Falling Off the Wagon...and Climbing Back On a (Slightly) Different One

I've been busy.

It's no excuse, but it's true. I've been working hard to publish a second book, QRevolution, which is available for preorder through Smashwords. I've been hosting live webinars every Tuesday and Thursday on technology tools for digital literacy, recording those webinars, and publishing them on my website. I've been creating the outline for my next book and developing ideas for three more books. I've been busy.

And yet...

One of my goals for this first year of being an author was IS to blog about the connections I make between all of the many things I read, view, and research and being a teacher. It's important that I maintain that goal, but as I look at my blog publishing, I haven't posted since September. Unacceptable!

So, in the spirit of cutting myself some slack and recognizing that I'm not perfect, I'm going to revise my goal and work to meet it. Instead of writing every day, I need to back off the blogging a bit. Since I'm already planning and presenting webinars on Tuesdays and Thursdays, I'll plan to blog every Monday and Wednesday with the option of adding Friday on weeks when I have something valuable to share.

How many times do we set goals and, when we get busy, fail to follow through? What happens to those goals? Sometimes we need to just forgive the fail and get back to them. Sometimes we need to reevaluate and alter them to better fit our schedule. In this case, blogging every day was too much. Since I didn't want to write nonsense, I had to find things to write about. I realized that I really only had two or three insightful connections every week, and I was forcing myself to find more. Not only did that make my writing feel forced, but I was spending time and energy on things that were distracting me from my other goals.

How can this help teachers? Ask yourself--how many times have you set goals that ended up being unreasonable, unattainable, or took up too much of our valuable time without returning that value to us in a sense of accomplishment?

Goals should make us feel successful when accomplished, not put upon to even consider doing. When your goals don't give back in a sense of satisfaction, it's time to think about why you're doing them. The same thing applies to teaching, in the biggest sense. You should feel that your teaching is fulfilling, satisfying, and gratifying. That doesn't mean it's not challenging or even frustrating at times. But your overall sense of accomplishment should outweigh any negatives.

If it doesn't, it's time to think about why you're doing it. It may be that you could use some new strategies or a different class or grade because you're bored, not intellectually challenged, or stuck in a rut. It may be that you are focusing too much on the negatives and failing to appreciate the positives, in which case you should step back and try to see your career from another perspective.

I know that I had a memorable moment in my last year of teaching. I just couldn't feel satisfied with my job--at all. Finally, I took a step back to figure out exactly what was keeping me feeling disgruntled. When I saw my teaching from my students' perspectives, I realized the issue--I didn't like the novel I was teaching from--at all. I didn't want to read it, talk about it, think about it. It was a novel chosen by another teacher and in the spirit of collegiality, I'd agreed to teach it. Nothing about the unit I'd created was inspired or even interesting. It had no "me" in it, and I just couldn't feel satisfied. Once I figured that out, I could fix the issue. 

Now, step that back even further. What satisfaction do your students get from what they are learning? Interesting, thoughtful,personally connected activities will satisfy most students. If they are dissatisfied, it might be that they can't find the "me" for themselves. Try discussions, opinion polls, anticipation guides, and forums to help students find the relevance of your teaching.

For more teaching ideas with technology, visit my website at www.angrybunnypublishing.com.

[It feels good to be back!]

Keeping It Simple

I have a working theory that people have optimum and maximum work pressures that push them towards getting things done. When you are working at your optimum pressure, you have just enough on your plate to feel as if you are being productive and your work is meaningful. Optimum work pressure keeps you focused, determined, and working at your very best. Maximum work pressure, on the other hand, is the absolute most you can have in your work queue without completely shutting down. Maximum work pressure is characterized by frenzied, harried behavior and appearance and is a hard state to maintain for long periods. Think: all-nighter studying for a test or writing a paper you've been putting off.

Some people believe that their optimum pressure and their maximum pressure are the same. These are the people who intentionally procrastinate to feel the rush of adrenaline when they finally get started. I used to be one of those. I used to think that I could only do great work if I had some outside pressure and deadline looming over me. I've had some very successful projects completed by procrastinating and letting it come down to the wire to complete.

Here's the problem--there's a third work pressure and that's breaking pressure. When you max out your maximum and slip past the point where you feel that completing the work in front of you is possible, you've hit your breaking pressure. Breaking pressure shuts you down. You lose all interest, focus, and determination because you believe that it's not possible to get something done. Some people still go through the motions and will complete an inferior work product, but most people just move on. It's like missing your exit on the toll road: most people just go on to the next one and pay the extra money. Oh, well.

So, here's the life hack: break things into small pieces and only allow your optimum work pressure on your schedule at a time. Easier said than done, I know. But here's what I've found. If I can set small goals and feel as if I've accomplished something, I'm more energized and willing to tackle the next thing. I'm working at my optimum level.

