What if there's no prior knowledge to activate

            Activating students’ prior knowledge is one of those edu-speak phrases so often repeated that it has in many ways lost all meaning and functions only as a square on satirical faculty meeting bingo cards.

The intention is good.  New information can be more readily understood and remembered if it can be assimilated with material that already resides in long-term memory.  For example, if I needed directions to somewhere in downtown Durham, NC, I would ask where it was in relation to Fullsteam Brewery.  I have a very clear mental image of that area and can easily build onto it, despite my nearly tragic lack of directional sense.  I once missed the entire state of Virginia.  True story.

Unfortunately, the places with which I am that familiar are very few, and my map reading skills are purely theoretical.  When I first moved to Athens, GA, from Chicago, I needed to buy a shower curtain, so I called the local Target store and asked for directions.  

The clerk asked, “Do you know where the mall is?” 

I said, “No.” 

She tried again, “Do you know…” 

I said, “Let me save you some time.  I’ve lived here about sixteen minutes.  I don’t know where anything is.”  We eventually worked it out. 

The prior knowledge activation technique that I hear used most often is to ask students, “What do you know about ______?”  And the problem is that many of our students don’t know anything about the topic.  Asking them, “What do you know about Ancient Egypt?” is analogous to asking me where the mall is. 

Actually, it’s worse.  I absolutely knew that I had no idea where the mall was.  Our kids often think they know things when in fact they don’t or the things they know are complete fiction.

            According to Dr. David Sousa, author of How theBrain Learns among other titles, we tend to remember best the first and last things presented to us in a learning session.  That means students need to receive only correct information initially.  The use of the above technique or the much-beloved KWL chart may explain why students give those same wrong answers on the end-of-unit test, despite weeks of instruction.

            It may be more useful to plan your lessons with an eye toward creating a schema, as opposed to activating prior knowledge.  Consider, for example, Ancient Egypt.  Rather than asking students what they know, present them with an image like this one.  Better yet—give them an assortment of images. 

Now ask them simply to observe: “What do you see?” This can be done individually, in small groups, or as a whole class.  Make certain to limit students’ contributions at this point to what is objectively present in the image.  No interpretations or value judgments just yet.

When students have exhausted their observations, ask them, “Based on what you see, what do you think is going on?” 

Finally, ask students to consider what questions persist for them.  “What are you still wondering about?”

This activity, called See-Think-Wonder, is taken from the superb book Making Thinking Visible,  I like that it allows students to craft an accurate mental framework on which to attach the material they will be studying.  Later in the unit, the teacher can refer back to the images rather than spending a great deal of time explaining a concept.  Because the students were allowed to ponder the images for a considerable amount of time, they are apt to be remembered and serve as useful shorthand. 

Perhaps more importantly, it presents academic material as a puzzle to be solved.  Cognitive psychologist Dan Willingham, author of Why Don’t Students Like School?, explains that people like puzzles and will keep at them provided they believe they have a reasonable chance of success. If you have ever persisted at a difficult crossword or Sudoku, you know this is true. 

Teachers of Teachers are Teachers

Around October of my first year of teaching, I experienced an overwhelming depression brought on by what seemed the inescapable truth that my work simply did not matter.  My students would succeed or fail despite my efforts.  New teachers typically cite this belief as their primary reason for leaving the profession.

Déjà vu struck last week.  I left work Friday afternoon convinced that the individuals under my tutelage would flourish or founder despite my efforts.

I am no longer a classroom teacher.  Instead, I provide professional development programs for P-12 teachers.   Sometimes these programs take the form of weeklong workshops.  Occasionally, they look like the more typical “drive-by” PD— a few hours after school or on an early release day.  Most recently, I’ve been helping individual schools identify their instructional challenges and then tailoring PD to those needs. 

Twenty years in education, nearly half of it with adult learners, has led me to the conviction that there is no such thing as Adult Learning Theory.  While adult brains may have better impulse control and somewhat longer attention spans, they also have much more deeply ingrained habits of mind than children.  Encouraging a new way of thinking about a difficult topic is exactly as difficult in adults as it is in children—more so if you first have to supplant an old way of thinking.

I begin most workshops with an injunction against blaming the students.  To do so is to accept an external locus of control, to concede that nothing in your classroom is in your power.

As I struggled with my frustration with the lack of progress I was seeing in the teachers I work with, I returned to this idea.  If my students weren’t making sufficient progress, I would change my teaching practices to address that.  What, then, was I doing wrong as an educator that was preventing my teachers from progressing?

When teaching a new and sophisticated concept to children or adolescents, I know I must provide multiple opportunities for them to engage with the material before they will feel confident in their understanding.

