A New Approach

I am attempting to revamp my curriculum and approach to teaching. Although the term itself has lead to a bit of a backlash (as always happens when a new strategy becomes flavor of the month), I think there is much value in some variation on the flipped classroom model. At a minimum, I know my current strategies have stagnated and I am finding it ever more difficult to slog through the content in class with a distracted group of thirty or more 14-15-year-olds, leaving less and less time to do interesting things like labs and projects field trips and such.

I also find that the interface for the school's website that allows teachers to post assignments, events, and links is just too cumbersome for the way I work either way - as it is, attempts to update information on a daily basis requires too many steps and limitations, which a blog format will simplify for me. Time will tell if I run into problems on blogger that I didn't encounter on edline.

I will have one blog for AP Biology and a separate blog for Regents Living Environment. For the rest, the results will speak for themselves once I start posting.

PPAS Style Guide

PDF Version

PPAS Style Guide

Common PPAS style questions are addressed in this short guide. Rules are followed by examples when needed. In every instance where a word, term, or punctuation device is used, it is used according to guide rules and may be considered an example of proper form (for example, note the period at the end of the URLs in the following paragraphs).

For other grammar and usage questions, try Jack Lynch's online Guide to Grammar and Style at http://andromeda.rutgers.edu/~jlynch/Writing.

For vocabulary and spelling, including whether a term is one word, two words, hyphenated, or capitalized, use http://www.merriam-webster.com.

This guide is aligned with modern style guides, including MLA, APA, and the Chicago Manual of Style, with some minor exceptions where there is disagreement among the various styles. I used Chicago a lot because of its extensive coverage of writing style. In the rare cases where there was disagreement with MLA, I used MLA instead to maintain consistency with the PPAS humanities department. For any question not addressed in this guide, you may consult your favorite source until we add it to the guide as needed. This guide applies to formal or public communications.

PPAS and Majors

1.   Depending on the audience, the first mention of the school should include the full name with the abbreviation in parentheses. Subsequent use of the name of the school may use abbreviation only. In-house publications may use PPAS exclusively. The school newspaper is an in-house publication.

• Students applying to the Professional Performing Arts School (PPAS) must audition for admission. PPAS is a small school in Midtown Manhattan.

2.   In the first instance of a major appearing in text, use the full name of the major. Note capitalization style. In subsequent instances (within the same document or webpage) use common abbreviated forms, if they exist (shown in parentheses below). In-house documents may use the abbreviated forms exclusively.

• Alvin Ailey dance majors are placed in levels A–D. (Ailey majors or students)
• American Ballet Theatre dance majors (ABT majors or students)
• Ballet Academy East dance majors (BAE majors or students)
• Drama majors are placed in levels 1–4. (drama majors or students)
• Juilliard instrumental and vocal music majors (Juilliard majors or students)
• Musical theater majors are placed in levels 1–4. (musical theater majors or students—avoid "MT" in formal writing but in-house is acceptable)
• School of American Ballet dance majors (SAB majors or students)
• Vocal music majors are placed in levels 1–4.  (vocal music majors or students—avoid “vocal students")

3.   Theatre is the British spelling of the word theater. There are no generally accepted rules regarding the use of the British variant. Use theater in all cases unless directly quoting a written source that uses the term theatre, or unless the official name of a theater or program uses the -re spelling. For help with names of theaters go to the Playbill website: http://www.playbill.com/index.php.  Most Broadway theaters use the -re spelling.

• Spring Awakening is now playing at the Eugene O'Neill Theatre.
• Rebecca is a musical theater major at PPAS.
• PPAS is located in the heart of the Theater District.
• Theater is my first love.

 Capitalization

1.   PPAS majors and levels are in lower case, unless the major contains a proper noun, and except in rare cases where the major is used as a stand-in for the department (as in the second example, which should be avoided in formal writing unless quoting someone). Do not capitalize majors when followed by a number or letter.

