Think Like a Teacher

As a teacher, I am thankful for many things over the course of a rich career, some small details, some lasting legacies:

For EMPTY butterfly clips, signifying that I have no “homework”

For “teacher shoes” with extra cushiony heels to survive days-months-years-decades of standing and walking on concrete thinly clad in carpet

For donations of Kleenex

For permission to play music in my classroom

For Apple IIe, IIgs, HP, IBM, Lenovo, and MacBook Pro, my friends for decades

For www

For the parent volunteers who organize kids on field trips, at special “culminating” events, and at after school celebrations

For gift cards to the local teacher store (stickers!!!)

For the colleagues who organize the teachers’ room potluck lunches, filled with comfort foods and things none of us should eat

For the invention of microwave ovens cheap enough to have multiples in the teachers’ room

For the kids who come back as grownups

For being blessed with my own children — whose lessons make me a MUCH better teacher and a better mom. Today I read this on the blog of one of my now-adult children and cry the most grateful tears:

As the child of a public school teacher–and a gifted education teacher at that– I was raised with extreme appreciation of the importance of having the proper resources available to children to foster creative learning and independent growth. That is not to say I learned that every educational opportunity required substantial spending. Rather, I grew up realizing the impact a few generous parents or school board members could have on a classroom. Whether it was helping my mother scour the sale rack for stickers to use in her own classroom or seeing the look of gratitude on her face when thanking the moms who volunteered at the various district-wide events she organized and hosted each year, I grew to value the importance of parental participation in the classroom. And, even more importantly, I learned the importance of listening and responding to teachers’ requests.[…]

When I dropped off the new toys yesterday, his teacher was overwhelmed. So much so that she asked if she could give me a hug to say thank you. I told her it was the least I could do. And I meant it. After all– in choosing childcare, we trust a great deal to the folks who spend each day with our children. I was more than willing to help ensure that she had everything necessary to continue doing an excellent job fostering the creative and loving learning environment for [my child] and his classmates.

My greatest thanks are for all the teachers and students who pay it forward.

We all know the experience of walking into a kitchen and being engulfed by the buttery smell of baking cookies. It feels so good inside your nose, you want to bite the air.  As we near the Most Wonderful Time of the Year, i.e. Cookie Season, this video wooed me as quickly as the first fragrant air tendrils of Tollhouse cookies.

This is inspiration: a lesson.. a UNIT… and yearlong THEME! If I were still teaching gifted, we could explore it all year: Why does it taste so good?

Start by brainstorming the questions that waft from watching this. The video makes us ask more than it answers. What else uses egg proteins? Are eggs from certain chickens better for certain cookies? Are there other emulsions that separate to make food “work”? Who figured out how to make cookies in the first place? Could we test some of the temperature variants and their impact on cookie results? How much of this do professional chefs know and how much do they care?  This is more than simply food science. It is also human body systems, senses, and perception. (How ’bout that part about throwing away the timer?!)

If we took all the questions that a few fluent thinkers could generate, fueled by this video and perhaps a Tollhouse or two, we’d have enough inquiry to fill a highly enriched science curriculum and a group of kids hungry to attack it. The best part is that the questions come from the kids, so they spread like warm cookie smell. The only people who might object to a cookie-based curriculum might be those concerned about childhood obesity. So we make sure we include the nutritional side of decision making about our food. We might even look into WHY cookies appeal to us so much more than, say, broccoli.

Watch the video. Imagine and ask questions. As you sit down to Thanksgiving Dinner, you may find yourself wondering about the chemical reactions that turned that turkey such a lovely brown or made the mashed potatoes form a cement-like substance on the sides of the bowl. Maybe the experience will make you  consider the possibility of hooking your students with cookies during the upcoming holiday season.

Bon appetit.

Teachers are careful about the things we do and say. We cringe when remarks accidentally slip out and  wish we had a verbal “undo” button. We beat ourselves up when words intended as neutral feedback somehow echo back sounding negative. When commenting on writing or anything student-created, I deliberately “sandwich” what a student needs to improve between two positive observations.

This blog post makes me pause to wonder if my praise has been reinforcing the “wrong” things — or the right ones — both with my students and my own children. More importantly, I wonder how small changes in comments on student posts in MySciLife  or on student blogs and online projects might build creative confidence far beyond the hollow “great job” or “interesting idea.”

Maybe it is better to comment before kids publish. Or to comment on the struggles we see them go through before the finished product.  Or maybe we should emphasize ongoing process by asking where they will go next:

I love your video, especially because I know you had to redo it three times to get it right. Your extra efforts were worth it, and  your outtakes show how much you improved! I salute the changes you made! Where do you want to take it next ?