So, why would I expect an adult to make the shift from teacher-centered to student-centered instruction based on a single modeled lesson?

When teaching complex processes to children and adolescents, I break it down into discreet steps and teach each explicitly. 

Why, then, should I be surprised that the teachers I work with didn’t do any of the things that must precede a student-centered classroom, things I not only had not taught but had not even identified?

When working with children and adolescents, especially those with troubled academic pasts, no learning will occur until you establish a mutually respectful and caring relationship with each student.

My group e-mails weren’t doing the trick?  Shocking.

I went back in on Tuesday with a renewed internal locus of control: what can I do differently to help these educators be more effective?

I sat in on a first grade reading class and saw that, although most of the students were eager to participate, the teacher was calling on only one student at a time.  As a result, students were either shouting out or checking out.  Both problems could be remedied if the teacher used more student-to-student interactions, but the children didn’t know how to engage in an academic conversation. 

With her blessing, I’ll be modeling that skill both for her benefit and theirs on Thursday. 

Discreet steps.  Multiple exposures.  Personal relationships.

I’ll let you know how it goes.

I Don't Need a Buddy--I Need You to Do Your Job Better!

A friend once asked me whether New Yorkers were as rude as everyone said.  I explained that in my experience New Yorkers were not necessarily rude.  They just didn't go to any great lengths to make you feel good about yourself.  To illustrate the point, I described wandering around Greenwich Village with a UNC classmate one spring break, looking for a place to have dinner.  I ducked my head into a shop and asked the woman running the place, “Could you point me to Little Italy?”

Without breaking eye contact or uttering a word, she extended her left arm and pointed. 

“No, seriously,” I prodded.

“Seriously,” she insisted.  “Keep walking in that direction and you’ll run right into it.”

She was right.  She was tremendously helpful, just not very friendly.  But here’s the thing.  At that moment, I didn’t need a friend.  I was already with a friend.  And my friend and I were really hungry. 

As a woman who works in education and lives in the south, more and more, I find myself wishing for a little more of that businesslike efficiency and a little less flaccid friendliness.

Efficient: Calling one teacher into your office and saying, “The last time we met, I asked you to get your lesson plans to me by 3:00 pm on Fridays, and you haven’t been doing that.  If you miss another deadline, I will have to reprimand you formally. ”

Flaccid:  Calling the entire faculty into a meeting and explaining, “Some of you haven’t been getting your lesson plans in on time.  We really need you to do that.  Okay?”

Efficient: Encouraging—nay, demanding—that employees interact with each other as adults, that they stop gossiping and take their complaints to the source of the complaint, not to you.  When Employee X comes to your office and says, “Employee Y hurt my feelings yesterday,” your response is, “I think you should talk to Employee Y about that.”

Flaccid: Enabling behavior from adults that you would not tolerate in children.  When Employee X comes to your office and says, “Employee Y hurt my feelings yesterday,” your default is, “I’ll talk to her. Okay?”

That word—okay?—like you’re asking permission to lead!

I wonder sometimes if part of the reason little ever changes in education is that we’re all so damn busy trying not to hurt anyone’s feelings.  So we allow incompetent people to serve on essential committees because we don’t want them to feel left out.  And we neglect to document behaviors because it would make everyone uncomfortable.  And we pretend we don’t see bad teaching or abusive administrators. 

Why?!

Because someone might get mad?  Or get their feelings hurt?  Or not feel affirmed and fuzzy?

Perhaps my upbringing was too no-nonsense but it seems to me that people’s self-esteem should result from their having done something worthwhile, not because everyone else is in a conspiracy to protect them.

In the pilot episode of The Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt, Matt Lauer asks one of the rescued girls how she ended up a victim of kidnapping and, presumably, rape.  She explains, “I didn’t want to be rude so… here we are.”

I’m not suggesting we stop being kind to each other or that we take no notice of our colleagues’ feelings.  On the other hand, the behaviors I’m describing are not kindnesses. They are duplicitous, cowardly, and, frankly, an abdication of our responsibility to the children we’re supposed to be teaching.  It’s certainly not kind to them.

Making a Murderer: How Did So Many People Miss the Point?

Typically, I blog on education-related topics, but today I’ll be shifting gears a bit.  Like almost everyone in the county, the Netflix series Making a Murderer consumed a significant chunk of my time recently.  Of all the things that appalled me about the documentary, what I found particularly infuriating was the amount of activity it engendered in the snarkosphere. 

I read several blog posts that I suppose were intended as observational humor about such banalities as how unattractive Dolores Avery is, how unfashionable her clothing was, how moronic her phone conversations with Steven were.  And the more I read, the more I seethed.