• Derrick is a sophomore Alvin Ailey dance major in level B.
• In June, Musical Theater will perform a Kander and Ebb review at the Maravel Arts Center.
• All drama 4s will perform scenes from Shakespeare in the spring.  (The preferred formal phrasing would be "level 4 drama majors.")

2.   Do not capitalize middle school or high school unless part of a larger formal title.

• The PPAS middle school will hold auditions this weekend.
• Cindy enrolled in PPAS after attending New Horizons Middle School in Brooklyn.

3.   Names of spaces that are simply descriptive in nature (main office, auditorium, lunch room, etc.) are not capitalized. Any room that has a formal name that is special, unusual, or unique should be capitalized. When announcing the location of a formal event in the auditorium or the black box theater, capital letters may be used.

• A meeting will be held in room 408 today. Room 408 is a science room.
• The PPAS library is open during lunch period.
• The main office is on the third floor.
• Many students like to spend their free periods in the Learning Center.
• Level 4 drama students meet in the black box theater for PA classes today.
• The middle school production of Servant of Two Masters will take place at the PPAS Black Box Theater.

4.   Do not capitalize subject areas unless they are proper nouns or unless using the official full title of the course as offered by the NY State Board of Regents or PPAS programmer.

• PPAS humanities classes combine English and social studies in a single block.
• Mr. Wright teaches Strategies in Problem Solving. There are thirty students in his problem solving class.

5.   Capitalize professional positions or titles only if they appear before a person's name. In certain official or promotional materials where headline style is appropriate (such as the PPAS letterhead), capitalization is appropriate.

• Mr. Ryan, principal at PPAS, loves his job.
• We had a conversation with Principal Ryan.
• Mr. Martin Josman is the music director of the National Chorale.

6.   Academic terms and date formats:

• Students generally look forward to a new beginning in the fall semester.
• Spring term begins on Tuesday, January 29, 2013. (no -st, -nd, -rd, or -th)

Numbers (MLA)

1.   In general, spell out all one- and two-word numbers. Newspaper writers (due to space considerations) should use words for numbers one through nine, but numerals for numbers 10 and above. Be consistent—when the rule calls for mixed numerals and words but the numbers are related, use numerals (see last example  below).

• There were nine students who auditioned for the lead role.
• There are twenty-three students in AP biology. (Newspaper: There are 23 students in AP biology.)
• The average rainfall through the summer months of June, July, and August is 3.7, 4.4, and 4.0 inches respectively.
• There were 88 students, 125 parents, and 250 other supporters at the rally.

 2.   Use numerals for the following situations: dates, ages, percentages, numbers followed by units of measurement, and money. Use numerals in situations where convention demands it, as in the fifth example.

• Earth's population now stands at approximately seven billion people.
• I grew up in a small city with a population of 22 thousand people.
• A 3-liter bottle of soda often costs less than a gallon of water. (Hyphenate only if used as an adjective and the unit is not abbreviated.)
• Students in grade 8 take earth science. (Students in eighth grade take earth science.)
• We will perform act 3, scene 2 from Shakespeare's Hamlet.

 3.   Ordinal numbers follow the same rules as cardinal numbers regarding the use of numerals or spelling out the number.

• In first grade we took a nap every day.
• Most eleventh-grade students in New York State take U.S. history.

 Titles of Works

1.   Italicize titles of longer works including movies, books, plays, musicals, operas, albums, TV series, newspapers, magazines, etc. Do not capitalize definite and indefinite articles, prepositions, coordinating conjunctions, or to, except when these terms begin or end a title.

• To Kill a Mockingbird, Our Town, Lost, Cabaret, La Traviata, the New York Times

2.   Use quotation marks for shorter works such as short stories, songs, arias, articles, individual episodes of a TV series, etc.

• "The Pit and the Pendulum" (short story by Edgar Allen Poe), "Paparazzi" (song by Lady Gaga), "Un di, felice, eterea" (aria from La Traviata), "Bat Child Found in Cave" (Weekly World News headline), "The Trouble with Tribbles" (Star Trek episode)

3.   The words that denote subsections of works, such as chapter, page, unit, act, scene, etc., are not capitalized.

• For homework, answer questions 1-10 from chapter 3 on page 77.

