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Growing up in Albuquerque, New Mexico and attending public schools meant that I was surrounded by a relatively diverse group of peers from a young age. I never realized that this was different from how all children grow up, it just was. This is the case for most children I think, they grow up thinking that their own experiences are shared by all people. This is why educating children about other experiences and teaching them how to be aware of their own perspective is so vital. It is also so important that we all become aware of how our brains work and how to become aware of the “hidden brain” as writer Shankar Vedantam coined it. I thought this quote really summed it up well,

So the problem is not that the plane has a pilot and an autopilot function. The problem is that sometimes without the pilot even being aware of it, it’s the autopilot function that’s flying the plane.

Shankar Vedantam

By learning about how the subconscious sections of our brain function, we can better understand what causes us to react in certain ways and evaluate if we are “piloting the plane” or if we are allowing our automatic reactions to drive our decisions.

Over the years, I have worked as a part of many teams. From my own experiences, I have observed that teams that are comprised of diverse individuals seem to work better. This is also supported by in the article How Diversity Makes Us Smarter from Katherine W. Phillips.

Finally I wanted to address being uncomfortable. In some situations, exposing ourselves to diverse experiences can feel uncomfortable. I think that this is completely normal and actually a good thing. The feeling of being uncomfortable is a sign that we are extending beyond our current levels of knowledge and understanding.

I know we do not need to blog this week, but I don’t have better audiences elsewhere than here. ? I have to admit that it is so difficult to design a syllabus from scratch. I was never an instructor so I do not have an existing syllabus. There are so many criteria and suggestions […]

“A mindful approach to any activity has three characteristics: the continuous creation of new categories; openness to new information; and an implicit awareness of more than one perspective. Mindlessness, in contrast, is characterized by an entrapment in old categories; by automatic behavior that precludes attending to new signals; and by action that operates from a single perspective. Being mindless, colloquially speaking, is like being on automatic pilot.”

Ellen Langer, “The Power of Mindful Learning”

Promoting mindfulness in learning is a concept that I think is extremely important in providing students with real tools that they can use instead of just checking the boxes of a curriculum. After reading the first chapter in the book, “The Power of Mindful Learning,” by Ellen Langer, I was really struck by how prevalent rote learning really is and how ineffective it can be. I also really enjoyed the many musical examples that she used.

It was very interesting/alarming to see how creativity is stifled when people are taught using traditional techniques. Throughout my educational experience, the majority of the classes I have taken relied primarily on the ideas of memorization and repetitive practice to master concepts. I think that this culture of teaching and learning is especially prevalent in the field of mechanical engineering, which I find ironic because one of the main duties of an engineer will be to solve problems in creative ways. It is essential that engineers can adapt the skills that they learn to novel situations that often do not have well defined constraints. Adopting a mindful approach would be a much better method for educating engineers, and really all students.

I also connected with the idea of “Sideways Learning” and how the methods we use to partition skills actually prevents true mastery of the information.

“Mindfulness creates a rich awareness of discriminatory detail. Theories that suggest that we learn best when we break a task down into discrete parts do not really make possible the sort of learning that is accomplished through mindful awareness of distinctions. Getting our experience presliced undermines the opportunity to reach mindful awareness. Sideways learning, however, involves attending to multiple ways of carving up the same domain.”

Ellen Langer, “The Power of Mindful Learning”

It is so important to real understanding that we are not just taking our “presliced” knowledge. To truly understand, you must look at the whole and dissect it for yourself; discovering the different parts and having the freedom to explore it from all points of reference. Learning in a mindful environment promotes this type of thinking.

I also really appreciated the discussion that Langer included about pianists and the idea that a truly amazing performance requires not only mastery of the technical parts of the music, but also the ability to convey the emotion and the performers individual adaptation of the music to create a unique performance. I thought this was a great demonstration of how important mindfulness can be.

“If a pianist is preoccupied with the voluntary, manipulable end of the spectrum of neurological possibilities, this preoccupation resounds in the music. The performance sounds calculated, not shaped from a spontaneous response. Hence critics often comment on virtuosos who, for all their technical brilliance, are unfeeling, or mechanical, or characterless, and so on.”

