Time

This thing all things devours;

Birds, beasts, trees, flowers;

Gnaws iron, bites steel;

Grinds hard stones to meal;

Slays king, ruins town,

And beats mountain down.

You may recognize the riddle above. It is one in a series of riddles
asked between Bilbo and Gollum in one of my favorite books, The Hobbit.
In this case, the answer to the riddle is, “time.” I find that time itself is
one of life’s biggest riddles. Many would argue that it is our most precious
resource since it can never be recaptured. How we view time has a huge
impact on our attitudes, relationships, and daily interactions. Philip
Zimbardo, a psychologist and thought-influencer, has done some great
work around this topic. How our students and staff view the world, and their
orientation to the future, impacts how they engage with us. Take a look at
this video for a deeper dig into the idea of time orientation:

The Secret Power of Time

One could argue that finding a way to grow our students from
present-oriented hedonists, to future-oriented people, is the key to their
success... and ours!

What specific actions do you take to help our learners orient to the future? 

The Power of Fun

“Make learning fun!” How many times as an educator have you said or heard this quote?  Countless times I am sure. The reality is that human behavior can be shifted in a positive way when we make things fun. Check out this two minute video:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2lXh2n0aPyw&sns=em

As I watched the video, I was reminded of three simple things that we can do to engage our learners by making it fun.

Novelty - In low risk situations, like climbing a set of musical stairs, human nature drives us to experience things we have yet to experience.

Immediate feedback - Learners like to see the impact of their actions.  Every step here is rewarded by a note. Rewarding our learners with immediate feedback drives engagement.

Social connection - One of the simplest ways to make a lesson more fun is to let our learners work together.  Making meaning together is inherently more fun than doing it alone.

To see more videos like the one above, check out http://www.thefuntheory.com/

How do you leverage fun to engage your learners?

Mark

The Story I Told Myself

I once had the privilege of attending an 8th grade field trip to our district's STEAM center. As a science teacher of 13 years, it was good to be surrounded by engaging activities connected to my favorite content! I bounced around from activity to activity and watched my students learning by doing. One activity involved using K’NEX to create a variety of structures.

I strolled into the room about 10 minutes into the session and noticed a student sitting alone at the table, not building the model. This young man is full of personality when you interact with him one-on-one, but is not a strong student. It is not uncommon for me to see him just sitting in class, not doing his work. I know that he is a past STAAR failure and was retained in elementary school. I also know about his home situation that is not something I would wish on anyone. Despite knowing all this, when I saw him just sitting there, a story began to form. In my mind, I believed that he was just choosing not to engage. I thought he was just being lazy. I sat next to him with the intent to tell him how disappointed I was that he was not respecting the opportunity he was being given. When I asked why he wasn’t building, he said, “I don’t know how.” This seemed unrealistic and I told him just to look at the picture and make it look like that. I watched as he struggled to connect the pieces. At that point I gathered up pieces and began to build. He watched intently and within a minute, he was going. I watched his momentum build after his “aha” moment. We continued building together. I asked him if he had ever had Duplos or Legos as a kid. He said that he had not. I am ashamed of the story I told myself about this young man. Some might think that he should be grateful that I cared enough to sit next to him and help. The reality is that the biggest learning that happened that day was on my part. This young man taught the principal to beware of the assumptions we make about why students disengage. It is a lesson that I won’t soon forget!

What are your go-to questions that you ask of students when they appear to be disengaged?

Perception vs. Reality

The human mind is amazing. Our success as a species is clearly linked to our ability to perceive the outside world, find patterns based upon experiences, and learn. Despite the undeniable virtues of the brain, it is fallible. Take two minutes to view the video at the link below.

Charlie Chaplin Illusion

When I first saw the video clip, I was amazed.  How did my mind misinterpret the reality of the situation?  I rewatched it and tried to force myself to see the mask as it was. I was unable to make this happen.  Despite my best effort, the mask always became convex as it turned to its inverted back side. My perception was not reality.

The relationship between perception and reality is worthy of exploration. One truth that successful people recognize is that our own reality is skewed by prior experience, bias, and our own brain’s misinterpretation of events. This realization helps us slow judgement, seek outside perspectives, and to be truth seekers. A second truth is that other's perceptions are their reality. People, adults in particular, hold tight to their perceptions as truth. This understanding is critical when we work to shift other's thinking.

Accepting these two important truths is fundamental to a mature mindset. Perhaps that is just my perception…. :-)

How do you create an internal, reflective pause, when you are compelled to be a truth teller, rather than a truth seeker?

