Category: Adaptability

Doing the Deep Work of Education: 3 Reasons It's Needed, 3 Ways to Get Started

2/27/2022

by Heather M. F. Lyke

A simple Google Search or a scroll through a social media feed from an educator, and it’s easy to confirm that this is a hard year—a hard year that follows two previously hard years. This is a truth that has not alluded us here at Third Eye Education: simply explore some of our articles from this past year to confirm:

"Rethinking Education: Using the Pandemic as Inspiration for Innovation," May 2021
"My First Year of Teaching, Again and Again," August 2021
"Saving Students & Saving Ourselves," December 2021
"Meandering Through the Messy Middle, Searching for Solid Ground," January 2022

In the past year—particularly, over the past few months—there is one phrase we hear over and over from educators: We just don’t have enough time.

Yep. That tracks. Over the course of a school day, teachers have classes to prep for, labs to set up, emails to answer, students to follow-up with, make-up assessments to give, test scores to analyze, poor student choices/behaviors to address, copies to make, coffee to drink, emails to answers, bathroom needs to attend to, parents to call, papers to grade, meetings to attend, assignments to create, messes to clean up, referrals to follow up on, chapters to preview, grades to update online, club meetings to facilitate… and those are only the basics. Not to mention what happens when the classroom phone rings: Can you cover __ class during your prep hour? Could you attend this IEP meeting in place of __ since he is out ill today? FYI, there will now be a mandatory after school meeting.

So the day finishes with work undone; which means that teachers take the work home with them, or they stay late to finish it, or they feel guilty that they did neither of the two. Little of this refuels the soul, little of this is why teachers went into the field, and none of this is sustainable for the long term.

While too much to do in too little time may be a truth universally acknowledged in our field, it’s not one to embrace. In Deep Work: Rules for Focused Success in a Distracted World by Cal Newport, readers learn that you must “treat your time with respect” (227) and ensure there are many opportunities to do deep work, or “professional activities performed in a state of distraction-free concentration” (3).

Considering how little time educators have, the likelihood is low that most Third Eye Education readers will have time to complete Newport’s book in the near future (maybe once summer arrives), I bring you the following key reasons and applications for educators:

3 Reasons Why Deep Work is Needed

It increases job satisfaction.
Counterintuitive though it may be, “jobs are actually easier to enjoy than free time, because…they have built-in goals, feedback rules, and challenges, all of which encourage one to become involved in one’s work, to concentrate and lose oneself in it” according to the work of Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi (Newport 84).

Hungarian psychologist Csikszentmihalyi is perhaps most famous for his work on flow states, which is outlined here along with how educators can utilize this concept in classrooms:

Newport notes that a state of “flow generates happiness” and that “deep work is…well suited to generate a flow state” (85). Therefore, to increase satisfaction with work, educators may wish to find more opportunities for deep work, just as educational leaders may wish to remove/limit the many barriers that can get in the way.

It increases the ability to learn new things.
It is not uncommon to hear that “the educational system is broken” nor that someone would like to lead a new initiative but they “just don’t have the energy.” If we want to try new things, if we want to fix broken systems, then we have to have a capacity to learn new and hard things.

Newport notes that “to learn requires intense concentration” (34); yet, we often try to squish it into 10 minutes at the start of a staff meeting, 30 minutes of table conversation in a room where other groups are also talking, or 45 minutes of PLC session that is filled with interruptions by emails or visitors. But learning requires “deliberate practice”: attention “focused tightly on a specific skill you’re trying to improve or idea you’re trying to master” (35) for long periods of time.

The educational system we are working in right now needs change, but to learn and apply what is needed to make that change, we first must ensure there is time for deep work.

It increases productivity.
Deep work pushes past that concept that being busy is being productive. “Doing lots of stuff in a viable manner” isn’t the aim (64). Instead, when deep work is embraced one identifies what tasks are most important and ensures they can be completed during periods of high concentration.

If one has “clarity about what matters” it then “provides clarity about what does not” (62), and knowing the difference allows one to focus on the work that will have the greatest impact. In turn, productivity—at least the productivity around what matters most—is enhanced.

3 Ways to Reclaim Time to Do Deep Work

Take control of your tasks.
Newport notes that the “key to developing a deep work habit is to move beyond good intentions and to add routines and rituals into your working life,” to “minimize the amount of your limited willpower necessary to transition into and maintain a state of unbroken concentration” (100).

