Rocking Back and Forth

For the past few weeks I have been a little obsessed with quotations.  First, I started noticing what people put in their signature lines in their emails.  Then Della showed me some of the door posters that people are putting together, and I started reading quotations you have chosen to include.  Finally, this past week, somebody quoted a line from Jack Handy’s “Deep Thoughts,” which aired on the old Saturday Night Live episodes.

The long and short is that below is compilation of some of my favorite thoughts, quotes, and truisms that I have collected recently.  They may inspire you.  They may make you laugh. My hope is you find all of them enjoyable in some way.

• “When you’re riding in a time machine way far into the future, don’t stick your elbow out the window, or it’ll turn into a fossil.”  --Jack Handy

• “Just when the caterpillar thought the world was over, it became a butterfly.”  --Thomas Alva Edison 

• “A day without sunshine is like, you know, night.”  --Steve Martin 

• “If a student can Google the answers to the questions we ask, we are asking the wrong questions.”  --Anonymous

• “The function of education is to teach one to think intensively and to think critically.  Intelligence plus character, that is the goal of true education.”  --Martin Luther King, Jr.

•  “I went to a restaurant that serves breakfast at any time.  So I ordered French Toast during the Renaissance.”  --Steven Wright

•  “A child is so much more than a test score.”  --Bumper Sticker

• “Change your thoughts and you change your world.”  --Norman Vincent Peale

• “Be kind whenever possible.  It is always possible.”  --Dalai Lama

• “You are never too old to set another goal or to dream a new dream.”  --C. S. Lewis

•  “Always forgive your enemies—nothing annoys them so much.”  --Oscar Wilde

•  “It’s easy to sit there and say you’d like to have more money.  And I guess that’s what I like about it.  It’s easy.  Just sitting there, rocking back and forth, wanting that money.”  --Jack Handy

I hope you enjoyed the long weekend, and I hope that whether you are in the need of motivation, consolation, or humor one of the quotes touched you in some way. 

Have a great week, HSE.  Pay attention to the words by which we are surrounded.  Perhaps you can add to this list or make up new words of wisdom to pass down to future lovers of words.  And perhaps one day, someone will just sit there, rocking back and forth, being touched by your wisdom….

Phil

Kudos this week to our department chairs.  Theirs is no easy task.  They teach, they push, they support, and they keep us moving forward.  We are lucky to have this gifted group providing leadership to our school.

A Feedback Quiz

The Challenge:

Take this one-question quiz on giving academic feedback to your students.  (See if you do better than I did.)

Which approach to giving feedback to students has the greatest impact on learning?

1. Giving students a score;
2. Giving students constructive feedback – specific comments on errors, suggestions on how to improve, and at least one positive remark;
3. Giving students constructive feedback and a score.

Background: Not All Students Learn at the Same Pace

Earlier this year I wrote about Dylan Wiliam (the guy with two first names) and used his statement, “Students don’t learn what we teach them.”  This describes a phenomenon you almost certainly have experienced.  You check for understanding and realize that students are all over the place with their learning of key concepts or skills.  Some get it; some don’t.  Others are everywhere in between.

I also told you that in Embedded Formative Assessment, Wiliam gives specific information on what increases the probability of students learning what we teach.  You can probably guess from the title of the book that he is a huge proponent of formative assessments, which give low-stakes feedback to both the teacher and the students and allow both to make adjustments in the learning process.  William says if we believe that students learn in different ways and in different timeframes, formative assessments are not just good instruction, they are essential.

And the Answer Is….

The answer to the quiz may surprise you.  According to the research, Wiliam says that students in the second group learned twice as fast as students in the first. That may not be surprising, but keep reading! The students in the third group (comments and a score) made little progress.  I had to double-check to make sure I was reading correctly.   In fact, giving students a score and feedback was less effective than a score alone, and not nearly as effective as feedback alone.

The reason according to Wiliam: Those with the highest scores felt no need to read the comments and those with the lowest scores didn't want to read the comments. The score was all they remembered.

If you want a research-based argument in favor of formative assessments, this is it.  Formative assessments allow students to make mistakes and learn from their mistakes.  They allow teachers to adjust instruction, and they increase student learning when they include:  

• Specific comments on errors,
• Suggestions to improve, and
• At least one positive remark.

If you don’t believe it, I encourage you to try it for yourself.  Experiment with feedback using the three steps bulleted above and hold the score until students have worked through the comments and suggestions.     

I would love to hear your feedback on this experiment.  I promise to give you a positive comment, and I promise not to give you a score.

Have a great week.

Phil

Kudos this week to all of you who rolled with the punches.  PLAN and PSAT causes weird schedule issues.  If you said, “It is what it is” and kept on keeping on, this one is for you!  Thanks for staying positive and supportive of school-wide initiatives.

Work with Laughter

I was sitting in the athletic office with two wise men—or perhaps two wise guys—who asked me how I deal with stress.  I didn’t have good answers right off the top of my head, but I’ve been kicking around some ideas and have come to the conclusion that humor, and more specifically, laughter, may be one of the most important components for me. 

Out of curiosity, I did a little research and found that laughter is indeed the best medicine:

• Laughter relaxes the whole body.  A good, hearty laugh relieves physical tension and stress, leaving your muscles relaxed for up to 45 minutes after.
• Laughter boosts the immune system.  Laughter decreases stress hormones and increases immune cells and infection-fighting antibodies, thus improving your resistance to disease.
• Laughter triggers the release of endorphins, the body’s natural feel-good chemicals. Endorphins promote an overall sense of well-being and can even temporarily relieve pain.
• Laughter protects the heart. Laughter improves the function of blood vessels and increases blood flow, which can help protect you against a heart attack and other cardiovascular problems.