Let’s be clear.  The Avery family is white trash.  They are poor.  They are uneducated.  They are physically unattractive.  They’re the kind of folks who think nothing of tossing a tire on a bonfire. You would not want them as neighbors. 

They’re not clever and cuddly white trash, like the gang on Duck Dynasty.  And they’re not sexy, dangerous white trash, like The Sons of Anarchy.  They are reality trash, not reality TV trash.

And that’s kind of the point.

Civil rights are not the sole province attractive, educated people.  You don’t even have to be a particularly nice person to have civil rights.  They are not something you earn; they are simply something you have.  That’s why they’re called “rights” and not “privileges.”  The Constitution exists to protect everyone’s civil rights, even those of the trashy and ignorant. In fact, I would hazard that the trashy and ignorant need the Constitution more; the wealthy and the educated know how to advocate for themselves.

If you watched all ten episodes of Making a Murderer and failed to absorb that, you are part of what is wrong with our justice system.

Ask This, Not That

As 2016 begins, many of you may have resolved to eat healthier or exercise more.  My Facebook feed is plastered with recipes for things like Swiss chard wraps and fat-free, dairy-free oatmeal cookies.[1]  A particularly popular phenomenon at this time of year is Eat This, Not That, a web presence that shows people how to swap calorie dense foods for lower calorie “equivalents.” 

In this same vein, I decided to create a post for teachers who have resolved to get their classrooms in shape this second semester.  Very often, the problem you’re trying to correct is actually a symptom of a more important problem that you may not have even considered.  So, ask this, not that.

Don’t ask, “How I can raise homework completion rates?” 

Ask instead:

Why do I assign homework?  If I took out their homework grades, would some of my failing students be passing? Do I give my students timely and meaningful feedback on their homework, or do I just collect it and pass it back periodically? Would I want to do this homework if I were one of my students?  Could I get better results if I had them do the homework in class and the classwork at home (flipped instruction)? 

Don’t ask, “How can I get my students to follow directions?”

Ask instead:

Do I wait until all my students are looking at and listening to me before I deliver instructions?  Do I give instructions while simultaneously passing out papers or checking attendance?  If I’m not paying attention to myself, why would the kids pay attention to me?  Do I give lengthy instructions with multiple steps?  Do I craft my instructions with concision and precision? Do I explicitly check for understanding when I’ve finished my instructions, or do I just ask, “Got it?” and move on.

Don’t ask, “What behavior modification system can I implement so my students stay on-task?”

Ask instead:

Do my students understand what they’re supposed to learn from this work?  Will they know when they have learned it?  Is this work sufficiently challenging?  Is it too challenging?  Is there a real upside to finishing the work on time or a downside to not finishing? Would I want to do this work if I were one of my students?

You may not like the answers to a lot of these questions.  The good news, though, is that if the problem lies with you, so does the solution.

Happy New Year, everyone!

And remember—breathe in, then out.  Repeat as necessary.

Dr. Deb

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[1] I made this recipe, and the cookies were absolutely dreadful!  Just sayin’.

Some Possibly Uncomfortable Truths About Cooperative Learning

Last week, I conferred with a new teacher who was struggling to manage the behavior of her class of fourth graders.  For a variety of reasons, these children have not yet developed the ability to self-regulate, so, when released from direct instruction, their immediate impulse is to flee from the assigned task to anything else.  This impulse was aided by the fact that the teacher had placed their desks in clusters of five.

When I suggested that cooperative groups might not be the most productive arrangement for her students, she looked shocked—for about a second—then audibly exhaled and said, “Thank you!”

For some time now, teachers have been served a pretty steady diet of cooperative learning Kool-aid, and I feel it necessary to clear up some misconceptions.  Lest anyone think I’m simply a curmudgeon with a fetish for desks in rows, let the record state that, for five years, I served as a trainer in Kagan-style cooperative learning for my school district.  I believe in the value of effective cooperative grouping.  The operative word being “effective.”

Truth #1: Sitting together does not necessarily lead to working together.   In my observations, the most common scenario I witness is the teacher’s request that students “work together to finish this problem/ worksheet/ paragraph/ etc.  In most classrooms, what happens next is that a high-achieving, grades-oriented student in each group takes over the task.  I was this child (I am this adult).  This student will not risk allowing others to contribute, and those others are more than happy to surrender to the grade-grubber’s superior will.  In the absence of a high-achieving, grades-oriented group member, students will engage in a dizzying number of stall tactics that may include but are not limited to sharpening pencils, flipping pages randomly and/or accidentally dropping the book several times, asking to go the bathroom, requesting clarification of the task (this after 10 or 15 minutes have elapsed), and conversing on topics of greater personal relevance, interest, and facility.