Ellen Langer, “The Power of Mindful Learning”

Teachers must change their material to be more mindful, but they can also incorporate the lesson of the pianist into their pedagogy by not just being a master of the material but also learning how to convey it in a mindful way.

The best part is that Langer found that students actually liked the experience of mindful learning more than traditional memorization techniques. This makes sense to me. Students want to succeed and they also want to be able to express their creative and unique ideas.

Browsing through social media on Sunday evening, instead of reading for this class, informed me that I had missed the Hokie Half Marathon. It is OK, a half marathon isn’t my kind of a race anyway. If I were to run, it would look something like this:

I was mindlessly reading the Langer article until I reached the part where the author wrote that the importance of learning delayed gratification is overstated and it is a myth. So instant gratification works well for learning? I guess we need to provide instant gratification to students, but not ourselves, cause the last time I checked, instant gratification leads to procrastination, and that is a daily battle for me.

There is a really interesting TED talk on allowing the “instant gratification monkey” to take control leads to procrastination:

I get the reasoning behind mindful learning, but how could we apply it to learning outside class? How could we use mindful learning to teach an undergrad how to measure chlorine in water on a HACH? This process has set steps that need to be followed in the same order and a typical day can involve repeating those steps dozens of times. This is just one instance of precise vital repetitive tasks that are common in my field. Our group recognizes the risk of becoming mindless, which is why we are reminded to be mentally present even after “mastering” the techniques. This is definitely a point where delayed gratification works. Reminding oneself of the big picture to justify the value of tedious repetitive tasks is vital to be successful in research. I believe these repetitive tasks are the backbone to the good stuff in research – performing experiments, which is where the real learning happens.

So, how should a master procrastinator like me resist self-instant gratification, while providing the same to students in a classroom setting? I hope this is discussed at some point in class.

I think we’re each a product of the culture we were raised within. This isn’t really a stretch. Of course, it’s true. But how many of us have really taken time to think about what that really means, in terms of how we ‘fit’ into the world we inhabit? How many of us realize how much we were influenced by the way the adults around us responded to the world (or didn’t), how our community’s  sense of place, privacy, responsibility, influence shaped how we saw ‘others’ and responded in stressful situations. How many of us consider the history, perspectives and values of people we meet for the first time and how that shapes how they interact, what they say and how they hear what we say?

I grew up in the 1970’s and ’80’s – those were my sentient, formative years. The years when I was paying attention to what was going on around me and when I was trying to ‘fit in’. I wasn’t aware of any of that stuff outlined above. I didn’t even realize that the benign neglect my parents demonstrated was detrimental much more than there wasn’t dinner on the table every night and they weren’t in the stands (or even knew) when I was running a cross country meet or playing soccer. I don’t think either of my parents ever came to a sports event I was involved with. My dad liked coming to football games on Friday nights, but not so much because I was in the marching band: he was much more interested in being raunchy and obnoxious with the low brass boys, and watching football. That’s ok because I wasn’t terribly interested in hanging out with my dad at football games on Friday nights and I ditched him as fast as I could most weeks. (I should mention, my parents divorced when I was seven, so I only saw my dad once a week at most) For the most part, I was a ‘free range kid’ in the sense that no one worried about me unless I didn’t show up by dark or I called because I had fallen off my bike (and we didn’t have cell phones at the time either).  I roamed in about a five-mile radius from home and rarely did my parents know the full story of where I was, who I was with or what we were doing.

That sense of freedom grew as I did through my teens and into my early twenties. I rarely had to answer to anyone about choices I made, the friends I chose to hang out with, the places I worked. I felt like I had conquered the world by the time I got to college. I had always felt like a round peg in a square hole in many respects: most of my friends in high school (in NoVA) were from intact families and were at least second generation college-goers. (although I’ve found out since that most grew up with the same sort of feeling of benign neglect that I did, or worse) We weren’t poor, but I always felt like we weren’t as well off as others around us (that was more a function of my parents’ frugality – they had both grown up at the end of the depression in working-class families). I prowled the local mall, found a group of wildlings like myself and got into some ‘interesting’ situations – often referred to as ‘poor personal choices’ today. Most of my 20’s were spent doing what I wanted to, working toward that elusive thing called ‘adulthood’ that I would know when I saw it, or at least that’s what I was told.