Some routines to try:

Batching your work, or scheduling like tasks together, can help with concentration. Batching “hard but important intellectual work into long, uninterrupted stretches” (39) allows focus to be sustained when it’s needed most. Likewise, batching together smaller tasks, like replying to emails or phone messages, allows those smaller, distracting items to be checked off so they will not pull attention away from more important tasks.
Schedule your day. “Divide the hours of your workday into blocks and assign activities” to each block (223). By using Newport’s recommendations, but altering them to work for educators, such a schedule might look something like this:

Shutdown work at the end of the day. Newport notes that “a strict shutdown ritual that you use at the end of the workday” is beneficial and that those interested in doing more deep work should craft “a series of steps you always conduct one after the other” (151). This might look like, at the end of every workday, (1) doing a final check of email, (2) straightening up your desktop, (3) grabbing your empty lunch bag, (4) verbally saying “done” and then (5) shutting off the classroom lights and locking the door. This creates an opportunity for your work-brain to turn off since incomplete tasks can dominate our attention, but “we don’t need to complete a task to get it off our minds;” rather, we simply need to “make a plan” for how it will be completed later (152-153).

Limit distractions.
Some of what Newport suggests when it comes to limiting distractions doesn’t fit in education. For instance, as much as I would love to try his “Don’t Respond” method for dealing with email, I don’t think that would go over well with the staff, parents, students, and community members who email me frequently. Nonetheless, here are some ideas to do work in the education field:

Turn off email notifications during prep hours. For me, it’s the *da-ding* noise of each email hitting my inbox that distracts me, so I mute my computer when I’m doing deep work. I also turn my cellphone on to its “do not disturb” setting during the workday.
Come in early/stay late a few days a week. Since school days are filled with distractions, consider batching tasks that need focus into times when students and colleagues are less likely to interrupt. This could also look like a half-day that you work from home on the weekends. However, be careful not to do this too often: you need down time too (see “Build capacity for future focus” below).
Work outside of your classroom/office: make yourself harder to find. Personally, I love that “coffeehouse feel” I can get in the secondary Media Center, so if I need to really dig into a task, I simply leave my office and make it harder for interruptions to find me, while still knowing if it’s an emergency someone will track me down.
Lock your door, maybe even add a note that says something like, “from 'X' time to 'Y' time I am unavailable because I am focusing intently on providing students with quality feedback, planning engaging lessons built on best practices, or doing a deep dive into what research says will make my students learning experiences more valuable. If this is an emergency, please ; otherwise, please stop by later or send me an email.”

I know there are those who might scoff at some of these suggestions, usually with the argument that we need to be available for our students at all times. While that may be true in some cases, for most of us setting and sharing boundaries like these is a way to teach students time management as well as a way to model the importance of focused work. Setting boundaries lets us become even more available for students in those times when we are not engaged in deep work: these boundaries allow us to be more focused while working with students, as we know our other tasks have already been, or are scheduled to be, completed.

Build capacity for future focus.
Perhaps this is the most counterintuitive of the ways to reclaim time and embrace deep work. To focus deeply, one must also have time allotted for boredom, reflection, meditation, and creativity: this is the yin that balances out the yang of deep work.

In Deep Work, Newport notes that he doesn’t “work at night and rarely on weekends;” yet, during the fall of 2011 to the fall of 2014 he published 20 peer-reviewed articles, won two highly competitive grants, published a book and wrote the bulk of another all while being a full-time professor at Georgetown. His ability to sequester work to Monday through Friday, and to finish each day by 5:30 PM, actually provided him with stronger focus; knowing he had limited time enhanced his productivity and allowed him, upon getting home, to be more present as a spouse and father.

Some ideas for reclaiming the downtown needed to do deep work while at work:

Say no to requests that don’t align with the deep work you are already doing or planning to do.
Do work at work by using some of the strategies outlined above. Leave your to-be-graded pile on your desk, keep your laptop at school, and end your day with a clear plan for tomorrow. This allows downtime to begin the moment you leave work until the moment you return.
Stay off Social Media, which can pull you back into thoughts of work. A simple post by a coworker, or a shared article about teaching, can have your brain back at work in no time. Instead, allow yourself a small window to engage on social media, if you must engage at all.
Schedule downtime by taking an art class, signing up for a yoga class, or meeting a friend for coffee.

By putting into practice some of what Cal Newport recommends, we might be able to make educational change happen faster and achieve more ideal outcomes. Whereas, as Henry Ford is attributed with saying: "if we keep doing what we have always done, we will always get what we have always gotten."