Truth #2: Just because students are engaged does not mean they are learning.  That said, it is important to recognize that when students are not engaged, they’re definitely not learning.  However, teachers must consider whether and how collaboration contributes to learning goals.  Often the answer is “not at all.”  Students may enjoy the opportunity to talk to each other while working, but unless this talk is focused on building content knowledge or skill it is not helping them academically.  Yes, yes! Some students need to build social skills, but simply placing four kids in a group will not make that happen any more than placing four cats in a bag will.  My experience is that the students who most need help with social skills either shut down or become hostile when forced to work together.  Most groups—whether children or adults—require a protocol of some kind to enable them to distribute responsibilities equally.

Truth #3: The “real world” analogy we keep using to justify group projects is completely specious.  My significant other is the director of a team of software engineers. 

•  His team is made up of individuals hired specifically for their skill in writing code. 
• The team knows he is in charge.  He has more experience and holds institutional authority over them.  As their director, he can request status reports to keep track of how the work is progressing, reprimand any team member whose work is lackluster, and recommend the firing of team members who consistently fail to perform. 
•  Tasks are assigned to take advantage of team members’ strengths.  If they want to shore up their weaknesses, they do so on their own time.
•  In the end, the only thing that matters is that the product is completed on time and according to client specifications.   

Contrast those givens with the typical school project group.

·         Because the material is new, by definition, no one is an expert. 

·         Likewise, no one in in charge.  Even groups that are assigned a team captain succumb to the realities of adolescent social dynamics.

·         The goal of school activities is to help students get better at what they do not already know how to do.  If the activities tap only students’ strengths, they will not lead to learning. 

·         The learning process should be more important than the product. 

Now, I realize it is a poor leader who tears ideas down without providing alternatives.  But it's Friday, and I'm tired.  I’ll get to that in my next post.

Remember to breathe in and out (repeat as necessary),

Dr. Deb  

You are the Grown-up

During a recent classroom observation, I experience particular annoyance with a group of students who seemed ostentatiously inattentive during instruction.  At very long last, the teacher gently requested that they stop talking while she was talking.  Unsurprisingly, the request was not honored.

In our post-observation conference, I asked her, “Did you notice they were talking before you said anything to them?” 

“A little bit.”

“Why didn’t you say something the first time?”

“I don’t want to be mean!”

I asked her, “If you were a parent, and your three-year old wanted to switch to an all-candy diet, would it be mean to refuse?”

“No.”

“Why not?”

“Because it’s not good for them.”

“Right.  And it’s not good for your kids if they don’t listen while you teach.”

She thought about it, nodded, and then admitted, “I guess I’m just afraid of what they might do if I try to make them behave.”

In an attempt to establish some common ground, I shared with her that in the early years of my teaching career, I was often intimidated by the more confident students.  They triggered a lot of old anxieties from my own high school career.  I confessed to Kiley, “I wasn’t very popular in high school.”

“I was bullied in high school.”

And there it was, the source of the problem.  Kiley was regressing in her own classroom, turning back into the shy, frightened 14-year old who was taunted by her classmates. 

Many of us go into the profession without realizing how much adolescent baggage we carry with us.  And if we don’t make ourselves aware of how our past impinges on our present, we can buy ourselves all manner of trouble.   

For myself, teaching was a way to rewrite my teenage experience and cast myself as one of the popular kids.  The high-water mark of my career had to be the day I walked past a few members of the men’s chorus, and they spontaneously broke into a four-part harmony rendition of Oh, Teitelbaum!  If forced to choose, I suppose I’d rather be respected than liked, but I liked being liked.  And that led me to make choices that were very much not in my students’ best interests.

When working with beginning teachers, I counsel that most behavioral problems stem from a single issue: the students' lack of respect for them.  “You are the grown-up now!” I explain.  “Even if you don’t feel like a grown-up—especially if you don’t feel like a grown-up—you need to fake it until you do.  Put your hair in a bun, slip on a pair of high heels, and stand in front of the mirror saying ‘I am the grown-up.  I am the grown-up.  This is what I look like when I say, “I am the grown-up,!”’” Of course, it is difficult to be a successful grown-up if you’re still fighting adolescent wars. 

The first step in any recovery program is to acknowledge you have a problem.  To do that, you have to become aware of the problem. I think it would be good practice for every young middle and high school teacher to write their autobiographies, giving particular attention to those aspects of their educational experiences that were not pleasant, not successful.  In this way, we can begin to identify hot buttons and subjectivities that might otherwise remain shadowed, subverting our best efforts to make school better for those we teach than it was for us.

Remember to breathe in and out, (repeat as necessary)--

Dr. Deb