Signs of life in the Skinner box

I’ve long felt that grades are an outdated mode of determining educational performance. As seems universally supported across the readings this week, grades don’t measure what is learned by the student, only what they were tested on. Grades also encourage limited learning as the motivation becomes focused on passing the test and not learning to learn.

The students have become conditioned, similar to that of mice in B.F. Skinner’s experiments, do exactly what you are told with no variation and you will be rewarded with the grades you want. Deviate from what you are told and your reward will be altered. The conditioning begins early in elementary school and continues with the introduction of honors and AP coursework. Learn exactly what you’re told better than most of everyone else and you will get to move ahead to the next level of rewards, completed course credits in college.

The problem is that for us as academics, like Kohn and others have pointed out, this approach leads to classrooms full of perfectly conditioned college students, seeking their reward and the instructions on how to claim it. But the conditioning is so strong that if for some reason the earned reward is not at the same level as was expected for their work we are faced with emails, upset students, upset administrators and poor teaching evaluations.

This situation is so pervasive and the conditioning so strong that it makes alternative evaluation approaches challenging. Students don’t respond well to abstract criteria they cant necessarily study for. In my grading approaches I prefer written essay statements from the students, formulated from response to various prompts, demonstrating their mastery and understanding of the concepts. I describe the approach to the students in advance as looking for “signs of life” from them, that there is more going on than a parroting back of definitions and theories.

Ultimately, my quest to find their “signs of life” has to be equated back into a numerical grade as the students can’t exist without a grade. But as soon as the grades go out, those unhappy with my assessment will inevitably email me to argue for points back…

Sorry but I can’t memorize

I have always been very bad at memorizing things, especially equations. However, most of the classes during my undergraduate degree required me to memorize numbers and lots of equations. I still remember the day, when I went home feeling completely devastated after doing terribly bad in my Hydraulics exam. I wasn’t sad because I didn’t know how to solve the problems, in fact I knew the solution to each and every problem very well. However, I couldn’t remember any of the equations associated with solving those problems and hence, I couldn’t write the final answer in numbers. I knew I wasn’t going to get good grades although I wrote the step by step procedure to solve the problems because the examiners only cared about the final answer. Finally, the results came and I got a very poor score which was expected.

This is probably the story for many people like me who have a hard time memorizing equations and thus have failed to get good grades in exams. Our education systems are built in such a way where students are graded and ranked based on their ability to “memorize” things. An example of this is the multiple-choice exams where the students are solely graded based on the number of correct answer choices in the Scranton sheets. This in no way appreciates any of the efforts that the students put on trying to solve the problem. Even if you did everything correctly but messed up while pressing some numbers on the calculator in the final step, you will probably be put in the same category as someone who had absolutely no clue about how to solve the problem.

https://heartoftheclassroom.files.wordpress.com/2014/11/mind-full-or-mindful.png

I think there are issues with both the examining and the grading system which in many ways forces students to “rote learn” and the distinction between a good and a mediocre student is made based on their grades. There has to be definitely a better methodology for teaching and grading where mindful learning is encouraged and the efforts of the students in solving the problem is appreciated.

 

The “basics” have saved my life, more than once.

The “basics” are a critical foundation to learning any new subject.  They’ve saved my life on more than one occasion.

For four years of my life, I professionally taught people how to fly airplanes.

L-29 Delfin
The L-29 Delfin was the Soviet jet-trainer of choice during the early Cold War period.

It’s something I’m surprisingly good at.  The regional FAA examiner used to refer to me as “Ace”*, not because of my flying skills, but rather, because of the quality students I sent to him for evaluation.  During those four years, not a single one of my students failed: a nearly unheard of statistic.

* [Simply “Brandon” would have been more to my liking, but it’s not something you get to choose in that line of work.]

While immensely proud of the hard work my students put in to achive that pass-rate, it’s not what I’m most proud of during that period of my life. The high point of me is that two students (and myself) are still alive today because my instructors took the time and care that was needed to ensure I had the best understanding and practice of the “basics” when I was learning how to fly. I’m proud of them — my mentors. I’m a difficult student. It took a lot to put up with me.

Without that I most assuredly would not be around today to write this post.

