Our Common Rival

In sports, there are many rivalries.  Whether it is UNC and Duke, Alabama State and Auburn, or OU and OSU, there are certain teams that you just care about beating more than others.  Friday night, GRACE Christian and Cary Christian set aside their rivalry for one night.  Don't get me wrong.  Both teams still wanted to win their basketball games.  But, that night, they had a common rival, and that was cancer.

In GRACE's eleventh Hoops for Hope (Play for Kay) event, the gym was absolutely packed.  There was a lot of activity.  Cakes were sold in a silent auction.  T-shirts, jewelry, and child-friendly prizes were available for kids to win in games. 

Coffee and snacks were sold in addition to normal concessions.

There was face painting for kids of all ages.

The National Anthem was played and sung.

Funds were raised that resulted in two faculty members getting pies in the face. 

Kids posed in a photo booth. 

Survivors were honored and prayed for. 

And, oh yeah, there were three basketball games. 

The goal was ambitious.  We had hoped to raise ten thousand dollars from one event.  We did not meet that goal.  With the help of our friends at Cary Christian, we crushed it beyond belief.  Just before the final quarter of the last game, it was announced that we had topped FOURTEEN THOUSAND!  We know much good is being done with these funds.  From better patient treatment to clinical research trials, the Kay Yow Fund is committed to keep working with every dollar raised until a cure is found.

The Humanity of Heroes

When you teach, you get asked strange questions.  From how I pronounce caramel (because he wants you to agree with him in the argument he is having with a friend) to my favorite element (which I don't know how to have an answer for) to my favorite meme (do people have favorite memes), students ask a lot of opinion questions.  Occasionally, I even get asked who is my favorite President.  The answer is Thomas Jefferson, but I know that can be a difficult answer for some people to take.  After all, he was a very flawed and self-contradictory individual, both wanting to free his slaves and writing that "all men are created equal" while fathering children with one of his slaves, Sally Hemmings.  Similar contradictions are true of many of the founding fathers, so we feel we are left with the choice of ignoring their faults or ignoring their contributions. 

When the movie The Greatest Showman was released, I heard a lot of students speak very lovingly of PT Barnum because the movie had portrayed only his heroic side.  I guess his ownership of an old woman (yes, he purchased her) doesn't make for good content in a musical.  He is the person known for lines like, "A fool and his money are soon parted" and "There's a sucker born every minute."  While it is hard to know if all of the saying attributed to him are true, we can all agree that his character is more complicated than the movie portrays.

There are so many examples of this.  This summer, I decided to read Buzz Aldrin's book Magnificent Desolation to commemorate the 50th anniversary of the moon landing.  He describes the affair he had with a woman he met while on the world tour, flying back and forth to New York to "keep up his flight certification."  We all know the controversies over monuments to confederate leaders.  Henry Ford was antisemitic as was Charles Lindbergh.  Both Charlie Chaplin and Elvis seemed to be interested in girls we would call younger than appropriate.  If you want to keep admiring singers that you grew up listening to, I don't recommend seeing Ray or Walk the Line.  Since I'm writing this post on Martin Luther King Day, it might be worth noting that he regularly cheated on his wife.  Recently, A few weeks ago, I saw a tweet asking a prominent Baptist leader why he didn't call out George Whitefield and Jonathan Edwards for their apparently racist views.  Of course, Twitter's character limit means it is hardly the place for a deeply meaningful discussion, so the answers to this question left much to be desired.  John Piper does a pretty good job of addressing the issue here, even referencing Peter's denials of Christ and God's forgiveness.

Speaking of Twitter, it seems that every day, someone is being "canceled."  It takes one statement or action for the mob response on Twitter to call for us to boycott various celebrities or companies.  In the past year, I have seen cancelation calls for Kanye West,  JK Rowling, the Hallmark Channel, and even YouTube.  I'm not saying some of them aren't deserved, but it is an almost daily event.  Can there really be that many?  (It's also worth noting that it doesn't seem to work.  Kevin Hart may have removed himself from hosting the Oscars after being canceled, but his shows are still as popular as they were before.  And, I don't think the use of YouTube dropped even one percent after being called out as "over" on Twitter.)