Sometimes I break my up big goals into smaller ones by scheduling game breaks as rewards. If I get that first three paragraphs of my blog done, I'll go collect my gold in a video game. Or, if something is really big and I know it's going to take a LONG time, I'm set physical breaks. After each little bit, stand up and walk around the room, go freshen up the coffee, take a bathroom break (after all that coffee!)  

Another strategy for feeling accomplished even when you should be overwhelmed is to record (and hence, celebrate) all of the small things you get done. For example, if my big goal is clean the house, then I'm not done until it's clean. I can make a list of all the things I need to do, but that can be really overwhelming and push me to my breaking point--especially since cleaning isn't something that I enjoy doing. So, instead of making a to-do list, I'll just do something, then record when it's done on the dry erase board I have hanging on the fridge. There's a lot of satisfaction in writing down your accomplishments. In fact, once that list of "already done" things get long, I feel pretty good about myself. I start walking around seeing what else I can get done to write on the list. Just recording the accomplishment is a mini celebration of your hard work, which makes the work rewarding. So, just keep it simple--you'll get it done.

What I Learn from Video Games Part 2

If you read yesterday's post, you'll know I'm a sucker for a great game. In fact, I credit Jane McGonigal's book Reality is Broken with legitimizing my love of gaming in the academic world. How amazing her job must be, to always be gaming... heaven!

Anyway, I wanted to continue on my gaming-connecting path and take a look at some other ways that video games- and the lessons I've learned from them- have made me a better teacher.

#1-At first, you don't have to know what you're doing to do it. See Part 1 for details on this gem.

I guess this applies to the art of teaching as well. You don't have to start out as the greatest teacher in the world; in fact, if you think you are the greatest  teacher in the world your first year, you're probably delusional and shouldn't be around kids. Nobody starts out as great. You might know a lot, but applying it in a real-world setting has plenty of challenges- managing a room full of students, managing your own knowledge of students, curriculum, and best practices, finding time to have a life outside of teaching, and figuring out all the power trips and pitfalls in a new (and constantly changing) work environment. I know plenty of amazing teachers that are still learning- and that's probably what makes them amazing.

You don't have to know everything about what you're doing to do it. You don't need to know everyone's name to step foot in the teachers' lounge, know every reading strategy to start reading a book, or know every classroom management technique to start the first day of school. Knowing those things may make your job (and life) easier, but it's not necessary to getting the work done. So stop freaking out about what you don't know, and just do it.

#2- Lay the foundation early and keep adding to it.

Video game lesson #2 comes directly from my current addiction, Knights and Dragons (as well as myriad other great video games. Foundations can consist of skills or knowledge, but it's important to set the stage for future play/ learning by building a firm and broad foundation. I actually got stuck on this part of my current game because I was working so hard to complete quests. The instant gratification of completing a quest was keeping me from seeing the big picture- namely that I needed to upgrade my armor in order to complete the quests. I kept getting stuck, dying just before I could complete each quest, and the heart of that failure was a neglect for building a strong game foundation.

So, here are the basics of the game. You build structures that generate gold. You collect that gold and use it to pay for armor for your knights. You can pay to forge armor together to create stronger armor at higher levels. Stronger armor means that you can withstand greater attacks by monsters. You fight monsters to collect building blocks that allow you to craft different types of armor. Gold pays for the armor, but you must have the building blocks- fire shards, stone slabs, dragon scales, etc.- to make the armor. You earn the building blocks by battling monsters in different game arenas. Quests guide you through the game arenas and push you to conquer more and more levels. [There are more pieces than just that, but that's enough to get you to my analogy.]

The quests push you to move forward, sometimes before you have the foundation to support a forward move. Ultimately, you can't move forward until you have a high enough level of armor to beat the monsters at the game arena. But you don't know if you have strong enough armor until you test it out. Failure means you have to wait to heal before you can try again. Winning building blocks to create better armor means you have to go back to game arenas you've already moved past in order to defeat monsters you've already beaten and earn enough building blocks to create better armor- the goal of which is to defeat monsters that are much stronger.

So, here's the analogy to education. Students build learning habits (structures) that generate access to information (gold)- the better the habits, the easier it is for students to access new information. Students collect that information and craft it into knowledge (armor). The more information you have, the more knowledge you can build. But information alone is not enough to build knowledge- students need skills (building blocks) to craft information into knowledge. This knowledge helps you pass tests/ solve problems (monsters)- both school-based and real-world. The more problems you solve, the more your skills improve and the easier it is to build more knowledge. Getting better, faster, and more adept at solving problems makes future- tougher- problems easier to solve.