Some background: Pilots, as a matter of their basic flight worthiness, train for emergencies. One such emergency that is often practiced is the event of an in-flight engine failure. The public is most likely familiar with this idea from the wet landing of US Airways Flight 1549:

(C) NY Daily News / Maria Bailey
(C) NY Daily News / Maria Bailey

One of the most deadly times an in-flight engine failure can occur is immediately after take off when no suitable locations for ditching the airplane (like the middle of the Hudson River) exist directly ahead of the plane.  In this scenario,  the pilot has only one option: attempt a u-turn back towards the airport.

This is such a difficult maneuver that it has earned the nickname “the impossible turn” in piloting circles.  Statistics show that somewhere between 80% and 90% of aircraft that are forced into this maneuver of last resort crash — typically with fatal results for everyone aboard.

Here is a video of a successful attempt:

While acting as a flight instructor, this happened to me twice.

I should stress though that this is an extremely rare event. It occurs in a statistical sense to general aviation type aircraft (“small planes”) once every 50,000 hours of flight.  In both cases the engine failure was a result of easily avoidable, poor maintenance practices — but that’s a story for another time.

On to the basics…. To execute this turn, the pilot must possess a  solid foundational knowledge of the aerodynamics involved and an even better “feel” for the aircraft — after all, this is a kinesthetic exercise. It’s a high standard to begin with, but as an added complication, the pilot must be able to recall these things in a split second and act on them under the stress of an incipient fatal crash.

Not only does the positioning, speed, and orientation of the aircraft in its takeoff configuration give a window of only a few seconds to react successfully to an engine failure at this point, but the execution of the maneuver must be near-perfect. For this to work, the pilot has to push the aircraft to the very edge of its operational envelope and hold it there. Any deviation will  result in one of two things happening:

  • The plane will stall and crash, or
  • The plane will run out of altitude (energy) before making it back to the airport (and crash)

For me, I only was able to perform at this this level thanks to practicing the fundamental skill set that makes up pilotage… the boring stuff… the “rote” movements of flying an airplane… the basics… over and over and over again. And doing so while in the presence of an experienced instructor that cared enough to provide an honest critique of my performance (over and over and over again).  It was frustrating and (at the time) it didn’t seem to have much of a purpose, but looking back on it, I’m grateful my instructors had the wisdom to hold me to a higher standard than most do. I would imagine my two students are grateful as well.

Some activities in life require training to a standard of “right and wrong”. Getting too creative, too early can be dangerous.  That’s not to say we can’t develop or grow past this point with experience, wisdom, and creativity, but as instructors, it’s our duty to know where and when this is advisable for a student.

 

 

Mindless vs Mindful Learning – My experience in Australia

 

My academic/professional training has been shaped by different elements that helped me understand how the environment where you learn enhance either mindless or mindful learning. In this post, I elaborate on the different aspects that lead to one or the other, and the reflections I’ve got from experiencing for two years the Australian Academic system.

Prior to Virginia Tech, I got a bachelor in architecture from USFQ university in Quito, Ecuador; and studied a year abroad in Juniata College, PA. In both liberal arts universities, I experienced two types of classes: the very “technical” ones, and the “social/abstract” ones. The technical ones (such as structures, calculus and statistics) were the type of classes where you would sit in auditorium with 40 other students to learn from a lecture with very limited participation/interaction. The social/abstract ones (design studio, sustainable development, NGO managements) were the ones with all the interesting discussions and a lot of participation. These experiences, led me to the construct that it is difficult to overcome mindless learning in those very technical subjects, and that social/abstract subjects are the ones that usually promote mindfulness learning.

However, it was only until I studied my masters in Australia that I was able to break that paradigm I had mistakenly built. The University of Melbourne, as any other Australian university, has a completely different approach to learning. As a student, you are required to enroll in two different classes per each subject: a lecture and a tutorial. For instance, for a “3 credits” methodological class, I enrolled in a 1-hour lecture and in 2-hours tutorial. Lectures had the classical approach where you would sit in a classroom to receive all the information/material the professor prepared to facilitate your learning. Tutorials (which were usually run by T.A.s) in the other hand, were the space where you were expected to read articles so you can contribute to the class with opinions, arguments and discussions.

This experience helped me realize how achieving mindfulness learning, no matter what the subject is, is very possible when providing the right environment to allow students contribute to the learning process.

Learning on a Steep Curb | Mobile Education and Mindfulness in Myanmar

I met Tim Aye-Hardy while living in Yangon, Myanmar in 2015. He is a native Burmese man who fled the country after his participation in the student protests in 1988 led to military persecution, and proceeded to spend the next two decades studying and working in America. Upon returning to his homeland he started Myanmar Mobile Education Project (MyME), a social enterprise that educates young tea-shop employees on the back of retrofitted, antique Hino buses (see below).  In Myanmar, many children from the countryside are sent by their parents to work at these tea-shops and collect a little extra money for their families. They are essentially swept up into a type of modern indentured servitude- sold to tea-shop owners as cheap labor and stripped of any fundamental access to education.

