isn't that people have expertise; it's that they forgot what it was like before.  There is jargon that they use fluently, forgetting that many people don't know those terms. This is what happened when your dad told you to shine the light on the cam shaft, and you pointed it somewhere else.  It's what happens when doctors use abbreviations for the cardiac event you had or the treatment she wants to prescribe.  It's why you might think your child is speaking a foreign language when they excitedly talk about the video game they are obsessed with.  And it is why you often had difficulty processing the lectures of some of your college professors.  People simply forget that what is obvious to them is not obvious to those who have no achieved their level of familiarity with a topic.

School is starting soon in most of the United States.  Every student in front of you will be a novice in the thing you are teaching.  Remember that when planning your lessons.  There is a certain amount of pre-requisite knowledge you might assume they have - if it was something they were taught last year - but it's a good idea to check.  When you are planning to present new information, slow down and think about the terms you are going to use.  When you teach gas laws, you are going to use the word "pressure" a lot.  They know the word, but are you sure they know what it is in context?  When you are going to teach solving a multi-step problem, make sure you are giving equal attention to each step with novice learners.  There are steps involved in solving Doppler problems in physics that I can carry out unconsciously on my way to a more complex step, but I should not skip them while teaching juniors how to solve them because, if I do, they won't know why I chose the minus sign instead of the plus sign and assume all problems involve subtraction.  Part of good pedagogy is figuring out what students don't know.  Some knowledge is foundational, and we can't just move forward as if they had known it, or the knowledge we are trying to build will be shallow and best (or completely collapse at worst).

Adapting to their knowledge gaps will take extra time.  I know there is a lot of pressure to get in all of our curriculum, but that should not be accomplished at the expense of learning.  I would much rather have students learn well the things they have learned while having to omit a chapter at the end of the semester than to "cover" everything without their actually learning it.

Be Confident in Your Expertise

I've written several posts over the years about the death of expertise and why it matters.  The reason I wanted to write about it again is that I've seen a disturbing trend in education, a sort of populist approach that reduces teachers to facilitators.  

It started by asking students to teach themselves, reducing the role of the teacher to facilitator.  If you are in the world of education, you have been encouraged to stop being the "sage on the stage" in favor of bing the "guide on the side."  If you aren't in education, you might not know these pithy rhyming phrases, but you might have heard your child's teachers talk about being self-guided, using inquiry methods, or using a constructivist approach.  It all means the same thing - the blind leading the blind while the teacher looks on.  

It might have died the inevitable death of most educational fads had it not been for parents with strong opinions who could find a blog to back them up (yes, I'm aware of the irony here).  My most recent school principal has a degree in curriculum, but she found herself in meetings where she had to defend our curriculum choices to people who read an article on parents.net.schoolstuff.something.  In a world where "elitism" is being progressively looked down on, my ill informed opinion is equal to your highly trained expertise.

Because I am scared of getting caught in traffic jams on my way to work, I leave far to early and end up sitting in the parking lot for 15-20 minutes before my shift.  I usually read in the car, but on Thursday, I found myself fascinated by the landscapers and tree trimmers keeping the area around the outdoor pool maintained.  

The first thing I noticed were the amazing tools these guys have.  I don't know what to call the saw that looks like a very large electric turkey knife, but the blade is as long as I am tall.  And it must be incredibly sharp because they run it along the surface of dense trees and bushes with heavy wood branches, and it cuts through them like they are made of something no more substantial than butter. I don't have access to a tool like that because I don't need it and because it would be dangerous if I tried to use it without expertise.

The second thing I noticed was what they did after running the saw along the surface.  They reached out and shook the bushes.  I don't mean a little vibration.  The entire bush was vigorously shaken.  As an outside observer, it appeared to me to be a violent force, and I wondered why it was necessary.  Then, I watched as they cleaned up all of the leaves and sticks that had been loosened and dropped out of the plant.  If they had not shaken it, it would have looked fine that day, but when the newly detached leaves dried up and turned brown, the trees would have looked worse than before.  They knew exactly what to do to make the pants look better that before and thrive without leaving the waste behind.

Because they are equipped, trained, and experienced, they have both tools and expertise I do not have.  This meant that the way they did their job looked strange to me, but it was the right way to do it.

Teachers do things that may look odd to the outside observer.  Students, parents, and people on the internet have a lot of ideas about education.  I have been in conversations with people who have very strong opinions about what teachers should do, in spite of their not having been in a classroom since 1968.  They think that, because they went to school, they know how school should look.  But that would be a little like me thinking I could inform an auto mechanic on the best way to fix my car just because I know how to drive.

Even within the field, there are varying types of expertise.  I may observe teaching methods that I do not know in disciplines other than my own.  I don't have the first clue how to teach computer coding or foreign language, but the experts in those fields are trained in that kind of pedagogy and can make decisions with a different kind of professional judgment than I have.

Some teachers are shy about asserting their professional judgment, especially in meetings with particularly forceful parents.  Some teachers go too far the other way, believing they should never have to explain themselves to anyone outside their area of expertise.  Neither of these is the right approach.  You make the decisions you do for a reason, and you should be happy to share those reasons because they come from a good place.  You can be open to input without caving to everyone who disagrees.

Teachers, as the school year is about to begin, let me encourage you all to find the confidence to make strong decisions, explain them well, and stand your ground because you have skills, tools, and expertise those arguing with you do not possess.