If you haven't seen the PBS documentary Hamilton's America, let me recommend that you do.  Even if you aren't into the musical, the presentation of history is compelling.  There are two scenes in it that stuck with me.  One is the scene in which Christopher Jackson, the play's original George Washington, visits Mount Vernon.  While standing in the slave quarters, this African American states that he is trying to reconcile the heroic aspects of George Washington with the fact that he owns slaves.  In the end, he decides that he has to make peace with the fact that he can't make peace with it.  He is a deeply flawed and yet heroic figure.  The other scene that returns to my mind frequently involves a conversation with Leslie Odom, Jr., the actor who portrayed Aaron Burr.  He discusses how, before the show, most of us only knew that Burr killed Hamilton in a duel.  The benefit of the show, in his estimation, is showing the events that led to that moment because we see the complexity of the man, not just his actions on his worst day.  In fact, one of the things I most appreciate about Lin Manuel Miranda is that Hamilton treats each person in our complicated history as a three-dimensional human being, not a marble statue of their best moments or a painting of their worst. 

How do we deal with this, especially when having conversations with our students (who have been immersed in cancel culture for their entire lives)?  The answer is certainly not to ignore faults in order to maintain our hero worship.  The answer is not to ignore the accomplishments of those we look up to because their flaws make them worthless.  The answer to acknowledge the complexity of human beings.  We are made in the image of God, but we are also corrupted by sin.  Even young students are capable of recognizing complexity.  In fact, these types of discussions are the perfect time for Christian school teachers to talk about sin and our need for redemption.  We can be glad that God uses people with flaws since those are the only kind of people there are.  If we want our heroes to be perfect our only option is to make Christ the hero of the story. 

Call Them By Name

Have you read Dale Carnegie's How to Win Friends and Influence People?  Point number 3 is 

"Remember that a person's name is to that person the sweetest and most important sound in any language."

He uses the chapter to expound on why people love their own name and how it makes us feel when people use it respectfully or disrespectfully.  

In a recent movie rendition of The Crucible, Daniel Day-Lewis plays John Proctor, a character accused of conspiring with witches.  He signs his name to a confession and immediately takes it back.  He doesn't want it to hang on the church door.  The minister asks why, if he doesn't plan to deny the confession.  He cries out, "BECAUSE IT IS MY NAME!  BECAUSE I CANNOT HAVE ANOTHER IN MY LIFE!"  He is willing to hang before submitting his name to something he knows to be false.

Why is our name so important to us?  It is the one thing we own, the one thing that is ours.  For men like John Proctor, it is the one thing he will pass down to his children.  We can lose all we own and replace it, but if our name becomes spoiled by disrespect or disdain, we can do little to get it back.  When it is used respectfully and well, we feel known and valued.

This is why it is so important to use the names of students well.  As a yearbook teacher, I have more opportunity to learn the names of students I don't teach than most.  My staff and I tag every photo that is uploaded so that the Jostens software can track how many times they are placed in the yearbook.  My staff is great at identifying high school students, but the elementary and middle school students are largely left to me.  I spend a lot of time looking intently at individual features of kids in their portrait and comparing it to an activity photo.  "Is that Jenna?  No, here ears are different."  As a result, by this time in the year, I know a lot of kids' names, whether I teach them or not.  When I have door duty, I do my best to greet each student coming in by name.  (When I'm not sure, I fall back on my southern-lady right to call them sweetheart or honey.)  I want them to start their day by hearing what Dale Carnegie says is the "sweetest and most important sound."  I want them to hear it used happily and in a welcoming way.  

I once knew a man who was attempting to discipline a student.  He kept saying, "We love you, Brandon.  We want what's best for you, Brandon."  Given that the boy's name was Landon, he lost all credibility, and the boy didn't absorb the point of the discipline.  Learn a student's name, and use it well.  When you get it wrong (we all accidentally call them by a sibling's name at some point), acknowledge it and apologize.  Then, make a note to intentionally use it well the next time you see them.