 

IMG_5084
A classic Hino bus still used for public transportation in Yangon, Myanmar. MyME is now retrofitting these buses into mobile classrooms. See video documentation here.

It is amazing that a country so intensely mindful in its religious practice of Buddhism can be so mindless when it comes to primary education and stripping this basic right for millions of their youth. Not only that, tea-shops literally represent the cultural center of communities in Myanmar. They are the setting for eating and drinking at breakfast lunch and dinner, studying, conversing, debating, catching up, having discussions, watching news, viewing sports, etc. – the essential pulse of social life in Yangon. Yet the kids who run them are being dreadfully denied access to the learning they will need to keep the country vibrantly progressing out of poverty for generations to come.

 

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A girl working at the tea-shop next to my office near the South Dagon industrial zone of Yangon. Employed children like her are often forced to work 12+ hour days and get paid next to nothing. 

Of course this is not the only controversy surrounding Myanmar at the moment. Their beloved leader Aung San Suu Kyi has neglected to intervene with the atrocious military treatment of the Muslim Rohingya ethnic group in the northeastern part of the country. Recently the burning of villages have sent thousands of additional refugees flooding over the border into Bangladesh. Though many speculate that Suu Kyi is in a very precarious political situation and is essentially powerless in controlling the military’s actions in the region, the strong current of seemingly radical Buddhism seems to uphold peace and justice if and only if you are also Buddhist. The majority in Myanmar tends to blame all Muslims for the terrorism of the select few that radicalize toward violence. They don’t understand that the word Islam in Arabic actually derives from the root Salaam meaning peace. Muslims literally greet one another with this same peaceful salutation. Yet the violence and the racism and the misunderstandings persist. Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeaux plans to bring the Rohingya crisis up as his main point on Tuesday’s UN council meeting in New York City.

Learning anything in the context of this social, economic, and political turmoil is an enormous challenge. Tea-shop kids have the same situational stress plus 10-14 hours of work a day.  So for Tim Aye-Hardy and MyME to succeed they knew they must go a step further and get very creative with their approach. They have already incorporated many of the gamification principles that we discussed last week into their courses. But there might be more to learn from their country’s strong Theravada Buddhist tradition when it comes to integrating principles of mindful learning into their mobile classrooms.

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Two Burmese monks walk past my corner tea-shop near Shwedagon Pagoda where I lived during my time in Yangon. The server in the background was a twelve year old boy nick-named “Ja Bao” or baby tiger. He had no access to formal education.

In his teachings, Buddha often talked about mindfulness and single pointed focus. Recognizing distractions and coming back to the subject at hand is something that could be invaluable to many students and modern day professionals alike. Just replace the focus on the breath in meditation with focus on the next task on your long list of to-do’s. Buddha also insists on complete personal detachment from the subject- an objective, non-biased perspective that many scientists strive toward for their entire career. Of course the end goal of these teachings in the Buddhist context is not a diploma or a career path with socio-economic security, it is a spiritual path toward Nirvana or enlightenment. If only some of these tenets of the religious culture in Myanmar could be applied to their education system. It could quickly become a baseline for deeply mindful education worldwide.

I learned a lot about mindfulness and Vippassana meditation while I was in Myanmar. I sat face to face with many monks struggling to understand the practice and learning what I could through hand gestures and broken Burmese. I taught my first ever yoga class at Yangon Yoga House and went on to start a collective called Transp0se while I was living in Washington D.C. We integrated lessons from Nada Yoga (the yoga of music) and Yoga Nidra (yogic sleep) with technology and mixed media as a way to make mindfulness more approachable for the masses. Our programs were also geared towards teaching mindfulness techniques rather than general education but we identified many amazing overlaps. Yoga Nidra, for example, is especially interesting in its ability to enable subjects to subconsciously absorb and retain information. Imagine being able to learn a language or study for an exam in your sleep! In his famous book on the subject Swami Satyananda Saraswati echos warnings from both Buddha and Ellen Langer alike- “Be mindful (especially) of mindlessness”. We need to be aware of not just what we learn but how we learn as well.