4.   In classical music italicize compositions known by name, such as Mozart's Eine kleine Nachtmusik. For titles in languages other than English, use sentence style and follow capitalization rules of the original language. Works known by number should be set in roman type without quotation marks, such as Beethoven's Symphony no. 5 in C Minor, op. 67.

 5.  Uniquely named single events that consist of a variety of performances should be capitalized but neither italicized nor in quotation marks.

•    The PPAS Roaring `20s Gala and Benefit will be held on April 22, 2013.
•    The HIV/AIDS awareness assembly is an annual event at PPAS.

 Punctuation and Other Formatting Rules

1.   Punctuation almost always goes inside quotation marks, except for colons and semicolons, and except when the quote's punctuation is at odds with the overall sentence punctuation. In the second example below, the question mark would belong outside the quotation mark even without the exclamation point in the original quote.

• The worried valedictorian noted, "No one expected that final exam in gym class."
• Did General MacArthur really say, "Bunk!"? or, Did General MacArthur really say, "Bunk"?

2.   Use contractions sparingly, preferably only when quoting someone.

• We do not yet know where the event will take place.
• "There's no place like PPAS," she said.

3.   Use a hyphen (-) for certain compound words (consult an up-to-date dictionary or style guide), telephone and social security numbers and the like, and phrasal adjectives. Do not put spaces around the hyphen.

• The Chicago Manual of Style hyphenates e-mail. The Associated Press Stylebook does not.
• The PPAS phone number is 212-247-8652.
• He struck an unnerving matter-of-fact tone when describing the most gruesome events.

4.   Use the en dash (–) for ranges of numbers, dates, time, locations, etc. Do not precede the en dash with the words from or between, as the en dash already implies those prepositions. Use "Ctrl -" on your PC keyboard to make the en dash. Do not put spaces around the en dash.

• The meeting will be held on Wednesday, 1:30 p.m.–2:20 p.m., in the library.
• She referred to the period 2000–2004 as her "glory days."
• The New York–Boston shuttle leaves at 6:30 a.m.
• The shuttle that flies from New York to Boston takes about 35 minutes.

5.      Use an em dash (—), sparingly, in lieu of a comma, semicolon, or colon. Use "Ctrl Alt -" on the PC keyboard for an em dash. Do not put spaces around the em dash.

• There is no substitute for practice—especially in the performing arts.

6.   Use only a single space after periods.

7. Commas - so common, so misunderstood. Too much to summarize here, so consult Purdue Owl for guidance.

Quick Reference for Other Common Questions

Off Broadway (and by extension Off Off Broadway): Capitalize and do not hyphenate when Off Broadway is used as a combined term (adjective or noun). As an adverb use lower case: The play was produced off Broadway.

Who, Whom: In formal writing preserve the distinction. Who is a replacement for he, she, or they. Whom replaces her, him, or them. Examples: She was united with her parents, whom she had never met. (She had never met them.) We know who called 911. (He or she or they called 911.)

New York City, New York State: capitalized, or New York (city) and New York (state)

Avenues: Use numerals for numbered avenues, such as 1st Avenue, 2nd Avenue, etc.

Street names: Use numerals for numbered street names such as 48th street, 14th Street, etc.

Decades/Centuries: No apostrophe before the s in '20s, 1990s, etc. Decades may also be spelled out and in lower case as in the twenties, nineties, etc., but decades with titles should be capitalized as in the Roaring Twenties, the Gay Nineties, etc. 

Comprise/compose: The body comprises many systems. Each system comprises many organs. Comprised of is never correct. You can usually substitute composed of for comprises.

Study Habits

I'm conducting a little informal study of students' study habits as they relate to a midterm exam that is coming up in about 3 weeks. The exam is cumulative, spanning all the topics we have covered this year except natural selection.*

My advice to the students is to study a little each day (15 minutes or so), starting now, outside of any class time that I might give them to get prepared. They have packets of notes, old study guides, and most importantly, a set of flashcards that I devised for them.