The only other thing that is important about this story of my youth is that I was born into two families that knew how to fight for what they wanted or needed. My parents, grandparents and great-grandparents had survived their own travails as children and adults, and it was ingrained in our DNA that if necessary, we were able to survive. Just as an example, my high school guidance teacher called me to her office during my junior year to tell me that my grades and course choices were not ‘college material’ and I should consider a vocational option past high school. She was ‘doing her job’ and was woefully underinformed about who I was or what I intended to do with my life, but I recall saying that not going to school was not an option for me. My parents expected me to go to college – that was certain. And I did know that it was my ‘ticket’ to the future. I didn’t have any intention of not going just because this woman, who didn’t even know me beyond my ‘file’, had decided I wasn’t capable of handling it.

I fought a lot for what I wanted – back then we called it a ‘struggle’, but in hindsight, it was a fight. I learned how to get around people that stood in my way, how to face others who thought they could exploit or manipulate me (or friends), and I began to develop a sense of being a force to be reckoned with. My first job was as a compliance officer for a company that hired retired military men as insurance and securities salesmen. That was a fight most days (and could fill a book). I had to constantly resist my father’s insistence that I get a government job for the security and guaranteed pension. I had to learn how to resist the sexism, classism and mean-girl attitudes that pervaded the 1980’s, and I learned how to fight for political and community values that seemed to be eroding before my very eyes. I figured out that adults didn’t know half of what they professed to, and that rules were made for people who needed them. There’s more, but I think I’ve made my point.

All of this as a response to the tone and messages of our readings/viewings this week related to Mindfulness.  I’ve capitalized it on purpose. It is a philosophy that I had to be introduced to. It did not ‘fit’ into my early life paradigm of scrapping through difficulty, ignoring barriers, pushing past people who tried to stand in my way, and making space for myself and what I wanted from life. I was not selfish in my wants – I was more of a champion for the underdog, a role I knew well.

It didn’t happen until I was in my mid-30’s and struggling with the fight on a minute-by-minute basis. It’s worthy of more than a mention, but I was exhausted from the fight and literally couldn’t fight through any more. I had two wonderful, beautiful children, a nice house in the suburbs, a husband who was happy, engaged and supportive, a large extended family. There were a series of deaths in my family that had left me feeling very vulnerable to the forces of the universe, but that was only the visceral catalyst for the dissatisfaction with the world I was feeling. I was deeply unhappy as a public school educator: exhausted by having to endure the stresses and pressures that responsibility for other people’s children can heap upon one; of dealing with colleagues who thought that they didn’t have to demonstrate civility and compassion toward each other, the children (and families) that they engaged with, and a system that knew – absolutely knew – it wasn’t serving every child’s best interest but it was doing a ‘good enough’ job.  I fell into a very deep depression. The can-do spirit and the scrappy attitude I had cultivated throughout my life was a fleeting memory.

For six months I struggled to make sense of what was happening. For the first nine weeks I functioned in a fog. The next three months I tried to make sense of how I felt, how everything could have crashed down around me like it did – what had happened and what could I do to ‘get back to normal’. I got back to what appeared to be ‘normal’ (worthy of another tale), but I am not the same as I was before. I was lucky, once again, and found a way toward Mindfulness philosophy through Buddhism, yoga and meditation.  At the time, it was much more of a personal journey, but now (eight years later) I see it as an evolution into a sphere of understanding that helps me make sense of the world, to support others in their journeys through life, and to be my authentic self, even if I don’t always ‘fit’.

