An Important Reminder

Today I was again reminded of a fact which I have to remember when I move on in my learning how to teach, how to handle large groups.

I can relate with kids well, I can help them on their work. I can do all the things that a teacher ought to do...except when a large group is involved.

One, two, even three kids is fine for me. But usually anything above five, the amount of authority I can physically give starts to be spread thin.

Order falls apart.

I know that eventually I'm gonna have to learn how to handle these large groups, but for now, it remains my largest, and most dangerous, challenge.

Grades or Competence?

As spoken about in the last post, there's a big difference between telling kids they worked hard than to just tell them they're smart. When you congratulate a kid on a grade, or you give them a trophy, and then just walk away without talking about it, you leave the kid to just assume they're smart. And so, when that good grade or award is denied them, they figure they must not be smart anymore and give up in despair.

Instead of just saying, "Great job on that A" ask the kid, "I saw you got an A. What you learn in school today?" Keep the kids learning. Don't let them think that just because grades are in that it's over and they don't need to worry anymore.

The same goes for if the DON'T get a good grade. Say things like "Hey, I saw you got a D. What do you think we oughta do to fix that? Do you want help from me for anything?"

Just like in the last post, we have to teach our kids that work is better than smarts. Arbitrary grades and concrete reward can often muddle that picture. We have to leave that message clear if we want our kids to succeed.

Life is a journey, not a destination.

Although this quote was Ralph Waldo Emerson, it's philosophy goes back to the very roots of Buddhist Southeast Asia.

A recent article I read told the following story about how school in Japan is often taught.

In a fourth grade geometry class, the teacher was attempting to teach her students how to draw a cube on a flat piece of paper. One of the students was really struggling with getting it right. The teacher, noticing this, asked the student to come up to the board. An action like this could have caught some western educators off guard a bit. Why should the struggling kid be used as an example?

The teacher asked the kid to draw a cube on the board. After each attempt, she would ask the class if he had gotten it right, and every time the other students said, "No, not quite." Finally, after a host of attempts, the kid did finally get it somewhat correct. When the teacher asked the class, they all said, "YES! YOU GOT IT!!!" The student was then reminded of how he could solve problems on his own, and was sent back to his seat with a new source of pride. He had accomplished something through hard work!'

Doesn't that last sentence define a core lesson we want ALL our students here in the West to learn? And yet, why don't we see strategies used like this more often?

It seems that we Americans, though we speak so idealistically about the rewards begotten of hard work, we resent the idea of struggle. When we see a child struggling at a certain subject, we tend to dismiss it, essentially saying, "Oh, he's just not so smart in this area."

The article I read compared different means of praising kids. When we say things like, "You're smart!", "Wow, you really know this stuff!", and the like, we essentially inform them that they don't have to strive to any higher goals, they're smart already! Whereas, if we say "Good work!", "You must have worked hard at this!", and "See? Anythings possible if you work hard!", these messages are the ones we need to be giving our students, as this always leaves the door open for advancement.

We need to involve more of that Japanese Teacher's actions into our own system. It shouldn't be the ONLY thing we do, by any means, but we ought to do it more often at least. 

The Meaning of Achievement and What It's Worth

Another article I recently read reminded me once again of one of the details of Montessori I may have never succeeded without. The idea that EVERY advancement of ANY kind was celebrated as a breakthrough.

Everyone keeps preaching about making school be more like the adult world. Adults have good days and bad days, why should schools be any different? We shouldn't coddle kids from the occasional bad day, but neither should we expose them to harsh judgement and doom them to a constant stream of bad days.

Montessori allowed the students, outright encouraged them, to willingly help each other out. Here you saw the kiddy version of forming work associations, here you saw little colleagues willingly grouping up to complete these little projects, and whole little groups doing these little projects to form little corporations, with little staffs.

While maybe a little idealized, the essential for future work in the business office was all provided there. And for that kid who was struggling with a particular skill, most of the day was already devoted to work time. It was during those times that the teacher could take aside 'special interest' students and help them with whatever they were struggling on. 

The people who will benefit most from education are the students. It is one of the responsibilities of the teacher to make school interesting and fun. Those are the types of teachers we need.

However One Might Try, One Can't Be a Genius in Everything

In psychological and educational circles alike, there has been a grand debate about the idea of "native intelligences", the basic idea being that some people are better visual learners than are auditory learners, or that they are better mathematical learners than linguistic learners. 

