Teach like Adele

Following a post on how entertaining/engaging lessons are antithetical to sustainable learning with the idea that I want teachers to employ an entertainer's approach to singing may seem inconsistent. I hope you will bear with me, though, because I believe two performances from last night's Grammy Awards actually illustrate the point. As I watched Katy Perry and Adele sing, I was taken by the different approaches taken by each.

Now, I am willing to concede that what I am about to write may be based on generational preferences (I turn 50 this year). While I found Katy Perry's performance entertaining, it distracted from the song. I ended up focusing on surface features - the stagecraft. Adele, on the other hand, seemed focused on the song. There were no distractions. I knew what her performance was about. It felt authentic. And her power and passion affected me.

This is what teaching ought to embrace - focus on the song, not on the performance.

Updated February 18, 2012

I woke up this morning to this piece on NPR's On The Media examining Adele's song Someone Like You. The piece made two things abundantly clear. First, I am not alone in finding Adele's songs moving. Second, I do not know enough about musical performances to make statements like I did above.

It turns out that there is a science to musical performance and Dr. Daniel Levitin is doing the research. He has found that listeners want novelty, just not too much of it. He says, "If the music was completely surprising we would be disorientated. On the other extreme, if the music was completely predictable we'd grow bored with it and it would seem banal. And what the composer has do is find that balance and get it just right - the Goldilocks' Zone." This is accomplished both through writing the music and singing the music. An example of the latter is creating tension by singing slightly out of key but sliding to the correct note (appoggiatura).

Dr. Levitin explains how Adele does all of these things in her Grammy Award winning song. She starts with something simple and familiar. This is followed by several surprises: (1) a tempo change corresponding to the message of the lyrics; (2) an octave change (perhaps representing a change in perspective?); (3) using appoggiatura to suggest instability; and (4) a lower register meant to convey the emotion creeping to the surface. And host, Brooke Gladstone wraps it up saying, "It isn't just about the song. It's also about the performance."

Busted! Like many people who think they can distill teaching into a few "best-practices," I thought I could take two musical performances and identify what works and what doesn't. My efforts failed to take into account all that goes on in the writing of the song and the planning of the performance - even when it seems to be so simple. I hope I learned my lesson, but probably not. I am a sucker for a good teaching simile.

What have you got against engaging lessons?

I would like you to please take a moment and think about the last time you were engaged in learning. It might have been in a math class or listening to a TED Talk or reading a book. Whatever it was you were doing at the time, take a step back and create a mental picture of what this engagement looked like. We will be revisiting this image later, so please keep it in mind.

Engagement is central to learning. In his research on language acquisition, Dr. Brian Cambourne found it to be one of the conditions necessary for learning to occur. In fact, he saw engagement as the fundamental condition on which all the others are related. That is why it is at the base of his plan for teaching and learning that is shown below.

Teachers recognize the centrality of engagement and often talk about the need for writing engaging lessons. Recently, I have become uncomfortable with this view of engagement. I am afraid that we are confusing engagement with entertainment, and that we are disempowering and distracting students as a result. 

This commentary comes from one of the U.S. science lessons (US4 Rocks) from the TIMSS videos. It highlights what is happening in a lot of classrooms:

Motivating activities were defined as those activities likely to capture many students' interest and included jokes and humor, games, puzzles, role plays, artistic projects, dramatic events, physical activity, prizes or other rewards, anecdotal stories, or outdoor excursions. Motivating activities accounted for 23% of the U.S. lesson time (Video Report, figure 10.6). They occurred in 63% of the U.S. lessons, which was more frequent than in all the other countries except for Australia (Video Report, figure 10.5).

I have a couple concerns about teachers' efforts to create all of these engaging/motivating lessons.

First, are we creating expectations for students that if a lesson does not engage them it is the teacher's fault? I sit on a lot of airplanes and I am always amazed at how many people are unengaged when the crew goes over the safety information. This is potentially a matter of life and death, and they still have a hard time getting passengers to pay attention. It may be my pessimistic nature or my interest in engagement, but I try to take in everything they say. I worry about my fellow passengers, but not as much as I worry about the students who may not have a teacher capable of designing the engaging lessons the students have come to expect. Cambourne calls students who have lost the ability to take responsibility for their learning "disempowered" and I would agree.