Inoculate Yourself

We are told that laughter is the best medicine, and that laughter is contagious.  If both statements are true, then ironically laughter is both the medicine and the disease.  Fortunately, we can find ways to get a dose of this medicine by exposing ourselves to it. Click on the link and take a few minutes to watch a short video clip.  Judge for yourself how contagious laughter can be:

Laughter Chain

What Matters in the End

We do live in stressful times and work in a stressful profession.  We feel the urgency of being at the top of our game daily because we impact the lives of our students each and every day.  My hope for you this week is that whether it is inside or outside the halls of HSHS, you find times to laugh.

Kris Kristofferson, the singer, actor, and Rhodes Scholar, made this musical argument: “Tell the truth.  Sing with passion.  Work with laughter.  Love with heart.  ‘Cause that’s all that matters in the end.”  

Have a great week, Southeastern.  May it be filled with laughter.

Phil

Kudos this week to the HSE21 Professional Development Committee.  Thanks for your thoughtfulness and hard work that made last week’s release time successful and meaningful.

A few more thoughts on laughter:

• “Against the assault of laughter nothing can stand.”  --Mark Twain
• “Laughter is not a bad beginning for a friendship, and it is far the best ending for one.”  --Oscar Wilde
• “Laughter and tears are both responses to frustration and exhaustion.  I myself prefer to laugh, since there is less cleaning up to do afterward.” --Kurt Vonnegut
• “From the moment I picked up your book until I laid it down, I was convulsed with laughter.  Someday I intend to read it.”  --Groucho Marx
• “Laughter gives us distance.  It allows us to step back from an event, deal with it, and then move on.”  --Bob Newhart
• “Laughter is the best medicine—unless you’re a diabetic, then insulin comes pretty high on the list.”  --Jasper Carrott
• “Laughter is the closest thing to the grace of God.”  --Karl Barth

One more, just for fun… 

This is the sign that was awaiting our Spell Bowl team last week as the bus pulled up to one of our neighboring schools.  The irony was not lost on our students!

Desirable Difficulties

“It takes a great meeting to beat no meeting at all.” –Steve Barone

Spoiler alert: This memo is not about meetings.  It’s about homework.

Annie Murphy Paul, writing for Time Magazine, states that the arguments about homework are often about “too much” or “too little.”  This misses the point, says Paul.  Instead we should be asking this question: How effectively do after-school assignments advance learning?

Paul suggests many current homework assignments don’t “make the grade,” but this doesn’t mean we need to get rid of homework.  Instead, we should use what we know about the human brain to craft homework assignments that actually impact and improve student learning.

Three of her suggestions:

• Spaced Repetition: We tend to give homework based on what happened that day in class or on the unit we are currently in.  Consider an alternative.  Instead, assign homework that returns to key skills or concepts from earlier in the unit or even the semester.  Researchers from the University of California San Diego say this method works because of the way our brains work.  When we first acquire memories, they are “volatile, subject to change, or likely to disappear.”  The learning is fixed permanently in our minds when we are re-exposed to the content over time.  The research shows impressive results, nearly double the retention rate using the spaced approach as opposed to studying material in one consolidated unit.  As a bonus, consider how this practice could have a positive impact on your Student Learning Objective.
• Retrieval Practice: This brain-based approach involves testing, but a different kind of test.  These are short, specific assessments that require students to “retrieve” information.  Our minds are not storage tanks that we dig into to retrieve information.  Rather, our brains build paths that we navigate to pull up information.  The more often we pull up a memory, the stronger the path becomes.  Design homework that requires students to retrieve material from memory.  Research from Purdue University indicates that science students retained 50% more material using the retrieval practice strategy.
• Interleaving to Create Cognitive Disfluency: (I like this phrase so much, I had to use it even though I had no idea what it meant before doing more reading!)  One interesting paradox is that if learning is easy, it is not as likely to stay with us.  The extra effort needed to learn something triggers our brains to remember the knowledge.  Psychologists call this phenomenon “Cognitive Disfluency.”  Researchers say we need to include “desirable difficulties” to make the work challenging and even interesting.  One easy way to do this is to use “Interleaving,” which simply means “mix-it-up.”  Create homework that mixes up situations, problems, or tasks, rather than grouping all similar types.  Brains have to work harder to come up with solutions.  Shorter assignments using interleaving and cognitive disfluency can be more effective for learning than longer, single topic assignments.

I started with a maxim from Steve Barone, a man I admire a great deal.  His truism about meetings may be useful in thinking about homework: It takes a great homework assignment to beat no homework at all.

That certainly sets a high bar, but it is one worth considering.  I encourage you to experiment with Paul’s suggestions.  Start by examining the homework you give this week.  Time and effort are valuable commodities—for us and for our students.  We should hold high expectations for student performance on our assignments, and we should hold equally high expectations for ourselves when it comes to designing the tasks we ask them to complete.

I hope your week is a good one, one that is filled cognitive disfluency.   Teaching is no easy task.  It is filled with “desirable difficulties” but also with the rich rewards of student growth and learning.

Phil

Kudos this week to all of our Best Buddy students.  I find the relationships built with this program profoundly moving.  Lives are forever changed for the better because of the interactions between the students, and we are a better and kinder school because of the Best Buddies.

If you are not familiar with Best Buddies, check this link to senior Emilie Turner’s YouTube video from last year about Best Buddies.  I guarantee it is worth five minutes of your time.  Click here to see the video: HSE Best Buddies

By the way, I hear a new Best Buddy video will come out later this year.  (Maybe it is part of an ongoing homework assignment!)