k-12 teaching are a diff beasts compared to community college, and I agree Oscar! Getting 5th graders, be happy and healthy, get along w their peers, and not physically (injure) or socially hurt their peers for 60 minutes, is a huge W... 11:57 to reinforce and vote in favor of those rules: Rule 1: Health over Agenda: I know students who have lost their lives for the fear of being punished for arriving tardy to class, practice, or work. whether that shows up as reckless driving, scootering or simply feeling like they don't belong. ultimately students create the learning objectives and outcomes, not us... educators, and students' peers, can inspire guide and coach in smart goal setting and getting active in constructing knowledge. Rule 2: Students take guided ownership of their learning: humans get better at making decisions, when they make decisions, not blindly follow directions. It's true curriculum, lectures, content, speech are gifts for students in their learning process, but getting them to the point of believing and acting on those gifts requires rethinking how we use synchronous, live & direct meeting times... the most sacred time of all : for students yearning for mentorship, transformation and joy. who doesn't want to be seen heard or valued? Rule 3: one of my fav things Jeff says to his students is "don't give up on me!" . create time & space to build connections with each of your students, don't leave this up to chance or office hours where the rich get richer. direct opportunities for students to tutor and mentor their peers, don't leave this up to possibility.
8:40 all educators could benefit from the hippocratic oath of doing no harm... indeed this will require developing skills and work creatively over many years to position students for differentiated engagement... all while being in a country that doesn't support this skill development or work, structurally for teachers... whether that's helping students by building relevant engaging more understandable curriculum, various calendars of competence, guiding their students to build their own calendars, or sharing the responsibility for students to propose how they'd like to use in-class time, are all results when we support teachers.
25:43 learning principle: build reading habits and make reading fun/social, or be at the mercy of lecture, professional development, or Jeff's assignments 🤣 TBH if teachers saw evidence of sustained reading and writing (like how sports coaches can see the movements of their athletes), they might be less inclined to control and "do to" students as much as they're conditioned to! Do With not To!
I might go so far as to say that if teaching is happening then learning isn't happening. If learning is happening then facilitation might be happening. Teaching is to learning what cigarettes are to health. You need to go farther than ungrading to unteaching.
Hello Travis. Thanks for the comment and for your attention. I'd love to learn more about what you mean: "Teaching is to learning what cigarettes are to health." I also don't fully understand what you mean by " if teaching is happening then learning isn't happening." If you're willing to elaborate, I'll read and think about what you're saying. In my classes, I say to my students often that "math cannot be taught, it can only be learned." I think of learning as a creative process in the sense that learning involves creating and strengthening neural networks inside the brain. This type of creation takes active work on behalf of the learner and cannot be done to the learner. When I say that grading is to learning what cigarettes are to health, I mean that grading distracts students from the work of learning by focusing student attention on the teacher's expectations rather than their own processes. You can learn more about some of the harms of grading at the following blog post: www.alfiekohn.org/article/case-grades/ If you like this type of thinking, here is a list of resources I've used to change the way I think about grading: jeffandersonmath.wordpress.com/2022/01/02/essential-ungrading-reading-lists/ In terms of the difference between learning and teaching, I have my students spend a lot of time thinking about what learning is and how it works. Below are some of the posts I write for my students to have them really think about what learning feels like: thelearningcode.school.blog/2021/01/24/what-is-deep-learning/ thelearningcode.school.blog/2021/03/07/a-model-for-deep-learning/ thelearningcode.school.blog/2021/05/09/progress-through-the-five-stages-of-deep-learning/ The point of all that work is to have students develop a more sophisticated idea of what learning is and how it works. I also challenge my students to read the book Ultralearning by Scott Young. In all this work, I'm working to center each individual student as the leader of their own learning. My job as a teacher is to facilitate this, like you said. But the ultimate work of learning must be done by each individual student. I think about using an analogy. An expert teacher is to learning what a master chef is to nutrition. The chef can prepare the meal, think deeply about the nutritional needs of the eater, and do a lot of work to prepare highly nutritious food. But a chef cannot eat the food for another person. It's up to each individual to eat the food, digest it, and to enjoy the benefits of the chef's preparation process. I think this aligns with what you're saying that facilitation is crucial in good teaching? My point is that grades diminish the learning experience, ruin my relationship with students, and get in the way of the hard work I need to do with the students. Thanks again for the comment and cheers to this discussion.