As part of their daily "do now" assignment, I had them create a study log, so that each day I can now ask them how much time they spent studying the night (or weekend) before and what kind of studying they did - review flashcards, write/organize notes, do homework, etc. I tried to emphasize that the information would not be used for grading purposes, that it will not help them or me to be dishonest, and that honesty would not harm them - except of course that if they don't study they likely will be harmed by not performing well on the test - but that's not about the honesty issue. I further stated, just to be safe, that if keeping the log actually encourages them to study more, then that's a good thing. They don't need to worry that it will mess up my research if they study more now than they normally would have!

Obviously what I will be looking for here is a correlation between study habits and scores on the exam. I will choose questions that are more or less directly modeled on the flashcards, using slightly different diagrams and wordings from old regents exams. This levels the playing field somewhat in terms of what I discussed previously as the "IQ" portion of the regents exam. I will be testing what students have been taught and what they are responsible for studying.

I may get some interesting results. Based on Willingham's idea that the more you know the easier it is to learn more, I suspect a reasonable number of high scores on the exam will show very little study time. Many high performing students pay attention in class, get the concepts from the instruction, and assimilate it rapidly with little need for study time outside of class. I do expect those individual to be outliers and hope that I can show a more general trend where study time correlates to scores. Unfortunately, I also expect to see outliers on the other end of the spectrum, - those students who report a lot of study time and still get low scores. At least that will give me a target audience for some interventions before June comes around.


*I taught natural selection superficially in the beginning of the year and decided to keep it off the midterm - most of the regents questions relating to evolution are embedded with questions about genetics, heredity, or ecology that we haven't covered yet.

Science Test or IQ Test?

I've been going through old regents exams and pulling out images to make flashcards (which I will post when they are finished). I've got about 500 100 images now, but some of them are more or less duplicates that I have to weed out. Going through the multitude of different diagrams and models is getting me a little frustrated about the state of science education and education in general.

One of Willingham's chapters deals with the process of transfer of knowledge. Using knowledge of how Scenario A works can help us figure out how an analogous Scenario B works - if we recognize the two scenarios as analogous, which isn't always so easy. It requires a deep understanding of the underling structures of Scenario A. I'll illustrate the point with the following two images from old regents exams.
This is an energy pyramid.* It shows a producer level (A) followed by primary (B), secondary (C), and tertiary (D) consumers. There are several statements we can make about the pyramid. A might represent plants, which are eaten by B, herbivores, which can be eaten by C, omnivores or carnivores, which can in turn be eaten by D, other carnivores. We can say that D depends on C, which depends on B, which depends on A (which depends on the sun and inorganic substances from the environment, not represented in the diagram). Using basic logic, then, we can say that D and C depend indirectly on A. We could also say that D depends indirectly on the sun and so on.

Finally (for now) we can say that there will always be more energy available at the A level than the B level in a stable ecosystem. More energy at the B level than the C level. More energy at the C level than the D level. The reason for this phenomenon is that organisms do not store all the (food) energy they consume from the level below them. Instead, they use it for their survival needs - staying alive burns energy, so that every step up the pyramid, the energy consumed is lost as heat (when animals use energy, it is transformed into low-grade, useless heat that is lost to the environment).

If your an educated adult reading this and your head is spinning already, imagine what this must do to the the kids. We do spend some time teaching these concepts and using more concrete examples - so we might use grasses at level A, then a grasshopper to represent level B, a frog for level C, and a snake to represent D. Still, for most kids this is a lot of abstraction and they are likely to come away with relatively shallow understanding (they haven't had physics or chemistry and heat is not so easy to grasp), but if they see the energy pyramid on an exam they will at least have some idea what concepts to key into in finding an answer to whatever question might be posed about it.

