Think Like a Teacher

This is the time of year when weather fronts spawn nasty thunderstorms or stall out over my part of the world, sending gray-green clouds across  a calm lake, whipping up whitecaps in five minutes like one of those television chefs creating meringue. At the same time I hear from teacher-friends about how they have “had it.” They are stressed, can’t sleep, want to resign every activity that has brought them joy, and just can’t be very nice to each other. I call it “crabby season.” As the final weeks of school stall over them, they spin off storms of their own, whipping up waves over what would have been a pebble-drop in January and turning gray-green from their own exhaustion.

But there are good things that come of thunderstorms and unstable weather: the grass really gets growing, and the annual flowers so tender at planting are suddenly three times the size. The release of that “pressure system” explodes into summer’s best growth, both for the plants and for the teachers. There are high winds for a short while that kick up the white caps, but — in surprisingly short time — the waters calm. The silver maple leaves turn back right-side-out and flutter calmly where they had been bashing into each other a few moments before.

Teachers often ignore TeachersFirst for about three weeks while the winds (and their crabbiness) subside. The exact timing varies, depending on their school calendar. Soon they turn themselves back right-side-out and find green growth that lasts throughout a long, hot summer. After mid-July, they are back, prowling through new beds of ideas, admiring new blossoms and tossing together summer thinking-salads. Many of them have other jobs, but these are often a sort of brain-refreshing Miracle Gro to their real gardens of thought. Somehow the crabby season seems to disappear as if it never happened.

If your hallway seems filled with the crabbiness, close your eyes and remember that  these storms pass quickly. Join me on the covered porch to watch the thunder and lightning across the lake, knowing how beautiful the garden will be tomorrow.

I’ve always been fascinated by creativity. What makes it come so easily for some people and as such a struggle for others? Why do some teachers ooze creative ideas and respond to every student question with a different angle on the topic (flexibility) while others can only restate the concept over and over, perhaps in paraphrase? I really don’t think it is an issue of motivation, since many of the latter group of teachers truly admire those who generate new ideas so painlessly. Kids are the same way, especially after about third grade. Some of them go through school with a firehose full of fresh thoughts and project ideas while others follow patterns and templates very well, but — at best — elaborate  or “hitchhike” on their classmates fresh thoughts. It isn’t hard to be pushed by the force of a firehose, though one can only “ride” the stream very briefly.

I have always thought that school freeze-dried most student creativity, except perhaps in those who have veritable “firehoses.” Those with a garden hose or a drinking fountain of creative idea-flow seem to dry up once they have followed rules and procedures long enough to be successful in school.

Yesterday I ran across this article on the brain chemistry of creativity. Apparently neurobiologists have isolated something called  NAA, a chemical that correlates with divergent thinking when found in a certain part of the brain, the “anterior cingulate gyrus (ACG), which regulates the activity of the frontal cortex – implicated in higher mental functions.” So very intelligent people can also have this chemical and be highly creative, as well.

But it’s much more complicated than that. Apparently there is some interplay between intelligence, creativity, and NAA. As a fictitious friend of mine would say, “Holy Idaho!” The scientists have a lot more work to do to sort out this complex interaction.  And I now have even more questions:

Why are some engineers and scientists brilliant in solving things by scientific method (and able to think of alternative paths of scientific inquiry) but look awkwardly stunned when asked to imagine an alternative way to use a spoon (one of the basic creative brainstorming exercises I used to use with second graders).

Why can some people elaborate –adding many, many different and even beautiful versions of an idea, such as different designs and “twists” for using a spoon as a “dipper,” but never get outside of the “dippiness” of spoons to see them as mini-mirrors or vehicles or hair ornaments?

What implications does NAA have for teaching and learning? If we are to differentiate for different approaches to learning, how do we adjust for NAA?

I can’t help thinking that all the web 2.0 tools for creating products could help, especially since there are usually ways for  the spoons-as-dippers-only  types  to start from someone else’s dipper prototype and create a variation while the spoons-as-vehicles students can start from scratch to launch their spoon to the moon or under the sea.