An article I recently read talked all about this theory. A few believe that these native intellects should define how we teach our students. The linguistic learners ought to be taught linguistic skills, while the mathematical learners ought to be taught mathematical skills. Unfortunately for these few believers, no evidence exists that shows such a method to be beneficial in any way.

There is no doubt in my mind that different people learn in different ways. I personally am a much better visual and mathematical learner. I can comprehend complex equations and I can find the equations I need to solve numerical sequences. But where I begin to struggle quite a lot is on word problems in my math class. Even when I read a whole paragraph describing a mathematical operation, I can't easily grab the numerical concepts it's asking me to interpret.

In conclusion, I think that the way kids learn best ought to have some way in how they are handled in school. I wouldn't go so far as to teach linguistic learners ONLY linguistics and mathematical learners ONLY mathematics. But I do believe that visual and auditory learners ought to be taught in those ways specifically.

Now, if only we could find some sort of proof that such a method would work. Without the evidence, the idea is worthless.

Biases and Those They Hurt the Most

Very few people care to think that they could possibly have any form of bias, especially among educators. But the fact remains that in our culture there is a very common bias that almost all of us have fallen for at some point in our lives, often among educators especially.

The article I read spoke of the "natural bias", the idea that we often put more trust and support into "naturals" rather than in those who we know physically work to get where they are. Educators fall to this trap often when a student does "naturally" well on a test. If the teacher praises that student before the class, such an act can understandably bring a lot of harm to the work ethic of the other students.

A recent survey done among musical high school students who were asked whether they valued natural or built talent. The majority claimed to support talent built up over time, as they claimed that someone who practices to become great may overcome the natural with time.

We all have our occasional biases. I've fallen to the natural bias as well. The important thing to remember is to not publicly praise someone for their work by degrading the other students. Rather, encourage those "naturals" to join the rest of the class by challenging them. Ask them, "How could you do that better?" With any luck, they'll become another tinkerer, like the rest.

If Higher Purposes Aren't Enough, What About Encouraging Mental Weightlifting?

Of the many things one learns from three semesters of Psychology, it is that the brain is malleable, it can grow, change, and adapt. Just like working out your muscles to get stronger, you can workout your brain to get smarter.

As mentioned in the previous post, some struggling students only needed a sense of higher purpose to succeed a little bit more in their studies. The same seems to apply to ideas like the one stated above.

Today's kids are so often taught that intelligence is something you're born with, that some kids are just inherently unsmart and that there aint no way they're gonna ever make it in this darn world.

Statements like that are simply untrue. As a recent study showed, kids who are informed about the abilities of their brains to change and grow with effort, after a semester, were able to raise their GPAs an average of 14%. While that might not seem like much, it constitutes a full letter grade in difference.

Maybe adding more positive meanings behind education is all that's needed to encourage students to reveal their full potential. If that were true, and taken advantage of, how glorious schools around the country would become!

Could Higher Purpose Produce Higher GPAs? Recent Research says, "Yes"!

Ask yourself why you go through all the work and stress in your career. Why do you subject yourself to all that boring torture? Why the long hours? Why the sleepless nights? Why?

According to recent research, the philosophy behind that answer could make or break your chances for success.

In over a thousand interviews with lower-income high school seniors, the ones who answered that their goals in life were based on getting through high school in order to help others tended to do better academically. They also happened to pass the Marshmallow 2.0 Test mentioned in the last post.

Even just having high school freshman read inspiring quotes from their upperclassmen allowed them to attain the motivation and higher purpose need to raise there GPA by 0.2 points. That's the difference between a B+ and an A- (If, like me, you like Standard Reference Grading, that could change a 2.9 to a 3.1)!

So, when I'm bogged down in homework from about 80 different places, and it's an early Saturday night, why am I going on? Because I want to get through school so I can help troubled kids have the types of opportunities that I had.

That's inspiring enough for me.

Marshmallow 2.0! Can Students Resist the Internet?

The famed Stanford Marshmallow Test was one of the many things which inspired me to enter into the realm of Childhood Psychology. 

Stanford Psychologist Walter Mischel brought hundreds of preschoolers into a blank room with nothing but a table, chair, plate, and on the plate was a marshmallow. Mischel informed the children that they had two choices, either they eat the marshmallow now, or they could wait and eat two at the end of the wait period. The kids were left alone for fifteen minutes; just them and the marshmallow.