I love your suggestion that learning is most meaningful when it's driven by intrinsic motivation and interest. I'm right with you on this. That wisdom is part of why I feel so strongly about getting rid of grades. The entire letter grading system is based on the theory of behaviorism and uses punishments and rewards to drive learning. This is the antithesis of intrinsic motivation. This reminds me of the books Punished by Rewards by Alfie Kohn and Drive by Daniel Pink. In terms of the phrase "professional learner," this gets into a larger discussion of the social contract in college. Our society makes a bunch of promises to young college students to justify the large cost and the sacrifice of many years of their time. Specifically, we make the promise that a college degree leads to higher earnings and a better job. I talk a lot with my students about the idea that our system too often does not deliver on this promise. I am not at all impressed with the way higher education takes advantage of students and their families. My joke with my students is that if colleges can make the claim that a degree leads to higher earnings, then any graduate who earns their degree and doesn't earn their desired income should receive a refund check for their tuition. In other words, I want to see a world where colleges are invested in the individual success of students. This is not the world we live in. The college debt crisis and the STEM education pipeline issues are symptoms of this larger issue. As a college math instructor, I've really appreciated the book "Talking about Leaving Revisited", which you can find below: casa.colorado.edu/~dduncan/wp-content/uploads/2019_Book_TalkingAboutLeavingRevisited.pdf The first few chapters of that book illustrate some of the larger issues I see in college STEM classes. In my work with students, I have two separate definitions I use to talk about the process of working towards mastery of a given subject. I say that an expert is someone that is really good at a particular subject. I say that a professional is someone who is paid to do something. I ask students to think about experts who are not professionals (any expert who has retired from their full-time paid work) and professionals who are not experts (I think about nepotism here). When I encourage my students to become professional learners, I am pushing my students to think about how to develop themselves as experts in their given field during their education. I encourage them to get so good at their work that they can eventually trade their skills for labor income in the future (i.e. develop expertise first and then leverage that expertise to become a professional). This relates to some of the ideas in the book "So good they can't ignore you" by Cal Newport. I sometimes call this idea "strategic deep learning." This conversation comes up because many of my students are working to become financially independent as part of their college career. My point is to push them to think critically about how to do that using their learning skills. I have a larger approach for guiding this work. You can learn more about this at each of the following pages: jeffandersonmath.wordpress.com/2023/03/17/jeff-andersons-how-to-become-a-strategic-deep-learner-project/ jeffandersonmath.wordpress.com/2023/03/15/five-research-based-learner-centered-learning-objectives-for-college-students/ Does that answer your question? Thanks again for the comments and for your attention.
Hope both high school teachers and college professors can learn from this.
k-12 teaching are a diff beasts compared to community college, and I agree Oscar! Getting 5th graders, be happy and healthy, get along w their peers, and not physically (injure) or socially hurt their peers for 60 minutes, is a huge W...
11:57 to reinforce and vote in favor of those rules:
Rule 1: Health over Agenda: I know students who have lost their lives for the fear of being punished for arriving tardy to class, practice, or work. whether that shows up as reckless driving, scootering or simply feeling like they don't belong. ultimately students create the learning objectives and outcomes, not us... educators, and students' peers, can inspire guide and coach in smart goal setting and getting active in constructing knowledge.
Rule 2: Students take guided ownership of their learning: humans get better at making decisions, when they make decisions, not blindly follow directions. It's true curriculum, lectures, content, speech are gifts for students in their learning process, but getting them to the point of believing and acting on those gifts requires rethinking how we use synchronous, live & direct meeting times... the most sacred time of all : for students yearning for mentorship, transformation and joy. who doesn't want to be seen heard or valued?
Rule 3: one of my fav things Jeff says to his students is "don't give up on me!" . create time & space to build connections with each of your students, don't leave this up to chance or office hours where the rich get richer. direct opportunities for students to tutor and mentor their peers, don't leave this up to possibility.
8:40 all educators could benefit from the hippocratic oath of doing no harm... indeed this will require developing skills and work creatively over many years to position students for differentiated engagement... all while being in a country that doesn't support this skill development or work, structurally for teachers...
whether that's helping students by building relevant engaging more understandable curriculum, various calendars of competence, guiding their students to build their own calendars, or sharing the responsibility for students to propose how they'd like to use in-class time, are all results when we support teachers.
25:43 learning principle: build reading habits and make reading fun/social, or be at the mercy of lecture, professional development, or Jeff's assignments 🤣
TBH if teachers saw evidence of sustained reading and writing (like how sports coaches can see the movements of their athletes), they might be less inclined to control and "do to" students as much as they're conditioned to! Do With not To!
6:07 I wonder if you're able to share what Daniel wrote in the live chat, lol. those live streaming gamers get the benefit of their community chats...
I might go so far as to say that if teaching is happening then learning isn't happening. If learning is happening then facilitation might be happening. Teaching is to learning what cigarettes are to health. You need to go farther than ungrading to unteaching.
Hello Travis. Thanks for the comment and for your attention.