FreshAir
Luke and I in a Transp0se meditation circle in Upstate New York this past summer. Everything comes full circle.

I met Luke Namer at The Fresh Air Collective gathering in upstate New York this past summer. We went to undergrad together at Cornell but never met in Ithaca. Transp0se was hosting a meditation session there and Luke organized the event. A couple of days ago I got an email from Luke and his friend/collaborator Daniel who started a social-impact educational tourism platform called Edventurists. They were hosting screenings of a couple new short films from Luke’s production company Redefined. One of the films was called Steep Education, a 20 minute documentary on Tim Aye-Hardy and the Myanmar Mobile Education Project. They asked if I could help organize a screening on September 27th, without the faintest clue that I had met Tim in 2015 and was currently studying this exact topic in Contemporary Pedagogy.

If anyone would be interested in trying to screen the film during our class please comment! I plan to pitch the idea to Dr. Nelson immediately after submitting this post. A sudden change in the curriculum might be just what we need to drive home this idea of mindful learning and teaching right here at home.


Mind Gym

After graduating from college, I worked at a learning & development consulting company called Mind Gym. The goal of Mind Gym is to promote lifelong learning in the workplace, and to teach people to think differently. One of Mind Gym’s beliefs suggests that people choose how they think – and with a little exercise of the mind, we can choose to think up some pretty awesome, positive things. Consequently, our life at work and at home can change drastically, allowing us to be more productive in all aspects. But for the most part, people think in rigid, repetitive ways. Go to work, go home, eat, go to sleep, do it all again. For a lot of people, maybe the actual work they do is repetitive, and they see no point to changing how they think. Mind Gym, and this week’s readings, would totally disagree – and so do I!

While the readings for this week focus mainly on education in the form of schooling, so much of it can be applied to work settings. My belief, and Mind Gym’s, is that learning should not end when “formal” education ends. We can’t just graduate from college and stop learning. You got a job that suits you perfectly? Great. Does that mean you’ve peaked? I hope not! And for those who don’t want or don’t have the opportunity to graduate from any formalized educational system, how are we making sure they’re still learning? At Mind Gym, most of the learning centers around people. The learning Mind Gym promotes isn’t math or writing or languages (though it certainly helps to stay on top of those things). Instead, the focus is on how we interact with people at work and how we reflect on ourselves. Are we kind, inclusive, and understanding of others? And are we thinking about our own needs and developmental goals? Without this mindset, we’re more likely to fall back in to routine ways of thinking, back to that “go to work, go home, eat, go to sleep, do it all again” mindset.

I could go on and on about my thoughts on mindful learning, lifelong learning, out-of-classroom learning, etc. . But my biggest take away from working at Mind Gym is simple and concise, and something that Douglas Thomas and John Seely Brown mention in “A New Culture of Learning”. It’s also something I try to remember as I work towards a degree in higher education. Learning isn’t the new idea you came up with, or the formula you’ve memorized, or the paper you got an A+ on. Learning is a type of citizenship. It’s how you engage with other people and how you strive for personal development that allows you to contribute something to society, no matter how small. “A New Culture of Learning” tells the story of a young boy named Sam who is a talented programmer. To Sam, the most important part of being a programmer isn’t creating new games, it’s being kind to others in his programming community, and providing them with helpful feedback. If we think about formal education in a similar way, as well as learning beyond a formal education, I think people will be more passionate about topics, more likely to remember and utilize things they’ve learned, and they’ll be happier.

So take a minute to exercise your mind – why are you learning the things you’re currently learning? Because you want that A+, or that promotion, or because you know it will benefit you in a meaningful way?

 

“Korea-osity”

Before I get started, I just want to say – this post is personal. The central character is my beautiful, talented, creative granddaughter, who has actually played a prominent role in all my posts so far. But this post is different. It is one grandmother’s wish for her granddaughter.

Secondly, the post is about Korea, but it isn’t.

Okay, the groundwork is laid.

My granddaughter learns much everyday, but much of her daily learning has nothing to do with high school subjects. What she learns about most days has to do with what she is curious about. I asked her to make a collage of things she is curious about. This is her montage.

My Granddaughter’s Collage

As you can see (or perhaps not see), much of her interests lies in Korea, in K-pop bands,(the picture in the middle is of a k-pop band entitled BTS), in creative arts, (YG entertainment group in top left), in dance (IM is a dance studio in Korea), in food (especially Korean food), and in the Korean language (the text on the top right) and in the connections she has with people all around the world that share her same interests. Extending out from this, East Asian culture and history interests her as does Italian ballet, hip hop moves, living as second generation Asian American, photography and a myriad of other curiosities that come up through her connectedness. She loves learning about these things in a way that is very digital and connected. She pursues her curiosities and she is very good at it.