Ellen Langer’s Mindful Learning work is rich with the learning and lessons that came to me only after I had crashed and burned. The being aware  of one’s surroundings enough to understand them and how you function within is such a valuable lesson to know and understand while in college and into one’s 20’s. I wish I had. The notion that we are all capable of learning beyond what is being taught is liberating, isn’t it? And, the ability to think deeply, question assumptions and expectations, to be aware of the constraints that culture, family and community (including less mindful professors, advisors and mentors) can place upon you is so very important to being able to function freely – to be a free range learner – in both times of ease and strife, that is the real value of a liberal education. None of us are perfect. We may think we are, or we may strive to be, but I’m convinced it is not possible, or even desirable to be so. I am fairly convinced though that if we are mindful in our attitude, and authentic in our actions, kind to others and seek to do good in this world then we will have achieved ‘greatness’ for ourselves.

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A brief note about some of the other Mindful sources from this week (I couldn’t work them into this post in a more artistic way):

This quote from A New Culture of Learning (Thomas and Brown 2011) is so very powerful:

Change motivates and challenges. It makes clear when things are obsolete or have outlived their usefulness. But most of all, change forces us to learn differently. If the twentieth century
was about creating a sense of stability to buttress against change and then trying to adapt to it, then the twenty-first century is about embracing change, not fighting it.

I could not agree more. And I think this is kind of what I was getting at above, although in a very veiled way. There is a liberation that happens when one can embrace and welcome change, a sense of renewed hope for what is possible that doesn’t always exist in a stable environment. It is not comfortable, but the discomfort often pales in comparison to the freedom that results. (thinking about Plato’s Cave allegory here).  And if the twentieth century was really about creating a sense of stability, which I buy (two world wars, a worldwide depression, countless other regional wars, environmental, political and social instability)

Ken Robinson – How to Escape Education’s Death Valley

Sir Ken Robinson has been a champion of looking critically at the dysfunction of education systems. He has informed my beliefs and values for what is a ‘free and appropriate’ education for children and his perspective has lifted me out of feeling hopelessly frustrated more than once. His anectdotes and analogies are touching and reach into people’s thinking through humor. But he, like others, are ‘faces’ for the hard work going on in classrooms and communities each day. There are real people who are working themselves to death to keep children in school, to teach them all that they can and to shape them into humans worth knowing. While Robinson’s words and thoughts are uplifting, be mindful – and actively engaged – with the educators who are fighting the good fight each day. And be engaged parents, if you choose to take on that challenge: support wide learning opportunities, resist ‘group think’ and  standardization of learning that serves only the institution and not the individual.

 

Why PEAS Are the Key to a Successful Education | Dr. Michael Hynes

I can’t recall how this made it into the mix, its obviously not part of the reading list..

This is one of those tireless educators I mentioned above. Dr. Hynes has scrapped through his own issues in life, and likely had some sort of mid-life revelation, about what is real and important in the world. I am grateful that he is able to stand up and tell his story because it does inform the rest of the world in a way that is positive, challening and possible. And PEAS should be the goal for us all – both as individuals and as educators.

It is lofty in approach,  and the bookThe Educational Conversation: Closing the Gap and Parker Palmer’s work has deeply informed my values as an educator.

 

Garrison, J. W., & Rud, A. G. (Eds.). (1995). The educational conversation: closing the gap. SUNY Press. Dr. Garrison is a Professor here at Virginia Tech

Dr. Garrison is a Professor here at Virginia Tech and typically teaches an ed. philosophy course in the spring related to this book. Last year it was titled Gaps in the Educational Conversation.  He is a world-reknown Dewey Scholar and a professor of mindful teaching himself.

Nowadays, there are a lot of great new technology, software,  and apps that can be used to create learning games or interactive course content. This increased gave the instructors and developers an easy way to visually design their courses. However, they must look at the best way to achieve the simplicity and efficiency of visually pleasing and professional content presentation. When developing a learning game or any interactive course content we need to learn more about how students receive, process, retain the information, and hopefully retrieve it when needed. Theories of learning—specifically those based in cognitive sciences and the study of how knowledge is acquired—contribute to our understanding of how materials can be presented for effective learning and performance. Also, We need to look at the content it self and how to chunk it and organize it so it’s not overwhelming for the students, or if it’s not providing the students with all information they need to learn. To achieve the set of goals a learning game or interactive learning content needs to meet, a team of subject experts,  instructional designers, and graphic designers have to play their part in this process.