I'd love to learn more about what you mean: "Teaching is to learning what cigarettes are to health." I also don't fully understand what you mean by " if teaching is happening then learning isn't happening." If you're willing to elaborate, I'll read and think about what you're saying.
In my classes, I say to my students often that "math cannot be taught, it can only be learned." I think of learning as a creative process in the sense that learning involves creating and strengthening neural networks inside the brain. This type of creation takes active work on behalf of the learner and cannot be done to the learner.
When I say that grading is to learning what cigarettes are to health, I mean that grading distracts students from the work of learning by focusing student attention on the teacher's expectations rather than their own processes. You can learn more about some of the harms of grading at the following blog post:
www.alfiekohn.org/article/case-grades/
If you like this type of thinking, here is a list of resources I've used to change the way I think about grading:
jeffandersonmath.wordpress.com/2022/01/02/essential-ungrading-reading-lists/
In terms of the difference between learning and teaching, I have my students spend a lot of time thinking about what learning is and how it works. Below are some of the posts I write for my students to have them really think about what learning feels like:
thelearningcode.school.blog/2021/01/24/what-is-deep-learning/
thelearningcode.school.blog/2021/03/07/a-model-for-deep-learning/
thelearningcode.school.blog/2021/05/09/progress-through-the-five-stages-of-deep-learning/
The point of all that work is to have students develop a more sophisticated idea of what learning is and how it works. I also challenge my students to read the book Ultralearning by Scott Young.
In all this work, I'm working to center each individual student as the leader of their own learning. My job as a teacher is to facilitate this, like you said. But the ultimate work of learning must be done by each individual student.
I think about using an analogy. An expert teacher is to learning what a master chef is to nutrition. The chef can prepare the meal, think deeply about the nutritional needs of the eater, and do a lot of work to prepare highly nutritious food. But a chef cannot eat the food for another person. It's up to each individual to eat the food, digest it, and to enjoy the benefits of the chef's preparation process.
I think this aligns with what you're saying that facilitation is crucial in good teaching?
My point is that grades diminish the learning experience, ruin my relationship with students, and get in the way of the hard work I need to do with the students.
Thanks again for the comment and cheers to this discussion.
Professional learners...lol. What is that, since learning is intrinsic.
I love your suggestion that learning is most meaningful when it's driven by intrinsic motivation and interest. I'm right with you on this. That wisdom is part of why I feel so strongly about getting rid of grades. The entire letter grading system is based on the theory of behaviorism and uses punishments and rewards to drive learning. This is the antithesis of intrinsic motivation.
This reminds me of the books Punished by Rewards by Alfie Kohn and Drive by Daniel Pink.
In terms of the phrase "professional learner," this gets into a larger discussion of the social contract in college. Our society makes a bunch of promises to young college students to justify the large cost and the sacrifice of many years of their time. Specifically, we make the promise that a college degree leads to higher earnings and a better job.
I talk a lot with my students about the idea that our system too often does not deliver on this promise. I am not at all impressed with the way higher education takes advantage of students and their families.
My joke with my students is that if colleges can make the claim that a degree leads to higher earnings, then any graduate who earns their degree and doesn't earn their desired income should receive a refund check for their tuition. In other words, I want to see a world where colleges are invested in the individual success of students. This is not the world we live in.
The college debt crisis and the STEM education pipeline issues are symptoms of this larger issue. As a college math instructor, I've really appreciated the book "Talking about Leaving Revisited", which you can find below:
casa.colorado.edu/~dduncan/wp-content/uploads/2019_Book_TalkingAboutLeavingRevisited.pdf
The first few chapters of that book illustrate some of the larger issues I see in college STEM classes.
In my work with students, I have two separate definitions I use to talk about the process of working towards mastery of a given subject.
I say that an expert is someone that is really good at a particular subject.
I say that a professional is someone who is paid to do something.
I ask students to think about experts who are not professionals (any expert who has retired from their full-time paid work) and professionals who are not experts (I think about nepotism here).
When I encourage my students to become professional learners, I am pushing my students to think about how to develop themselves as experts in their given field during their education. I encourage them to get so good at their work that they can eventually trade their skills for labor income in the future (i.e. develop expertise first and then leverage that expertise to become a professional). This relates to some of the ideas in the book "So good they can't ignore you" by Cal Newport. I sometimes call this idea "strategic deep learning."
This conversation comes up because many of my students are working to become financially independent as part of their college career. My point is to push them to think critically about how to do that using their learning skills.
I have a larger approach for guiding this work. You can learn more about this at each of the following pages:
jeffandersonmath.wordpress.com/2023/03/17/jeff-andersons-how-to-become-a-strategic-deep-learner-project/
jeffandersonmath.wordpress.com/2023/03/15/five-research-based-learner-centered-learning-objectives-for-college-students/
Does that answer your question?
Thanks again for the comments and for your attention.