Now, with all of that said, I have just spent two hours doing deep work by focusing on this article (awesome!)—but I did it on a weekend (not so awesome)… So, that is a change I will need to make going forward.

In honor of my own suggestions above, I am now going to turn off this laptop and take a nice long soak in a warm bath so I can better focus on work when I arrive back at school on Monday.

Heather M. F. Lyke is the Director of Teaching & Learning for Dover-Eyota Schools and author of numerous articles focusing on quality education.

Meandering Through the Messy Middle, Searching for Solid Ground

1/16/2022

by Stefanie Whitney

I hear myself using the phrase “messy middle” quite frequently of late. This meander seeks to make sense of what the term “messy middle” even means.

In my mind’s eye, I imagine the messy middle as a place where one is suspended in an ocean between two shores–both shores well beyond reach. Solid ground no longer underfoot, it’s incumbent upon me to make decisions that will, once again, lead me to a steady, grounded place.

Some moments I have experienced this uncomfortable feeling in the classroom and community have been when I have turned over the reins of control and held my breath in wonder about what my fellow humans will do with them. What will they do with the foundation I have built? What will my role look like now? Will they need me? What if a mess is made of the beautiful ground I crafted? What holds? What falls apart? And what was my role in both outcomes?

We cannot possibly know how all of this (envision widespread hands, palms up, gesturing at our world) is going to turn out, which is a bone chilling reality for anyone who appreciates a semblance of control. A reality that seems all the more staggering as each month passes in this extended twilight zone in which we all exist. (Though, I’d argue that messy middles occur whether we are in the middle of a global pandemic or not.)

From here, my mind wanders to William Butler Yeats’ “The Second Coming,” particularly this stanza:

Turning and turning in the widening gyre

The falcon cannot hear the falconer;

Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;

Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,

The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere

The ceremony of innocence is drowned;

The best lack all conviction, while the worst

Are full of passionate intensity.

I am always admittedly stalled by Yeats' use of the word “loosed” twice, placed so closely together. In a little search for an improvement that I’m certain Yeats would appreciate, I arrived at Merriam Webster’s definition of loosed:

Loosed: (1) to cause a projectile to be driven forward with force (2) to find emotional release for (3) to set free as from slavery or confinement

Misters Merriam and Webster are speaking my language. For the purposes of this essay, please focus on the latter two definitions. Because of them, I will leave Yeats’ word choices alone. Also, if I may continue being so bold, it seems clear to me that Yeats was stuck in the messy middle of something, and he leaned on language to help make sense of it. The messy middle. Here we are. The middle of the school year, in the middle of a global pandemic, in the middle of hope for progress.

“...fantasy of control….” – “...the centre cannot hold….”

If we are finding that our old norms, our old systems are not working right now, then perhaps we need to investigate what those systems are built upon. If our souls are unsettled and we feel the bottom dropping out, then maybe our old systems are crashing head-on into our developing values; we are trying to hold our old systems up against an evolving human experience. It’s uncomfortable because that system felt safe and I knew my role, but I see more clearly all those not meant for that old system. They do not belong in it. So we don’t belong here, either. Change is crucial, and hard.

A bit about belonging

Brene Brown’s latest work, Atlas of the Heart, aims to help us identify and name experiences and emotions in order to gain power of “understanding, meaning, and choice.” While delving into the experience of belonging, Brown interviewed 8th graders about what it feels like to belong in a place. In their words:

Belonging is being somewhere where you want to be, and they want you.

Brown juxtaposes the definition of “belonging” against the definition of “fitting in,” which they describe as:

Being somewhere where you want to be, but they don’t care one way or the other.

Brown further explains,

Because we can feel belonging only if we have the courage to share our most authentic selves with people, our sense of belonging can never be greater than our self-acceptance.

Which begs the questions:

Shouldn’t we seek to build a community upon a center?
One where everyone can authentically root themselves?
One Where everyone feels like they are wanted and belong?

Heart is sea,
Language is shore.
Whatever sea includes, will hit the shore.

-Rumi

Brown’s explanation of belonging and Safir and Dugan’s description of a change process take us back to Yeats’ work; this time through the writing of Joan Didion, who borrows from Yeats’ poem for the titles of both a book of essays and a 1976 essay in the Saturday Evening Post. Didion acknowledges that,

It is easy to see the beginnings of things, and harder to see the ends.

Didion, in exploring the upheaval and disruption of the 1970s, writes about the critical nature of thinking for one’s self. Belonging to one’s self. In “Slouching Towards Bethlehem,” Didion states:

I am still committed to the idea that the ability to think for one’s self depends upon one’s mastery of the language.