Once again, creativity wins as the most powerful teaching tool. And we should never respond to a brainstorming suggestion by saying “NAAAAAA!”

That’s exactly what it is: NAA!

If you have ever eaten leftovers from a marvelous recipe for many days in a row, you know how it feels to cheer as you finally cram the empty Gladware into the dishwasher, the first serving lost in distant memory.  Those of us with empty nests, still learning to downsize the recipes we used with a household full of teenaged swimmers, know the meaning of “more of the same.” Even the best homemade ziti or sausage risotto does little more than fill a rumbling void the third or fourth time around. We cram it in, swallow, and do the dishes out of habit, but find nothing memorable in the overly soft pasta or rubbery sausage.

I worry that current efforts to extend the school day/school year for all U.S. students may be as mushy and meaningless as old risotto.  MoreOf TheSame, i.e. more hours of time with a numb backside in a plastic chair, does not equate to more learning, more challenge, or more competitiveness. If we are to extend the school day or school year, it should be with something different: different experiences in different places with different people. Imagine adding an entirely new dish to the menu in place of leftovers: spicy time (thyme?) creating meaningful projects from ANY chair, fragrant discussions with a professional or a mentor, savory stints arguing with classmates about real content — online, instead of on-schedule. If we are going to “extend” the school day or year, the extension should be anything but the same.

What an opportunity we have to open new kitchens. Imagine having school be a “reality” show: real experiences with real people (though not contrived a la Hollywood, please). Throw the kids into a Hell’s Kitchen of learning where they must cook up their own recipes and answer to the judges. The prize: your own “restaurant,” i.e. lifelong opportunities to keep on learning. What a magnificent alternative to MOTS.

Now if we can just listen to the true gourmets in education’s kitchens, and avoid short-order cooks with timers…

For those of us who have adventurous mothers, this weekend is an opportunity to give a special kind of present: tech help. Over the past ten years or so, I have spent countless hours on the phone  across the 400 miles between me and my fearless mother, helping her remember how to print multiple 4 by 6 prints onto an 8-1/2 by 11 sheet of photo paper, save an email attachment where she can find it, delete incorrect email addresses from her address book, or download the photos from her digital camera. At this point you are probably guessing that my mother is about 60 years old, maybe…right? Nope. Try over 80. (She’d shoot me for saying that, but she probably won’t read this).

Her age does not matter. What matters is that I am her personal tech learning network, and she loves it. My help is needed, appreciated, and custom-made to “fit.” I may have to “give” the same gift a few times until she gets it, but she revels in telling me every time she uses a tech skill. How often do you give a gift where the recipient brags back to you every time she uses it? So here is my list of tech-help MDay gift suggestions for moms at various levels of techspertise. And none of them requires a coupon at Macy’s. I hope you will comment back with ideas of your own.