What gets in the way of her learning on a daily basis, however, is her schoolwork. She must take certain subjects – subjects that tick off boxes and, in the process, put her in a box and leave her bored and less than impressed with school – kind of like this cat….which I think is just a great depiction of “less-than-impressed” and “I’m bored.”

I believe my granddaughter’s boredom with much of her schoolwork stems from the many subjects she takes that do not line up with her curiosities. She’s interested in learning Korean, but can’t. It doesn’t tick off the right box – another language does that was chosen for her and she must complete the requisite number of years in. Literary analysis must be done on certain books chosen for her. “Physical Education” consists of having to read an inordinately thick and boring book on human nutrition. Something she must do although she is a tremendous dancer – but dancing, although very athletic, doesn’t tick off the PE requirement. (And just a head scratcher here, reading a big, thick boring book and taking multiple-choice quizzes on it does?)

Okay enough of that. On to what we have been studying for this week – there really is a connection. And the connection is curiosity. As we listened to Dr. Ken’s TED talk Wednesday night, it struck me that curiosity drove my granddaughter’s learning outside of school – a revelation I should have put together much sooner. She is very curious and satisfies that curiosity through her intimate connection with information on the web, you-tube, social media and her connections.

Now to my wish as her grandmother – I wish her schooling tapped into her curiosities. Why not learn Korean? Sure it’s a relatively obscure language but a language that is deemed “critical” by the US State Department. Why not world history instead of American History? Even East Asian history? How about cultural studies? How about literary analysis of contemporary lyrics? And how about incorporating dance into algebra?

Algebra and Dance

And, in desiring something different for my granddaughter, where does this leave me as an educator tasked with teaching students only one to two years older than my granddaughter? Just as I have little control of the boxes that must be ticked off for my granddaughter, I have no control over the boxes that must be ticked off for the students I teach early world history. Some may be curious – others may need to just tick of a particular box. So, in this environment how can I bring learning into my classroom? How can I incorporate the ideas that students are curious about? How can I know what they are curious about? Also, how can I balance graduate school, department expectations for my performance, the desire to step out and try things outside of my comfort zone? Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated.

In bringing this post to a close, there is actually an idea in the Langer reading that I found intriguing and “doable” I guess you might say. Something I could incorporate in my classroom – if I indeed decided to be mindful. This idea is the idea of the “value of doubt.” Langer wrote in connection with the value of doubt, “The key to this new way of teaching is based on an appreciation of both the conditional, or context-dependent, nature of the world and the value of uncertainty.” This “value of doubt” does not particularly need any new technology. I think, and I may be wrong here, that it takes a mindset on my part as a teacher. It involves introducing doubt, asking questions, challenging narratives, asking for students to analyze and where possible, to invite my students to work on the ideas/events/time periods they find most intriguing – giving up certainty for uncertainty.

In my granddaughter’s world of school, certainty abounds. Boxes are ticked off and those in charge feel safe in giving her a diploma that says “You Now Are Educated With a High School Education.” Colleges feel “safe” in admitting her and the world of education remains aligned to some paradigm created by the administrators and my heart as her grandmother is haunted by what might have been.

PS. My granddaughter just read this post and said, “I approve of this post!” ?

A lesson in perspective

Meet Stormy.  Ok, let me back up.  Meet Stormy, minus a year and some change.  We adopted him from an animal rescue out of state last August.  He came from a litter of Chow’s, mixed with a then undetermined breed.  He was only a few months old when we met.  I was then a newly funded graduate student who had just left a full-time career of over a decade to embark on a new journey in academia.  My wife thought it would do me, and my then 12 year old Beagle mix to have a new friend.  I was skeptical at first but then I was (repeatedly) reminded that I got to pick out, name, rescue our first dog.  As you can see, both dogs were also skeptical of the idea but again, it was not a plan I came up with.