Did this picture draw your interest and distract you from the message?

I am also concerned that students are confusing entertainment with engagement. On one regional flight, I remember the crew ad libbed certain points of the safety talk. "In the event of a water landing the personal flotation device is your's to keep as our gift." I still remember the joke. I do not have a clue where that device was located, however (this was before I began engaging with the talk). In this case, they got my attention but distracted me from the important information. How often are students missing the point of the lesson when we try to gain their interest in extraneous ways?

Consequently, I see the development of engaging (i.e. entertaining) lessons as a possible impediment to sustainable learning. Engaging lessons make it more difficult for students to identify what engagement actually looks like. They come to view it as some external factor rather than a personal choice. Why is this a problem? Students who know what engagement looks like can self regulate their own learning; they can find ways to engage when important information is being shared in uninteresting ways. Students who cannot envision themselves engaging in "boring" material have ceded control of their learning to others.

Which brings me back to my original request. Please retrieve your image of engagement from the beginning of this post. Was it really engagement or merely entertainment? And if it was engagement, what did it look like? In the next post, I will share some ways other learners view engagement.

Updated (4/28/14): I saw this example of an entertaining flight attendant on Facebook. How much of the important information would these passengers remember in an emergency?

How am I doing? 2012

It is that time again - annual review. The time of year when I am asked by my employer to demonstrate how I have met the College's expectations regarding teaching, scholarship, and service. This includes providing an up-to-date vita and the past year's faculty activity report. The Department of Mathematics also asks for a self-evaluation that focuses on teaching. As I did last year, I decided that I ought to share this evaluation in order to make my efforts visible to all.

***

Technology, especially as it relates to social media, has been the focus of my teaching journey this past year. Social media provides me with the opportunity to connect with my students and colleagues in ways that were previously unimaginable to me. It has also introduced me to educational technology that has enhanced my instruction. This self-evaluation will highlight my efforts but it also includes hyperlinks if you wish more details.

At the end of last year I joined Twitter. My main reason for joining this micro-blogging site was the success I saw Dr. John Golden have with it during teacher assisting in the fall 2010 semester. It allows me to maintain contact with the teacher assistants by providing a window into their thinking and their classroom experiences. As I explored Twitter, however, I found that it had many more educational benefits.

Twitter is a platform that allows teachers from around the world to connect and share ideas. I have encouraged our students to use these educators as resources and mentors. Several teacher assistants and student teachers have sought advice from and used lessons shared by Twitter teachers. Even I have been exposed to new technologies as a result. In modeling iPad use for the Woodrow Wilson Teaching Fellows, I have incorporated several applications that I learned about on Twitter. You can read how I used the iPad here.

Chats are another aspect of Twitter that I have benefited from and incorporated into my lessons. These chats allow participants to share ideas with one another around a particular topic. I have used them for class discussions on instruction, classroom management, and assessment. The benefits of these Twitter chats is that everyone is given the opportunity to speak and it is possible to archive the chat for assessment or further discussion. An example of one of these chats is here. These class chats have been so successful, I have also started hosting chats in sessions at conferences. Here is an example.

Some students remain hesitant to use Twitter to its fullest as a professional tool. This is a challenge I want to address this year. I do not want to force compliance. I want to model Twitter's benefits. As a part of the student teaching pilot program that I am helping to develop, I intend to include a survey that will ask about Twitter and ways to improve its implementation.

I also began the year by creating a blog. This has been an opportunity to make available to students the resources, examples, and concepts that are addressed in class. The posts have become a kind of anchor chart that students can review long after the lesson. I have also used it to reinforce and extend topics presented in class.

In addition, my blog has supported my scholarly and service activities. The information shared on the blog contributed to my being asked to be a keynote speaker at the Mathematical Council of the Alberta Teachers' Association annual conference. A "transcript" of my talk is provided here. The entries on the Teaching-Learning Cycle have provided a framework for a book that has generated some interest from a publisher. I am considering making the writing of this text a part of a sabbatical proposal. Finally, several teachers have commented on how the lessons I have shared have been of service to them as they teach. Providing an open source resource to inservice and preservice teachers around the world is important to me.