One of the big buzz words of education right now is about "classroom climate."  EduTwitter uses the word "relationships" more than it uses any other word.  Using student names with respect costs nothing but time and it creates a respectful classroom climate as it is the first step in building relationships.

Don't Be a Day Counter

On September 1, I started seeing posts with how many days there were until Christmas, and once Halloween hit, I saw a post every day with the number.  As annoying as receiving that information every day, whether I wanted it or not, it sparked in my mind just how many times I see posts about how many days there are until something (the weekend, the next holiday, a vacation, spring break, graduation, summer, football season, the opening of a big movie, the premiere of season x of show y, etc.).  I just googled "how many days until" using quotes and got over 1 million results.  The first few pages of results are sites that will calculate the number of days until an event for you.  I know this doesn't seem like a big deal, but I submit to you that these people are not living their lives.  They are wishing their lives away.

I know we have to be aware of due dates and deadlines.  I'm a yearbook teacher, so I understand the need for schedule management.  That's not what I'm talking about, that's not what these pictures represent.  These are representative of people who think today is not worthy of their attention except for its transit to a different day. 

Working for the weekend means missing five days out of every seven.  More importantly, it means you are unaware of the opportunities God is putting in your path today.  To quote Ferris Bueller, "Life moves pretty fast.  If you don't stop and look around once in a while, you could miss it."  To quote the Beatles, "Life is what happens to you while you're busy making other plans."  To quote the gospel of Matthew, "Therefore do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will worry about itself. Each day has enough trouble of its own."

I've done this wrong.  There was a year that I was in the wrong job, and I thought that counting the number of school days left would help me feel better.  It had the opposite effect.  It served only to make me more miserable and slowed down each day.  It made me miss out on the impact I could have had on the students in front of me.  It made me miss out on the joys God was putting in my path because my eyes were farther down the road.  

If you are a day counter, here are some thoughts to keep in mind:
- The average person lives about 25900 days (average means some people don't have that many).
- What you do each day is important because you are trading a day of your life for it.
- Each day is a gift of God, and how you use it is an act of worship to Him.  
- God has a plan for your life, but that means He has a plan for your day, for this hour, for the next few minutes, and for each moment.
- He puts people right in front of you that you will miss if you are looking too far ahead.  
- If you knew you today was your last, would you do something different? 

I'm not expressing this the way I would like, but I found a poem that does, so I'll end this post with it.

Resolved?

I'm a New Year's grinch.  I don't understand why we celebrate this non-event.  I mean, I get that there has to be a day when the year switches number, but it is so arbitrary that we changed it from April to January (making those who celebrated it on the old date April fools).  Other holidays celebrate something of religious significance, honor some aspect of culture, or commemorate an important event.

When I point out that we are celebrating nothing, it bothers some people.  One friend, who took particular offense, reminded me that it is the only holiday celebrated by everyone in the world.  That doesn't help me.  It just makes me question why we have collectively decided to celebrate nothing.  So, yeah, I'll be going to bed at a normal time and wake up to 2020 anyway.

Perhaps the part of this holiday I find most ridiculous is the practice of making resolutions.  I have a co-worker who regularly works out at a gym.  He hates going there in January because it is packed with all of the people who have resolved to work out, but he says that he knows it will be normal again in three weeks, so he just has to time his visits well until MLK weekend.  Every television morning show does a segment on how to keep your resolutions while acknowledging that you will make it to Valentine's Day at best.  Resolutions are lies we voluntarily tell ourselves, knowing they are lies when we tell them.



Why don't we keep resolutions?
- First, it is because we know we won't follow through when we make them.  We know, in spite of touting the nonsensical phrase, "New Year - New You," that we will congratulate ourselves for even kinda sorta keeping them for a few weeks.  We don't actually RESOLVE; we just make a list.
- Second, overcoming a habit or forming one is difficult and requires a the energy of a powerful motive, which a non-holiday is not.  You are not a different person on January 1st than you were on December 31st.  You know this during the rest of the year.  No one says, "Once July 13th gets here, I'll be different."  The fact that the number on the year part of the calendar changes doesn't inspire change.