If there are any Dr. Who aficionados in the audience, Stormy is short for Stormageddon (Clip provided by Youtube).  I am not a Dr. Who fan, but I wasn’t consulted on the name.  I digress.  So on that fateful August afternoon, Stormy became the fourth member of our family.  Since he was adopted so young, he was essentially a blank slate with only room to learn.  Like most puppies, it became evident early on that he was a curious, but overwhelmingly happy dog.  This was despite the fact that we determined (through multiple trips to the vet in the first month) that he acquired multiple parasites and other lingering ailments from the less than ideal conditions of the shelter where we first met.  Because everything was new, he was eager to learn.  He already had a big brother, and he picked up social cues from him along the way.  Every car ride was an adventure.  Every mailbox in the neighborhood to mark, a new milestone.

Yes, Stormy is a dog.  This is well established.  But there is a lesson of perspective that we can learn from him.  In her writings on “mindful learning,” Ellen Langer reminds us that when we sleep walk through the motions of learning, we place limits on ourselves.  There is no fostering of enthusiasm and imagination when you approach learning in such a structured method.  Students of higher education are subject to many of these restrictions.  There are lectures, and planned assignments, and various reading materials to navigate through and comprehend.  Then the semester ends, and they move on to a new set of classes.  A few semesters in, and the student becomes well versed on what is expected of them to successfully pass a course.  But in doing so, they are also setting limits on themselves in how much they actually learn.  I’m not naive. As an undergraduate, I did the same thing.  I attended lectures, I read the assigned texts, I regurgitated the material for an exam, and I learned enough to push me through to another semester.  I can’t say how much more I would have learned had I not fallen victim to some of the myths that Dr. Langer described.  While this isn’t meant to be a condemnation of current academia, it is something to think about.  Stormy isn’t placing limits on what he can learn, he just wants to experience it.  In doing so, he’s learning as he goes.  I think this is a perspective we can all appreciate as continue our own academic endeavors.

On Teaching Katie

Confession: I haven’t taught a course yet. In class, when everyone else telling stories about the ways they teach and how they’ve helped their students, I can only stay quiet because I don’t have this experience. However, during the last class, we spoke about a student’s PI who no longer teaches courses but instead teaches through mentoring his students. It made me think about how I may not have experience as a teaching assistant, but I do have experience mentoring undergraduates in my lab. I thought about one person in particular, Katie, who joined our lab last year and how I got the chance to mentor her in working in our lab.

I’ll be honest, I wasn’t particularly enthused to be mentoring undergraduates in Spring 2017. I was taking three classes, doing my own research, dealing with my own personal life, and was now responsible of teaching two people how to work in a lab when I felt I was still learning myself. It was hard because I also didn’t know their level of interest and I just didn’t know how to teach in general. I started off with teaching basics and things I had wished I was taught when I first started working. I tried to make sure I wasn’t talking down to them and treated them with respect, because I knew that when working in a lab, confidence in yourself was key. I wanted to instill this into them. However, I wasn’t a trained teacher. While teaching, I would just spout off random, but imporantant, things they need to know and consider while working in a lab. Not very elegantly and I probably spoke very quickly when talking as well, as I usually do. I was just talking to talk, to be honest. However, I thought it was in one ear, out the other, that no one really cared to listen to what I was saying. However, I soon realized that some one was actually listening to me.

Watching Katie work, I realized she was mindful and actively thinking while working. Mistakes were acknowledged and corrected with input from myself. Little things I had mentioned, such as using water to clean up media spills in the biosafety cabinet, actually got through to her. However, there is one incident that I think about when I think about how far she much she has grown and how much she has learned.

I would watch Katie when I could and would still continue spouting off random things about cell culture. I mentioned once before that there were two different types of flasks: non-treated and treated for adhesive cells. It was a minor comment, one I said pretty casually, thinking she wouldn’t have caught it or paid much attention to it. While this is important to take into consideration when doing cell culture, I just wasn’t sure anyone else cared.

On this particular day, Katie was working by herself. She had gotten to a point where she no longer needed me hovering over her, watching her every move. However, I always made myself available via messaging for any questions. To my surprise, I received a message asking about which flask to use, because she looked on the package of the shelf that we keep our flasks on and realized that the flasks were for adhesive cells. We didn’t work with adhesive cells so she double checked with me to ask where she could get the correct flasks. It was this incident that I realized that she was actively listening to what I was teaching her and was not only working on autopilot, but present in her learning and her work.

While reading Langer’s piece on mindful learning, I realized that is exactly what Katie was doing while I was teaching her. Working with Katie never ceases to amaze me and this piece made me appreciate her all the more. So while I don’t have experience teaching a class, I have experience teaching Katie, who practices mindful learning techniques. I can only hope all of my students will be like Katie.

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