Now consider the following image used to test understanding of the concept just described in an energy pyramid. What do the squiggly arrows represent? Now, I just set you up for the answer by providing you with the analogous situation, but the kids taking the exam have no such clues. Unless they were directly taught this visual model, they must somehow connect the seaweed as Level A, the small fish as level B, and so on, then remember the point of that pyramid was the loss of energy at each level, so the arrows must represent energy lost to the environment as heat.
That's a lot to expect. I remember grading the exam (June '09) with this question and pulling my hair out at how many kids got it wrong. Some of the kids after the exam told me they thought it was sperm, but sperm wasn't one of the choices! They just weren't able to transfer the knowledge. I have since incorporated this kind of model in my instruction, but really, a lot of the success on the exam depends on kids' basic reasoning skills and not necessarily knowledge of biology. A little knowledge goes a long way if you are capable of abstraction and transfer, not skills that many 9th & 10th graders possess in particular abundance.

Stronger students could have figured out the answer by eliminating the other choices, but slower students are easily overwhelmed by the language and logic necessary to use that strategy effectively. To invoke Willingham's analogy again, imagine if your first driving experience were to involve navigating through midtown Manhattan in fast moving traffic. Although the signs and signals and dangers and other cars are right in front of you, plain to see, you would have a hard time processing it all because so much information is coming at you at once. Some kids look at a regents exam and their eyes glaze over, all the words start to run together and nothing makes sense. Whole pages of easy questions near the end are left blank sometimes, the equivalent of stopping in the middle of the street, getting out of the car, and just walking away.

Ultimately, one of the biggest challenges we face is getting students to a level of deeper understanding so that they can analyze and answer questions about a particular concept that use different visual models or different language than they have been taught directly. This is no small task given the number of concepts we have to cover, the limited time (6 periods per week including lab time), and the deficiencies in both background science knowledge and general high school-level vocabulary & reading skills. There's much work to be done!


*It could also be a pyramid of biomass, which can ultimately be thought of as "energy." but the regents exam almost always presents it as a pyramid of energy.

A Comeback for Lamarckian Evolution?

Technology Review: A Comeback for Lamarckian Evolution?

Apropos the malleability of IQ:

Mice genetically engineered to have memory problems were placed in a stimulus-rich environment, which improved their memory relative to a control group, not surprisingly.

What was rather astounding, however, is that the offspring of these mice, who inherited the genetically engineered memory gene, showed improved memory function even absent the stimulus-rich environment.

The study highlights a growing body of evidence that under certain circumstances, acquired traits can in fact be inherited without changes to the DNA sequence. The exact mechanism of this phenomenon is still not understood.

Wonder if that might explain part of the intergenerational increases in IQ that have been observed around the world?

Via Bioforum, Kim LaCelle

"Progressive" critique of Willingham

Here's an example of what I referred to as the "perfect world" answer to our educational woes - just completely transform the existing system and all our troubles will magically disappear as children educate themselves effortlessly, with nothing more than a little guidance (when asked for) and a properly rich environment in which to pursue their natural curiosity. Don't bother trying to work within the system, it's fatally flawed and should be completely abandoned. What kind of bubble do these guys live in?

Why don't students like school? well-duhhhh...

Chapter 9: What About My Mind?

Why Don't Students Like School? by Daniel T. Willingham (John Wiley & Sons, 2009).

Willingham starts this chapter with some reminders about how thinking works and why thinking is so hard. New material that you want to learn must first be processed in working memory. However, working memory is limited - there are only so many things you can juggle at a once and so too much new information easily overwhelms working memory.

Now think about all the new things a beginning teacher must learn. Every school has its own physical layout that a teacher must become comfortable with, its own set of rules and procedures, and administrative hierarchies. Then there's the classroom itself, procedures and routines for daily activities, managing student behavior, planning lessons, giving students feedback, dealing with disruptions from students, administrators, other teachers, communicating with parents, preparing reports, etc. etc., etc. As you become more and more experienced, these things that once overwhelmed you, at least most of them, become automatic. They no longer require thinking and you can then use the precious resources of your working memory for other, more important things like actually engaging students in a lesson.