If you identify something that needs changing and tell yourself that you will make that your New Year's resolution, you don't actually want to change.  If you identify something in your life that needs changing, that is the time to change it.  That's when there will be motivation and energy to do something.  That's when you might have RESOLVE.

Love Your Colleagues. Love Your Job.

I know this isn't a popular thing to say, but I love my job.  I love it.  I see people post online on Sunday nights about how much they are dreading Monday, and I just think, "Wow, you people are in the wrong job." 

You might be thinking that I probably have a really easy job.  Not true.  I teach middle school and high school. I teach science and yearbook, both of which are quite time-consuming.  I am at work for an average of 55 hours a week, but it can be as high as 75 when I'm near a yearbook deadline.  (Fortunately, I am single, so I don't have to deal with the emotional toll of a work/homelife balance.) 

I learned something in my early twenties when I was working as a janitor in an arena.  Your love for a job has less to do with your task than it does with your co-workers.  I really liked that minimum wage job, and it wasn't because I lived for vacuuming (except for the super-satisfying sound popcorn makes in the roller) or that I enjoyed scrubbing urinals.  In fact, that latter task taught me how to do something else in my mind while working.  It was because I loved my boss, Tracy Jackson.  He assigned me tasks with an end result in mind, but he trusted me to figure out the best way to accomplish it.  I know it doesn't seem like a job that involves a lot of creativity, but I enjoyed figuring out more efficient ways to do things, and my favorite memory involved chasing a mouse, trying to trap him in a corner in a room with curved walls.  We finally caught him we ran into a bathroom stall.  At the end of each shift, Tracy thanked me for my work.  It was never explicitly said, but he had a way of making me feel like I was doing something important by keeping the arena a pleasant place to be.  I liked him so much that when I was in need of a job a year later, I went back to him to work at the housekeeping office.  I've had jobs I liked more than others because of the work, but I've always found something to like in the people with and for whom I worked.  Except once.

The only job I've ever hated was, in fact, a teaching job.  The work I did there was the same as what I had done in the place I had loved working at before, so it wasn't the work I hated.  It was the culture.  The atmosphere of that school district was not one of encouragement and trust.  When test scores were lost, the assumption was that the teacher had not sent them in spite of the fact that the central office lost everyone's scores at least once.  Some of the administrators in that school believed what students said over what teachers said, and my mentor teacher (who had been teaching the same amount of time I had) insisted on multiple videotaped observations.  There was nothing in that school that implied trust in a teacher's professional judgment.  When I left, no one cared.  I had replaced someone, and someone would replace me. 

The job I have now is one I intend to keep until I die.  Seriously, I plan to die at my desk.  Don't get me wrong, there are hard days.  There are long weeks.  I've even had what I would describe as a difficult year.  I look forward to snow days and long weekends as much as any other teacher who needs rest.  Yet, I love my job. 

The work is hard but satisfying.  Most of the students I work with are hard-working and kind.  They learn enthusiastically and appreciate teachers who try hard for them.  The administration believes that if they have hired the right people, they don't need to micromanage them.  They encourage us to take academic risks and help us clean up the ones that don't pay off.  They want students to have experiences that enrich their academic and spiritual lives. 

My colleagues at GRACE are amazing, and there have always been some that I feel especially close to.  I've written about Blue Pod before, so you know how close I feel to them.  Some of my past favorite friends have left for different paths God had for them.  Jessica, who started our theater program and doubled our number of AP classes (at the time, we only had one) now lives in Colorado, but we still keep up with each other's lives and ministries through facebook.  Cheryl, who I wrote about in the post called the Teacher Next Door, left us to become a dean at ECPI, but her impact on our math department still continues.  Tomorrow, I will spend the day with the English teacher who left just last year, the one I wrote about in a post called My Co-Conspirator.  My friend next door recently told an open house group that he had worked here for 13 years, and I had to remind him that he had been here 17, so I guess he loves working here enough that the time seemed shorter.  And, of course, new friends have joined us that we love so much.  I laugh with my colleagues almost every day, and we've cried together on many others.  We pray together several times a week.  We give each other advice, and no one is protective of their ego over the school's good.  We just do life together at a deep level.