Let say you need to develop an interactive course content for an engineering class, then you will need a subject expert in the content you are covering, this individual is in-the-know about what needs to be included in course. The instructional designer, on the other hand, will utilize instructional design principles and learning theories to achieve the learning goals and fill the knowledge gaps. Then the graphic designer will be in charge of all the graphs and animations, which will be used to develop this content.

 

 

 

The concept of the Flipped Classroom is not complex, but often requires a great deal of thought and planning on the front-end to make it work.  From a K-12 perspective, it is typically worth it, particularly to develop skills and competencies that are ‘basic’ (such as word patterns or sight words for young children, or multiplication facts for older ones). High school science and math teachers have found it useful to ‘flip’ instruction to video or audio presentations of the lessons so that their class time can be utilized for collaboration, confirmation and creation of deeper understanding.

See the following for more information and examples of how Flipping has been implemented:

Tucker, B. (2012). The flipped classroom. Education next, 12(1).

Bishop, J. L., & Verleger, M. A. (2013, June). The flipped classroom: A survey of the research. In ASEE National Conference Proceedings, Atlanta, GA (Vol. 30, No. 9, pp. 1-18).

Herreid, C. F., & Schiller, N. A. (2013). Case studies and the flipped classroom. Journal of College Science Teaching, 42(5), 62-66.

One particular application in a university setting caught my attention during the 2017 VT CHEP Conference (Feb. 2017). Two professors from Radford University have been flipping their Calculus class for majors for 3 years now and are seeing dramatic differences in the number of students able to pass the end-of-course exam.

Adams, C., & Dove, A. (2017). Calculus Students Flipped Out: The Impact of Flipped Learning on Calculus Students’ Achievement and Perceptions of Learning. PRIMUS, (just-accepted), 00-00.

(link is to abstract only – I’ve requested a copy of the article from Iliad and will share it when available)

 

There are a few other studies/journal articles related to higher education via Google Scholar if you search for “Flipped Classroom”

The TEDxKC video “What Baby George Taught Me About Learning” by Dr. Michael Wesch, was inspiring but seemed a bit too idealistic. At one point he lamented the fact that despite all of his efforts, his students were still most concerned about their grades, rather than learning the material. But how could that ever not be the case?

If we are totally honest, the majority of students at any college are attending primarily for the job opportunities their degree affords. Certainly “expanding our horizons” and improving our understanding of the world is a great benefit – and I recognize that this was the original aim of tertiary education – but few could afford this experience if it didn’t also provide significant employment benefits. This has never been more true than it is today, when student loan debt is crippling, tuition costs have skyrocketed, and most white-collar jobs absolutely require the once-optional BA.

Doing some back of the envelope calculations, just 30 years ago, a year of tuition at VT cost the equivalent of about 500 hours of minimum wage work. One could pay for the entire year’s tuition with a summer job. Today that figure is closer to 1900, almost a full year of full time work. Couple that with the fact that 30 years ago a BA was mostly optional, while today it is required to manage a Starbucks. Add to this the fact that a degree from a good school like VT can be worth over $500,000 over a 20-year period. Can you really blame students for obsessing over grades?

By the time students reach Dr. Wesch’s class, they must have invested tens of thousands of dollars, likely put themselves deep into debt, and know their grades will literally dictate the rest of their lives. A few bad grades could make the difference between getting into a good grad school with funding, or paying their own way at some R3. It could be the difference between even getting into med school at all, or in getting an internship with their dream employer instead of ending up in a cubicle farm in a job they hate.

Until this changes, students will always prioritize grades above actual learning, especially in an elective subject.

I admire Dr. Wesch’s idealism, and I hope to encourage students to love both the material and the act of learning itself, but we cannot allow ourselves to forget how important grades are to these students. If they are truly concerned about their futures, learning will be the last thing on their minds.

Trying to fire up the Twitter!

A new semester awaits – priming the pump for Grad 5114!