The problem, as Willingham describes it, is that most of us approached learning to teach essentially the same way we approached learning to drive. Learning to drive is a difficult process that is analogous to any new experience in that there are so many little things to think about at once and initially they all require conscious thought within the constraints of limited working memory. As you practice driving, many of these activities are learned to a point that they become automatic and no longer require much effort or thought, freeing your mind to do other things like carry on a conversation or listen to talk radio.

Unless you are a professional racer or stunt driver or police officer, however, you probably reached a point in your driving abilities where you felt competent and safe and you have improved little since then. Willingham says it's the same for teaching. We spend the first 5 years or so getting better and better until we have reached a point where we are comfortable enough with how things are going and then our abilities level off. Studies based on gains in student test scores confirm this phenomenon. It is not hard to understand why this is the case. Improvement requires not just experience but practice, which means working on skills and knowledge outside and beyond the day-to-day performance of our normal routines. But as we all know those daily activities already take up an enormous amount of time and energy in themselves, leaving limited time for family, friends, or personal pursuits as it is. You should not be surprised to find, however, that for Willingham there's no getting around this requirement for more work. From a professional perspective, it certainly argues for more training to be incorporated into the school calendar, but again that's a policy area that Willingham does not address directly.

So what does professional development look like in Willingham's model? The essential element for the advancement in any field is expert feedback. Although he acknowledges that there may be many avenues for achieving this feedback, and little hard data to support one approach over another, Willingham does devote a good portion of the chapter to describing one method of working directly with a colleague on a regular basis with a formal and safe set of protocols around mutual observation. I've summarized the process below, but there is more detail in the book if anyone is interested.

Step 1:
Identify a colleague you would feel comfortable working with.

Step 2:
You and your partner each, separately, tape yourselves teaching and view only your own tapes to get used to seeing and hearing yourself on video - it can be a little jarring.

Step 3:
You and your partner together view tapes of OTHER teachers in the classroom (some are available online). This is so you can critique someone else and talk about what would make you uncomfortable if the critique were directed at you - essentially this is a safe place to talk about what kinds of comments would be appropriate/helpful and which would not be helpful or appropriate.

Step 4:
You and your partner take turns viewing, together, tapes of each other. It is important to agree ahead of time on the scope of the discussion and for the observing partner to honor the limits set forth. For example, if the subject wants feedback on his questioning techniques, it would not be appropriate to point out that the kids in the back of the room are off task and disengaged - that discussion should wait for another time.

Step 5:
Identify after each session ONE element of your instruction that you would like to change and focus on changing it. It is important to take this step slowly, and not try to fix everything overnight - you are in this for the long haul, so think in terms of the years that you will spend making improvements.

If all this sounds like too much for now, Willingham offers some immediate, smaller steps you can take, from keeping a diary to starting a discussion group (I think our PD strands can fairly be characterized as study groups) to simply observing teens in their native habitats (like malls) to see how they interact with one another. In the end, however, the crucial element to all of these strategies is a conscious decision to make an effort to improve one's teaching skills by going above and beyond the day-to-day chores of teaching.

Do you teach content or do you teach kids?

This question came up on Twitter recently and I gave a twitterly response (140 character limit) that "I teach kids content" because I don't think the question, as posed, makes a lot of sense. Certainly in light of reading Willingham's book and pretty much agreeing with him on the issue of teaching content vs. critical thinking, the same idea applies here. Without content there's nothing to "teach" the kids. There has to be a "who" (the kids) as well as a "what" (the content). Otherwise your just standing in front of a group of kids doing nothing or standing in an empty room talking to yourself.

Now, maybe I'm missing the point of the question and stating the obvious. But there is a tendency in education circles to make these over-simplified false-choice kinds of dilemmas, and it becomes a marker for group identity, a way of dividing people into camps of progressive vs. traditional, old vs. new, caring vs. cold, etc.* The question has an implied "right" answer - we are supposed to respond that we teach kids, that is our central goal and purpose.