Then, there are quests. In the field of education, we call them standards. Whether your school is on Common Core or State Standards, you have objectives that students are expected to accomplish in a particular time frame- before moving on to the next level. Let's continue with this quest analogy, because it offers some key insights into education as a whole. Quests move the game forward. They set expectations for what the next big move should be and put objectives into a logical sequence. That's great- clear, simple guidelines that help students navigate from one learning activity to another and maximize their educational experience.

Here's the problem... or problems. First, students don't always know what the standards (quests) are. I'm not a big fan of posting standards on the board- even in kid-friendly language- because it doesn't really mean anything to students unless completing the quest grants some form of reward. [We'll talk about rewards later.] Second, quests should be big objectives and as such require time to secure all pieces and complete. If you look at only English Language Arts, there are four Common Core strands (reading, writing, speaking/listening, and language) and 42 Anchor Standards if you split reading into literature and informational text. That's 42 quests in nine months- for just one subject! Quests take time, energy, dedication, and a sense of purposefulness- by the one on the quest, not the guide. Good luck with that.

Finally, quests don't take into effect the differences in questers (students). Some students start school with strong foundations- lots of skills and information to craft into knowledge with which to solve problems and gain more skills. Some students start school with no foundation and have to work to build it from scratch. Some students are better strategists than others. Some students have more time to quest than others. Some students "get" how to work the system and accomplish more. Some students have extra money to buy a "Mountain of Gold" or a "Dragon's Bounty" and start with a clear advantage (I'm back to the actual Knights and Dragons game now, but the same principle applies.)

To bring it around full circle, the point is this. Building strong foundations is important to accomplishing any quest- whether the quest is fair, reasonable, or even known is irrelevant to this fact. In order to build a great foundation, you have to keep working at it. You have to build and add, build and add, build and add, then test. If you want to know how well you've built it, you've got to test it, analyze the results, and evaluate the next round of additions. Keep building and adding to your repertoire of teaching strategies, knowledge of environment, curriculum and materials, and all of the outside factors that influence how effectively you teach. For every step up into new knowledge, build two steps out for support. And remember, it's the little things you do that add support for the big risks later on.

"When you become obsessed with achieving a result quickly, the only thing you think about is how to get to your goal, and you forget to realize that our process for achieving goals is just as important as whether or not you achieve them at all. The desire to achieve results quickly fools you into thinking that the result is the prize." - James Clear from Transform Your Habits

This very simple, free, downloadable guide to understanding how to form new habits has some great insights into how people can create positive habits that last. It's a quick and easy read (only 38 pages) and is a practical tool for making small, positive life changes.

What this quote means in the context of life may be important to you personally, but what it implies about teaching is even more valuable. Obsession with quick results is the government mandate in current educational practice. Students in the younger grades test multiple times per year, and students in the older grades have high stakes for the tests they take.

It's a lot like cramming for a history test. It's not getting an A in history that makes you a more historically knowledgeable person; it's the process of understanding why things happened, what were the causes and effects, what were the unexpected consequences, and how we can learn from the past to make a better future. Cramming for a test is not the process. Ultimately, being obsessed with a test grade is going to hinder our ability to learn from the past.

The result is not the prize; the process-with the experience, confidence, and knowledge that it brings- is the prize. It turns out that when we focus all of our energy on the result of our work, we miss the importance of meaningful work itself. This is not to say that all work is life-changing; productive work by definition is transforming, and every time we work productively we not only produce the goal of our work, but the process that changes- even if only minutely- who we are.

Here's a very practical example. We make goals for students that they need to be able to read and comprehend at a certain level by a particular time in their education. That students can comprehend what they read is the goal; there are test that assess whether students have achieved that goal, but if you think the test is the goal, you are missing the point of education. The ability to read and comprehend is the goal- the result of practice, both guided and independent. The ability to read, however, is not the prize and regardless of how quickly you achieve the result of comprehension, it is not the reason for learning to read. We don't want kids to read so that they are merely able to read; we want kids to read so that they DO read- and continue to read- long after we stop teaching them to read.

There is a huge difference between students who have been taught to read and students who are readers. When the process of learning to read- with the experience, confidence, and knowledge that it brings- is the prize of reading, and students who are readers seek out that prize whenever they can. If the only thing teachers are focusing on is the result- that students can read/ pass a test- they've completely missed the point of being able to read, which is to read for the prize of reading.

Once again, I've got to quote Chuck Jones:

Knowing how to read and not reading books is like owning skis and not skiing, owning a board and never riding a wave, or, well, having your favorite sandwich in your hand and not eating it.

In other words, what's the point? Where's the prize? And are we, as teachers, losing sight of the real goal of teaching students to read? It's certainly not just so that they can say they can; it's so they do...and expand their horizons in the process. And that's the whole point.