I continue to do teaching, scholarship, and service in the typical ways. My efforts are enumerated on my vita and faculty activity report. While these are important, I am passionate about the opportunities technology has for addressing these areas in the future. I have only just begun. There is a lot left for me to learn.

When do we stop chewing their food?

The birds have found the feeder. We moved it and a suet holder closer to the house this winter since the trees that used to shelter them were cut down over the summer. I was afraid that their proximity to the house might frighten the birds, but it has not been a problem. In fact, it has made it easier to watch the birds as they feed.

During the spring and summer, I watched as the adult birds fed the babies. The adults would grab food from the feeder and place it in the mouths of the babies waiting on nearby branches. I do not anticipate seeing much of this behavior over the winter. I could be wrong, but I think the birds that visit our feeder and suet cakes have outgrown the need to be beak-fed.

When does this happen in education? In other words: when do we quit feeding learners information and expect them to fend for themselves? This came up this past week as I talked with university colleagues about student evaluations. We have all had comments that our students want more lecture because that is how they "learn" best. I make up that these comments are from students who have come to expect that the teacher's role is to gather and chew up educational information for students to consume. Is that too harsh?

For the sake of completing this post, let us assume that this learned helplessness is indeed the problem. What can we do about it? This is where I try to apply the Teaching-Learning Cycle and the Gradual Release of Responsibility. The Teaching-Learning Cycle provides a framework where I can identify the information and the processes learners need to make it on their own, monitor learners' progress toward these goals, and plan and implement appropriate supports. The Gradual Release of Responsibility represents an instructional approach which helps learners to "fend for themselves" through a series of lessons that begin with demonstrations, move to collaboration, and eventually result in independent practice.

I am fortunate that my colleague, who teaches the prerequisite course for the one I am teaching now, uses these frameworks in his practice. Even after only a few days I have seen a difference in my learners. Not everyone of these learners had John's section, but those who did are able to share with the rest what is expected of them in and out of class. I get the feeling that there will be a lot less gathering and chewing on my part this semester. And for that, I am grateful.

What is your dream?

Today, Grand Valley held a Silent March to commemorate Martin Luther King, Jr, whose birthdate was January 15, 1929. Along the way, placards lay out a timeline of the civil rights leader's life and some of his quotes. I find Dr. King's messages inspiring, and I believe that they are timeless. So I was grateful when Valerie Strauss shared several excerpts from his speeches and writings related to education in her column, "MLK's prescient thinking on education reform."


I especially connected with his piece for the Morehouse College student newspaper. In this writing, Dr. King discusses the purposes of education. Part way through the piece, he writes:

Education must also train one for quick, resolute and effective thinking. To think incisively and to think for one's self is very difficult. We are prone to let our mental life become invaded by legions of half truths, prejudices, and propaganda. At this point, I often wonder whether or not education is fulfilling its purpose. A great majority of the so-called educated people do not think logically and scientifically. Even the press, the classroom, the platform, and the pulpit in many instances do not give us objective and unbiased truths. To save man from the morass of propaganda, in my opinion, is one of the chief aims of education. Education must enable one to sift and weigh evidence, to discern the true from the false, the real from the unreal, and the facts from the fiction.

The function of education, therefore, is to teach one to think intensively and to think critically. But education which stops with efficiency may prove the greatest menace to society. The most dangerous criminal may be the man gifted with reason, but with no morals.

Reading this, I immediately thought of phronesis - the idea of knowing what's available to do and what's worth doing. Of course, what is worth doing to one person may seem foolhardy to another. And another person might consider the "doing" just plain wrong. In the article, Dr. King writes about former Georgia governor, Eugene Talmadge. Dr. King considers Governor Talmadge intelligent but wonders, "yet he contends that I am an inferior being. Are those the types of men we call educated?"