The original poster of the question was not satisfied with my answer and followed up, "but at the core of it, what is your focus?" That led me to wonder just exactly what problem in education the question is designed to address, leaving aside for a moment the logical absurdity of the choice it proposes. I thought of the following scenario: A teacher is obsessed with "covering the curriculum" and keeps a strict pacing calendar, covers every topic deemed essential to the field, in order, on schedule, and refuses to compromise when the kids are left behind, dazed and confused. This is a bit of an exaggeration and while I have known teachers who express some sympathy for a modified version of this approach, I don't know anyone who is serious about teaching and follows it to this extreme. Even here, though, at the heart of this attitude is a feeling that this is what the kids need to know, so it's still about the kids. Misguided, perhaps, but it's not only about the curriculum. People who feel this way aren't indifferent to the kids, they just have a different conception about what's right for them.

Furthermore, the conflict becomes more acute when we talk about covering the curriculum to help kids prepare for the high-stakes assessments they have to take. In (NY State) high schools, if you don't pass them you don't graduate. If you get a higher score you may qualify for a diploma with honors, which looks good on your college transcripts. Then we also have to worry about the kids going to college and being unprepared for the work that is required of them at the next level. So teaching the content to the best of your ability is every bit about what's good for the kids. The challenge is knowing how to help every child progress in the content as much as possible. It's also about, on a practical level, when to stay on a topic the kids don't understand at the risk of not covering some other topics, and when to just move on. Again, this is a question of what's right for the kids given two equally unpleasant choices.

Am I still missing the point?

*The term "child-centered" education comes to mind. What school isn't "child centered" in the non-specialized sense of the phrase? The term is used as a weapon against schools or teachers who have more traditional approaches to the needs of the child.

Reflections

Why Don't Students Like School? by Daniel T. Willingham (John Wiley & Sons, 2009).

I'm taking a little break here to reflect on some of the overarching themes of the book this weekend before jumping into the next and last chapter, devoted to Willingham's prescription for teachers who want to improve their practices.

Up to this point I have found "Why don't student's like school?" to be on the whole quite teacher friendly, as I see it. You will not find simple answers to complex issues (we're not fools). No magic, artificial, "teacher-proof" curriculum that is doomed to wind up in the dustbin of all the other Great Ideas™ that came before it (we're human beings, not machines). No perfect-world methodology that requires a fundamental transformation of the present-day academic structures in our system (we have to teach in today's world, not some fantasy future). Instead, Willingham offers a pragmatic, realistic approach based in the world of education that we inhabit today. I will summarize below his views on the learning process, the relationships between students and teachers, and the approaches to teaching that seem to work, all in light of why I think these are teacher-friendly positions. Since this is a summary, for more detail you can read the previous individual posts about each point (linked).

A common refrain throughout the book is that learning is hard. It takes effort, and in fact it takes effort that most of us are reluctant to put forth unless there is a good reason to do so. One of our most difficult tasks as teachers is to motivate students to put in that effort. Willingham's answer is simple to state: students will invest time and energy in learning material that is challenging but not frustrating. This requires, among other things, teachers who know the material they teach, who know where students will have difficulty with the material, and who can create appropriate lessons that appeal to students' natural curiosity and desire to solve problems.

So wait, how is that "teacher friendly?" To my mind, it acknowledges the centrality and primacy of teaching in education. That might seem ridiculously obvious, but we have seen wave after wave of reform programs that apparently desire nothing more than to make teachers interchangeable (and cheap) parts of a machine driven by curriculum and/or methodological gimmicks. It also puts to rest a notion that learning can be made easy if we just follow the latest fad - students will miraculously and effortlessly master algebra and have fun doing it if we abandon our outdated methods and get with the new program (or the next one, or the next one, or the next one...). In the end, however, Willingham doesn't see any short cuts to the students themselves engaging in hard work, and I think most teachers would agree.