Over 15 years later, when Mischel looked back at these students after the end of their high school careers, he found a STRONG correlation between those who succeeded in waiting and those who scored well on the SATs. The same was true in reverse for those who failed the Marshmallow test.

This test opened a whole new field in the study of 'self-control' and its benefits.

In today's society, our own students are facing a sort of "Marshmallow Test" on a daily basis. "Do I do my homework now, and then enjoy Youtube/Instagram/Facebook/Nintendo all afternoon free of worry; or do I just do those now and have a heart attack over homework later?"

So, in some sense, a new marshmallow test has been published by psychologists out of Penn and Notre Dame, according to an article I recently looked at. The test offers students to do as many math problems as possible, while also offering a chance to scroll the internet. 

The results are much wider than the straight up [pass/fail] of the test's predecessor. Some students may work diligently at the math, others will do none of it. Most will do all the math they can personally handle, then take a break before returning to the math. The latter is by far the healthiest option, but also the one that entails the most struggle. How does one manage either not doing too much math, or breaking for too long.

Personally, I fall prey to that question far to often. 

Grit, Tenacity, Perseverance: The Three Things Which Allow Everyone to Succeed, and How to Teach Them

I think most people in the latter years of high school or in college can agree that these three little words were the breakfast, lunch, and dinner of their school days. These are also overly evident in the workplace of the 21st Century, especially in Capitalist America and Eurasia.

The article I read spoke on the many strategies needed to teach these traits of success, and most of the strategies understandably applied mostly to grades 4-up.

I do say I haven't seen much of this in the Hubble Classroom, and maybe for good reason. These kids are learning how to form friendships, respect their teachers, and survive in the new school environment. They certainly need to deal with a little bit of stress here and there, but not quite the constant, palpable stress of middle/high school.

However, even as I specify not seeing much teaching of these tools in the kindergarten class, I must take the time to honestly say I haven't seen much of this ANYWHERE, especially in places where it is most needed, like high school.

I have seen so many kids almost break under the pressure of school, and yet nowhere does there seem to be any source of help for how to deal with this stress in any real manner. It's almost as if these kids are expected to just adapt to their surroundings, as if they were Le Marcian Crabs or something.

I unfortunately have to say that this is even an area where Cowles cannot provide any comfort.

In an era where competition borders on brutality, where time has become to constraining of a concept, and where a much needed 28,800 seconds seems to fall far to short of what more is required, grit, tenacity, and perseverance are the skills we ought to be teaching, and yet, almost no one appears to be! 

Project Based Learning, and the Environment Needed for it to Work

I recently read an article commenting on the use (or, as could also be said, misuse) of Project Based Learning.

As always with matters like this, I revert back to my own experiences at Cowles Montessori, where Project Based Learning was the 'law of the land' as it were. One thing that stood out to me from this article, and something that I totally agree with, would be the fact that Project Based Learning is not only meant to affect the students, but the teachers as well. The person at the center of this article, Laura Thomas, director of the Antioch Center for School Renewal, says that teachers must also put aside their own biases. Just because is doing something differently from what the teacher expects, the teacher often discourages them from doing it 'wrong'. This is of course, a generalization, as not every teacher does this.

I can distinctly remember classes back at Cowles where the teachers allowed themselves to be pseudo-instructed by the students. After a class project, the teacher would go around and ask different students, "And how did you solve this problem/complete this assignment?" What would ensue would be a full out display of all the different strategies one could use to solve these problems.

But, of course, the most important element of Project Based Learning is the environment and community it needs to function. This is something I see in the classroom everyday at Counting Circle. The ENTIRE class comes together than to count up to the number of the day (we're in the 170s already!!!). The 'assessments' at Hubble also provide an excellent example of the 'free education' spoken of in the last paragraph. At least three different methods are noted for how to solve the problem when it is provided. If the student uses a different strategy, you can express that and count it equally.

I always honored the Montessori system for its philosophy of letting the students study 'on their own' for most of the school day, as what that facilitated was the opportunity for the students to form 'work groups', allowing them all to work together to solve a problem or complete an assignment, something which I have never been able to find even at Roosevelt, and only occasionally at Hubble.

Long story short, Project Based 'Free' education ought to provide an environment where students help not only each other, but the teacher (even if only as motivation) as well.

For the purposes of advancing the course a bit, I will return to analyzing some sources outside of the classroom for a bit.