How can education help us address such unintelligent presepectives? We must provide experiences that challenge unfounded beliefs. We must provide opportunities to reflect on those experiences. And then we must start over again because beliefs can be a difficult thing to change. But change they must, or it will be Dr. King's closing words in the article that will turn out to be most prescient:

If we are not careful, our colleges will produce a group of close-minded, unscientific, illogical propagandists, consumed with immoral acts. Be careful, "brethren!" Be careful, teachers!

Who controls the volume?

For that special date 11-11-11, NPR's All Songs Considered did a podcast based on the this clip from This is Spinal Tap:

No surprise - my thoughts went to education. I wondered about the ways I try to turn my teaching volume up to eleven. There are certainly times in my classroom where I want to REALLY impress upon my learners the importance of what we are exploring. While this might result in literally turning up the volume, it is more likely to manifest itself in elaborate planning and over-the-top presentation. It might get the learners' attention, and maybe even their interest, but this line of thinking seems too self-centered to be sustainable.

The podcast was really about the songs that listeners want to turn up to eleven, though. This was evident in the following exchange:

Bob Bollen: "I think most people, when they think of 'cranking up', they think of pop music. They think of turning up the radio that they’re listening to when that song comes on." 

Jacob Ganz: "Yeah, that’s the instinct. You’re listening to the radio and something comes on and you either reach to change the channel or you reach to crank it."

BB: "It was the original 'like' button. Only there was no feedback. If the station could have gotten that information that you turned the dial up …"

In my way of thinking, the listener represents the learners in my classroom. While I certainly have wished that I could receive immediate feedback on how engaged learners were in the lesson, when it is put this way I am uneasy. It too closely resembles a consumer approach to education - find out what they want and then give them more of it. This seems representative of some of the student-centered approaches that I find unsustainable.

Instead, I would like to have learners be more reflective about what they like or don't like about a lesson. Here is where the analogy breaks down because listeners do not need to connect with every song, but I want learners to be prepared to engage with every lesson. This is a metacognitive act that will allow them to participate more fully in boring lessons that they might otherwise tune out.

I still want to develop lessons that showcase my enthusiasm for the topics being addressed. Enthusiasm can be contagious. As the course goes on, however, I need to be ready to gradually release responsibility to the learners. They must find ways to connect to the learning regardless of their level of interest. After all, learners ultimately control the volume of what they want to hear. I just want to help them to make critical and sustainable choices.

Whose problem is it?

"Education systems, teachers, school districts all over the world are going crazy about problem-based learning - nothing like a good problem to solve. But they are looking at the wrong bit of it. The thing we're neglecting is to find a generation of problem finders."

The above quote comes early in Ewan McIntosh's talk at TEDxLondon. This really connects with my goal to foster sustainable learning. Here is the entire talk (it is well worth the eight minutes):

I want learners to come up with their own problems - to be able to answer, "Now what?" for themselves. Most times when I try to implement a problem finding curriculum, however, two issues interfere: trust and control. You see, I know what they need to know because I know what I learned and how it has helped me. How can I be sure learners will follow the correct path, find the right problems, if I do not lead them either explicitly or implicitly?

Here is a good example. Over the winter holiday break, I went on a hike through a state managed forest. Along the trail were a variety of signs describing interesting facts about the trees and forest management. The sign below was of particular interest to me.

I thought it had a lot of potential for use in a course on teaching and learning middle school mathematics that I am scheduled to lead this semester. It would provide a great context for the geometry section as I asked my learners to make Biltmore and Merritt Rule Sticks using the information provided. The problem was perfect, but as Ewan points out, it was also mine.

Given my interest in sustainable learning, I would be better off owning the problem myself and using it as a demonstration. It would offer an opportunity for thinking aloud about identifying problems in contexts that interest me - the first step in the gradual release of responsibility. Then, with my support, the learners could begin to find their own problems in whatever math content we must address. By the end of the course, hopefully, the learners could find problems for themselves.

With awareness and effort, I have gotten better at letting my learners lead the way. Every success allows me to trust them a little bit more and give up trying to control the curriculum. Maybe 2012 will be the year I learn to really let go.