This does not mean that teachers can be complacent or passive or lazy and just throw work at the students and insist that they do it and blame them when they don't (luckily I don't know many teachers who feel that way to begin with). On the contrary, Willingham asserts that the most important factor in how much students learn is what the teacher does to motivate, engage, and challenge them. Neither curriculum, high-stakes testing, nor a particular method can accomplish that.

Again you might wonder how this is a teacher-friendly principle, when it implies that if students aren't learning it is essentially the teacher's fault, but read on and you will find that Willingham does not believe that struggling students can catch up with where they need to be by simply having better teachers. They need more instructional time targeted at filling in the deficiencies in basic knowledge that are holding them back from learning the grade-level curriculum they are struggling with. That means more time with a teacher and it implies more individual attention and smaller classes for those struggling students.* The good news for teachers is that Willingham's overall philosophy is that hard work pays off, and we will learn in Chapter 9 ways that teachers, struggling or otherwise, can make improvements.

Willingham then offers two criteria for being a good teacher that are not unreasonable or unattainable. Both are flexible enough to allow for a good deal of teacher independence (from rigid mandates about how a teacher must behave, organize a lesson, etc.).** The first is that effective teachers must have a personal connection with their students, but there are as many pathways to finding that connection as there are teachers. Willingham maintains, however, that ultimately your students need to "like" you. They need to know you care about them, they need to trust you, they need to feel safe. None of that will matter, however, if you don't also organize your lessons in a logical way that is appropriate to the subject and the students you teach.

And that brings me to the final overarching theme, how to organize effective lessons. Willingham offers only general principles here, and I'll discuss below why he is vague on the details. The first is the idea of organizing lessons around stories. The human brain seems to have a special affinity for stories. Furthermore, an incredible amount of time in a student's relatively short lifetime has already been spent watching, reading, and listening to stories. The basic structure of a story is therefore already hardwired in the brain and provides a familiar schema or framework to help students make sense of unfamiliar concepts. Stories provide a model for making predictions, inferring causality, and so forth, all of which engage the student in actively thinking about the content embedded within it. You do not have to teach every lesson as a self-contained story, but you should be aware of the story components (character, causality, conflict, complications) and try to incorporate as many as you can into your lessons.

Willingham also cautions against worrying about the "learning styles" of students as there is no evidence that catering to individual styles will result in increased learning. Instead, you should base a particular teaching strategy on the nature of the concept or content objective itself. This makes intuitive sense and simplifies the matter greatly: If you want students to learn what something looks like, use a visual approach. If they need to learn how things sound, then auditory lessons would be called for. If a particular strategy benefits some, it probably benefits all, regardless of their 'learning style."

More importantly, Willingham sees a great need to change student attitudes toward learning. A major stumbling block for many students is a misconception that success comes from "being smart," or "talented," characteristics you are supposedly born with, rather than from working hard, a habit that you can cultivate. A great deal of our efforts should be directed at convincing students that hard work will pay off, and Willingham thinks we can effect this change on a local level through the way we interact with students and praise them for their efforts. This is a relatively easy change in our behavior to make, although the impact on student achievement may of course take longer to notice.

Finally, what all these things have in common is the demand for expert teaching and a willingness to let teachers teach. Willingham seems to be vague on details and reluctant to prescribe any particular approach or method precisely because he understands that teaching is not some mechanical process that can be codified, packaged, and universalized. He emphasizes the social nature of teaching and the importance of the interactions between a human teacher and human students. He places teaching squarely in the center of the education enterprise where it belongs.

Most of the book until now has addressed how learning takes place and the classroom implications of that process. In Chapter 9 Willingham looks at the teacher as learner and what we can to do to become experts in our field.


Next: Chapter 9: What about my mind?

*Wilingham doesn't much address the nitty-gritty policy or political issues in education, such as class size or standardized testing per se. Nonetheless, I think there are some obvious policy implications.

**I think we are fortunate to work with an administration that seems to have an intuitive sense of this principle.