Alexa

Last Christmas we received Amazon's Echo Dot as a gift for the family.  This little “smart” speaker is another technology tool that is leading us down a new path.  We activate the intelligence of the device by calling out “Alexa.” Once our friend Alexa awakens from her electronic slumber, we have access to music, weather, information from the web, etc.  Dear Alexa performs best with direct, concise requests.

Listening to my 5-year-old Max make requests with his speech challenges is really entertaining!  I am impressed that she can interpret and meet his desires as well as she can. When listening to him struggle to request, “Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer,” I realized that this technology tool was both a blessing and a curse.  The blessing part is that Max, and myself, are learning how to craft simplistic language to get the information or function we want. This is a great opportunity for problem solving and honing communication skills. The downside to this is the directive nature of the requests.  Terse requests tend to sound bossy and impolite. I don’t want Max to talk to me, his teachers, or anyone else in this way. Polite asking versus direct telling tends to increase the chances we will get what we want when it comes to human interactions.

I think that this example points to the challenge and ultimately the opportunity that lies with technology usage.  In my role as a parent and principal, I need not avoid these types of tools because of great potential they have. It is also critical to remember to teach Max that there are many different ways to communicate based upon the situation.  The way we talk to our new friend Alexa is different than the way we talk to human beings. When we embrace challenges as opportunities, our perspective shifts dramatically for the positive.

How do you directly teach your students the nuances of language, including registers, to set them on a path to successful communication?

Fuzzy Thinking

Neil deGrasse Tyson is one of my education heroes. He is a master of using the power of his narrative to simplify the complex. This is true if he is teaching astrophysics or important life lessons. Check out the 5 minute clip from a graduation commencement at the link below:

Neil deGrasse Tyson on Fuzzy Thinking

The examples he gives in this speech are powerful in helping to illuminate the issue of an over-reliance on multiple choice or objective testing. As a teacher of science for 13 years, I enjoyed the ease of grading and disaggregation of  data that these objective assessments provided. Despite this convenience these assessments can create the problem Neil is discussing. What are some steps a teacher can take to reduce the occurrence of “fuzzy thinking” in our classrooms as a function of our assessment?

1. Minimize the number of questions that are only at the knowledge level. If the answer can simply be given by memorizing, we are only reinforcing the problem. A good filter for this is to ask ourselves, “Can the answer be found by googling it?” If the answer is an affirmative, then it is back to the drawing board to craft a deeper question.

2. Provide a variety of assessments and checks for understanding about concepts that matter deeply. Let's face it, not all learning targets are of the same significance. For those enduring understandings that are priority concepts for your content area, allow for students to demonstrate mastery in a deeper fashion. When students respond in an essay or short answer format, we can get a much clearer picture of where students are in their understanding.

3. Demonstrate that your focus is THAT students learn rather than WHEN they learn. Your behavior after formal assessments will show students what you value. Simply returning the assessment and moving on sends a devastating message for those who were unsuccessful. This practice communicates, "Learning is optional... as your teacher, I am OK with you failing." Purposeful opportunities for students to revisit the thinking behind the answers that they missed, communicates a positive message. Leveraging retest and redo practices that allow for student to fully recover show that our focus is on learning, not just a grade.

Do you celebrate the correct answer or learning in your classroom?

Oblivious or Conspicuous?

I have a life goal that has set me on a path to continue to grow as a man. My goal is to be the best man my children have ever known. On my reflective journey to become better, I have noticed something about myself. I find that when things are going well and everything is in its place, I am oblivious to my current state. As soon as something is no longer in a state that meets my expectation, it becomes very conspicuous. A simple example of this could be related to the cleaning of a classroom. Each day we enter and the room is clean. Throughout the school day, busy students traipse in dirt, sticky fingers touch surfaces, and the trash can fills. The next day, the room is clean again thanks to the hard work of our custodial staff. Over time we become oblivious to this positive state of existence. If we walk in one day and the room has not been cleaned, it is VERY conspicuous. Rather than noticing and celebrating 100 days of a clean room, we only seem to notice the one day that it did not happen. A bigger example might be how we take our good health for granted. Only when we have pain do we appreciate the pain-free existence from the day before.

I know I am not alone fighting this dark side of human nature. Why is it that we don’t take the opportunity to praise the majority of students who are doing just what they are supposed to day-after-day? We are often oblivious to their contributions. Instead, those few students who are not meeting our expectations become very conspicuous to us. This narrow focus on the small minority begins to cloud our perspective of the class as a whole, our school, and sometimes even our view of the world. I believe that shifting our focus to make those things that are in a positive state conspicuous, and become more oblivious the other things, makes our life better!

What are you doing to make the positive things in your life conspicuous to you?