Katrina Schwartz’s post about praise, girls, and process made sense of two experiences I had as a student that have always stood in higher relief, though I never analyzed exactly why  until now:

In sixth or seventh grade art class, we were assigned to build a Rube Goldberg type invention out of found materials. I don’t recall the details. I do recall that I spent three art classes coaxing a windmill-like contraption, precariously taped and glued together before the era of Superglue, to work. It had several rubber bands and used plastic spoons for blades, and I was trying to make it pick up and throw a ping pong ball. The best it got was one lucky throw amid scores of attempts, and I never replicated that “success.” But I remember it,  not much more except the trials and trials. I also remember that Art class in general was one of the places where I felt especially successful.

Many years later, as a grad student, I wrote a paper on creativity — a topic near and dear to me. As he handed it back to me emblazoned with an “A,” the prof asked. “Now what are you going to do with it?” I rattled my head slightly and asked, “What do you mean?” No one had ever asked me about going further than the “final grade” to consider publishing or sending it anywhere other than the trunk-of-finished-papers in my basement. That question twisted around me then and squirms inside me with every product I have made since: from fabric projects and writing pieces to an entire graduate exhibit of art quilts.

Schwartz’s post is right. The nature of praise does matter. Process and open-endedness matter. I am sure you have personal experiences that rise as evidence from your own memory.

I wonder if we would we be better teachers and continue to improve if we were praised for PROCESS, for trying again after “failures” (lesson flops) more than if praised for what we have at the finish (like test scores)? Yes, the results matter, but we will get better ones if we are resilient learners, too.

When learning works, it feels like a Super Bowl victory to a teacher. Unlike the Super Bowl, we receive no media hype, give no interviews, wear no ring, never have a sexy half time show, and certainly don’t make a profit on clever commercials. But we celebrate as best we can, and it feels GOOD. We WON! #eduwin!

Today I celebrate a BIG victory: MySciLife WORKS! And now we can share the report that proves it. Both the documented learning and the act of publishing the report are victories. Believe me, I am celebrating!

Key findings in the report:

• When asked to compare MySciLife to their experience with traditional methods of science instruction, most students replied that MySciLife helped them understand content, that they enjoyed the social interaction, and that MySciLife was fun and creative.
• Three out of four groups using MySciLife showed a statistically significant increase in students’ science content knowledge as compared to the control groups using traditional instruction.

The background:

Almost four years ago, three creative teachers got together and dreamed up MySciLife, an entry in the 2010 MacArthur Foundation Digital Media and Learning competition. A few months later, we were finalists. Then we “lost.” We did not receive the funding. I blogged throughout the process and have shared more as the project moved ahead in new venues. Fast forward to 2012, and we had enough funding to conduct a limited research pilot of MySciLife with middle school science teachers, collecting data throughout the 2012-13 school year. We watched the dream unfold and shared it at the ISTE conference 2013.

Unlike the Super Bowl, the learning game does not end. As MySciLife moves well into its second year and a much-expanded control group study, the players are going without a huddle, eager to engage with each other inside MySciLife. The teachers meet for monthly collaboration where learning also happens. Unlike the Super Bowl, the “coaches” cooperate and share strategies. Unlike a football game, there are no losers. We share the triumph as we watch learning unfold.

Today feels like a Super Bowl victory for social media-based learning, and we won unopposed. Here’s to us!

I get lost in web resources that intrigue me, and I love the feeling. If there were one thing I could wish upon every child, it would be the experience of losing all track of time and place,  teleporting into an alternate era or experience where curiosity takes complete control. The time-travel hole that forms the central premise of Stephen King’s novel, November 22, 1963, is a perfect parallel to the timeless-learning experience I have when whirled into certain sites.

My current learning vortex is the JFK Library’s interactive, The President’s Desk. (How appropriate to time-travel just as Stephen King imagines, landing the oval office during JFK’s presidency.) As a big fan of West Wing and The American President  and a child of the 1960s, I am powerless to resist. I click and experience sounds and artifacts of the era. JFK makes a phone call in my ear. His diary shows where he was and when, and I follow him along. I am gone for hours. Every click makes me curious about the next one. I regret not having someone alongside me, since my impulse is to share, “Look at this! Remember phones like this? Listen to him talk about the sea from this scrimshaw thing. He’s here.”

Is it the lure of the Camelot fantasy that holds me at this desk? I think not. It is the layering of experience: a school child stunned to hear that the president has been shot, the touch of artifacts made real by sound and voice, the connections between what I knew, what I know, and what I want to know. Just weeks from now, we will pause to observe and struggle to explain that day 50 years ago to many who have no connection or recollection. But this virtual desk tips up like a floorboard, dropping us into a time and place where we wonder and touch and learn. If there were one thing I could wish upon every child, it would be this feeling, this experience — as often as possible and on whatever topic draws him/her as Kennedy was drawn to the sea (click on the scrimshaw to hear it).