1. Set up an account for her on Facebook so she can be friends with grandkids.
2. Use a free trial of GoToMyPC to fix all the things she cannot fix herself and customize her Favorites. Maybe even give her desktop shortcuts to great online games and word puzzles to keep her mind sharp.
3. Email her links to the same games, in case she forgets they are in Favorites.
4. Set up folders in her email, including a HELP folder where she can file away all your “How to” emails. Be sure you put “How To: [insert topic here]” as the subject line for subsequent tech help emails, so she can find them easily!
5. Have her try right-clicking on everything while you watch or talk on the phone. Explain what those options mean–and have her try some.
6. Make her a template for a photo greeting with her choice of layout and fonts ready to go. All she has to do is add the message and print.
7. Offer to digitize her Christmas card list. Then do it before December.
8. Set up an account on Voicethread and show her how to upload and record narration for family photos. You will LOVE watching them.
9. Pay for her virus protection subscription and set it so it is foolproof!
10.  Send her a list of travel links to go on virtual vacations. Talk her through organizing them in a single folder of Favorites.
11. Show her how to RIGHT-click nasty pop-ups to close them from the taskbar (in case they have nastiness linked from the little X).
12. Set up groups in her email and show her how to compose mail to one of them.
13. Show her how to find magazine images on the web from the decade of her childhood…then listen to her stories about them.
14. Help her organize the images from her digital camera. Tell her it’s OK to delete the blurry ones of her feet. Then set her screensaver to cycle through them at times when she is bored. (Warning: she may call you and start narrating the pictures as they go by).
15. Teach her how to copy and paste by keystroke. Copy is easy. Paste: think VELCRO to “stick it there.”
16. Show her how to use quotation marks to search old friends’ names on Google. Show her how to screen the results before clicking.
17. Set up Google Reader with feeds for her  from pubs and blogs you know she’d enjoy (there are tons of recipe blogs). Show her how to check out the Reader’s suggestions for more—and how to delete feeds she no longer wants.
18. Send her a new feed idea each week for a couple of months so she remembers how to add a feed.
19. Set up that digital picture frame you gave her so it actually works with current pictures of the grandkids.
20. Set up a wish list for her on Amazon and make sure she knows how to add to it and edit it. Now you have gift  ideas for the next occasion!

PS. When “showing” her, you are not allowed to touch the mouse. Put your hands behind your back and TALK.

Happy Mother’s Day to all.

David Brooks column on genius leaves me gesticulating and arguing aloud at my computer screen. Once again someone has attempted to quantify a magnificent phenomenon into something measurable and, in the process, created a well-organized data set that, at best, partially describes the topic at hand. Just as “Advanced” and “Proficient” on state tests define academic success, so does  Brooks’ description of “genius” as a function of repeated and highly-focused practice.  There are enough points unplotted on his graph to generate an entirely separate curve.

My argument draws on years of  learning as the “teacher” of gifted kids. While many of my students had very talented minds and exactly the drive and perfectionism  Brooks describes to “develop a deliberate, strenuous and boring practice routine,” a series of intriguing others showed entirely different patterns of genius. Some vaulted over practice routine to perfection on the first attempt. Others dove into disconnected ventures inside diverse idea-caves. Brooks’ description (with all due credit to his sources,  Colvin and Coyle) ignores both the Intuiting Vaulter and an Intellectual Spelunker model of genius. Yet both have sat in my classroom, dropped by my house after college, or emailed me a generation later to tell me what they have wrought. Their genius moves like spring white-water, making it far more difficult to describe or quantify. The only point on which I can agree with Brooks about their genius is that it was only remotely measured by I.Q.

The Intuiting Vaulter just KNOWS how things work without hearing it, seeing it, or watching YouTube explain it. She does not need practice. After only slight exposure to the venue and powered by a run-up of her own ideas and the grace of exceptional understanding, her vault takes her high over the bar in a parabolic leap past those practicing hard to achieve lower measurements of genius. Her ideas simply hit the mark the first time, though she cannot tell you why. She rarely boasts of the heights she reaches.

The Intellectual Spelunker  explores and tries out too many ideas, including those far from the main stream. She hears about and explores a never-ending series of new idea caves with no apparent pattern or map. She practices within none for more than a moment before she moves on to another twisted passage into murky, wet thinking. Occasionally she plays in the mud at the bottom of the cave, then leaves her finger marks for the water to wash away. One day she emerges with a book of poems or a concert that only hints at  connections between the caves  at some level far below the ground. But before she finishes reading the poems or singing the songs, she leaves at  intermission, lured by another cave. We stay behind, marveling at the words and music she leaves. The only things  she “practices” are changing direction and asking questions.

Brooks, Colvin, and Coyle, your vision of genius robs the world of  immeasurable wonders. In today’s connected world of user-generated information and understanding, the Intuiting Vaulter can land in soft cushions after a soaring blog post that stuns the rest of us. The Intellectual Spelunker has many more caves to explore, places to “play,”  and tools to express unmapped connections beyond our understanding, thanks to the web. This is an age to unleash and appreciate genius, not quantify it.