If you are one of the poor people who spend Sunday night tweeting about how much they dread Monday morning, my advice is that you either find a new job or find a friend you can like at the one you have.

   

Final Reflection from Learning and the Brain - Putting it All Together with John T. Almarode

There were more sessions than those I have developed in these posts, but some were so involved, you would need to have heard the entire speech because notes (even ones that have been reflected on) wouldn't have done them justice.  If you are interested in the development of the adolescent brain, you should definitely read Sarah-Jayne Blakemore's book Inventing Ourselves: The Secret Life of the Teenage Brain, but her talks were too intricate to be explored on this blog.  The same goes for two incredible keynote speeches by Dr. John Gabrieli and Dr. David Rose.  Linda Darling-Hammond presented three day worth of information in just over an hour.  Sorting through their speeches here would not give a good representation of their speeches.  

This is the last of the posts on the Learning and the Brain conference, which is fitting because this was the final keynote speech during the actual conference.  And, if your brain is tired from three days of learning, you want the final presenter to be John T. Almarode.  He's delightful, charming, thoughtful, and practical.  

One of the first things he said was one of the most important things that got said at the conference.  There is no one technique that is universally effective all of the time.  It must be adapted to the local context and timing of your students in your classroom and it must generate evidence of its effectiveness.  The reason education is so fad-driven is that everyone is looking for the magic bullet.  It's hard to realize that there isn't one. 

We Remember What We Encode

There are two types of encoding, rote and elaborate.  Rote encoding involves just knowledge.  Elaborate encoding explains why something is true, allows students to find patterns and relationships, involves emotional engagement, and includes multiple ways of representing the learning.

When people hear this, they want that silver bullet to be elaborate encoding and decide that all rote encoding is old-school garbage.  Life is more interesting than that.  Elaborate encoding should be first, but it can be strengthened by using rote encoding for retrieval practice.   

We Remember What We Retrieve

I did a whole post on spaced retrieval practice, so I won't go into it here.  The interesting part of this session was when he asked us what we thought this image had to do with retrieval practice.  There were so many interesting ideas, including:

• The brain has a capacity, so you can't keep adding to it.
• If you guzzle the entire glass, it won't do much for your body's hydration.  You need to drink it in sips.  Retrieval practice can't be over every single thing you learned all at once.  It must be done in smaller doses.
• A good waiter doesn't refill a glass every time you take a sip from it.  They also don't wait for the glass to get totally empty.  They refill it just before it is empty.  The time for retrieval practice is just before students are about to forget.

When you ask smart people to tell you their thoughts in a free-form way, you may get answers you didn't expect but that reflects excellent thinking.  This reminded me of a story Kevin Washburn tells about a math teacher who put radishes on her students' desks.  She didn't know how it related, so she asked them what they thought.  They gave answers that she didn't expect, but it made their thinking visible.

Some ways to make thinking visible:

• Ask students to observe and describe
• Have them construct examples
• Insist that they give a reason why an answer is right or wrong.
• Ask them to write how things connect to authentic situations.

Learning Takes Time

Interleaving and distributed practice is more difficult for the brain, but that is what makes the learning more permanent.

Teach students that learning takes time and is often uncomfortable.  It's what we call desirable difficulty.  It's desirable because it works.  The struggle is not only real; it is valuable.  Telling students why it is helpful makes it even more helpful.

Give and Receive Feedback

As John Almarode said in both his previous session and his keynote address, "None of this works without feedback."  None of what we learned at the conference means anything without giving feedback to the students and receiving feedback from them.  This is why relationships and classroom climate matter.  

We live our lives with feedback from others, whether they intend it or not.  If someone slips and falls, after you help them up,  you make sure not to walk in the place they just walked.  How can we expect students to operate without feedback in our classes?

For a long time, feedback has been used to say "I gotcha."  In a loving classroom, it should be used to say, "I've got you."  In order to make it supportive, we should ask the following questions.