The words of both Didion and Rumi make me wonder:

Are we guiding students toward mastery of the language–so they are able to know themselves and think for themselves?
Are we giving them language that explains more than that which a system has determined is necessary to be successful?
Or are we also guiding them to master a language that helps them describe themselves? Language that helps them accurately describe how they feel and how they belong? Do we know this language? And are we willing to speak it?

It seems fitting to acknowledge the great loss of Joan Didion with her passing on December 23, 2021.

Again, Safir and Dugan address belonging when considering what a school district chooses to place value upon:

If we accept that success can be defined by a metric -- if we hold true that a child’s test scores or grade point average are determinants of her future -- we will find ourselves forever suspended in a hamster wheel, chasing external solutions, curricula, and validation. But if we believe that every student is more than a number (or a “trauma” story) -- is in fact a complex, layered human being with endless potential, brilliance, and access to community cultural wealth -- we can choose a pedagogy of voice that transforms everything from our classrooms to our adult cultures to our policies. Such a pedagogy says, “I see you. I believe in you. You are safe to grow and thrive here. I want to hear your voice.”

Untethered Moments

During last week’s bone-chilling, sunlit days, while driving through slush and refreeze, a whisper encouraged me to keep driving. Drive past the chain restaurants, the organized meetings, the weight of expectations. Drive until nothing familiar surrounds me, expectations are impossible to meet, and there are no commitments on the horizon. Even now, I’m staring out the window–eyes focusing on everything beyond reach and nothing at all. Maybe my retina and optic nerve are having an argument? Silent treatment is the worst. In all of my efforts to live in the moment–the only moment we can actually count on–here I am, daydreaming about a four-wheeled mode of escape. And it’s funny, because I’m not actually trying to escape this very moment. I am good. I am warm. I have coffee. I’m mostly not hungry.

It’s likely I am trying to escape the foreboding feeling that unsavory moments from my past will repeat themselves -or- maybe I am trying to sidestep future moments that I cannot clearly control in the here and now. Futility at its finest, right?

Nonetheless, I’m untethered right now, but I’m learning what tethers me. Perhaps these two things are the same for others:

(1) Belonging to myself–getting square with my values (for me, compassion and curiosity).

For an exercise on isolating your core values, check out Brene Brown’s Dare to Lead value activity.

(2) A sense of belonging within my communities.

When I’m feeling untethered, is it because the system and structures within which I’m trying to function no longer align with my values -or- because those systems and structures no longer feel like home to me? If I can answer this question, I tend to gather a bit more agency in my own experiences.

It’s not lost on me that I have the privilege to seek out agency in most of my experiences. Do our students have this same privilege? All of our students, I mean? Social and emotional learning is an educational hot button right now, and rightfully so. The more language I have as an adult to work through my discomfort, my emotions, and get clear on my values, the more agency I have when working for equilibrium. As an educator, how can I build systems in my spaces that allow all of us to get grounded in our values, to belong in this community?

The Students’ Take

Recently, I seized an opportunity to talk with students about their experiences with feedback. The questions that guided my work were: What type of feedback feels most actionable to you? What types or approaches to feedback can hinder your growth?
Inevitably, the responses of all 43 students, grades 8-12, revealed themes surrounding relationships, trust, and belonging. Feedback is an action, often a system at play. As an English teacher with limited time, logic centered my feedback, even if emotions (pride, frustration, excitement, passion) bolstered my feedback process. Students also acknowledged the existence of emotions at the heart of their feedback experience. All of the students spoke of how feedback, their teacher, or the classroom environment, made them feel.

Rarely did students talk about grades as the sole reason feedback is helpful, but all students discussed the need to have a relationship with the teacher or person giving feedback and a need to feel a sense of identity and belonging in the class. Some even spoke of the need for passion–from the teacher regarding their quest for students to learn and within the student for the subject area or topic. In short, students want to feel like they belong, like they are seen, and that their voices matter.

I’m struck by how students spoke of values and emotions, yet as adults we often find ourselves rumbling about external systems.

Treading Water

The messy middle can also be explained as a feeling of great discomfort. We have been in this sustained discomfort for months, years even. When I’m uncomfortable, I seek to ease that discomfort as quickly and painlessly as possible. However, I’m learning that, for me, the answer is to slow down, take stock, feel the intensity of and seek to better understand my emotions. Get grounded in my values.

Of course, in this sustained discomfort, we are apt to fight harder to reach one shore or the other; some form of solid ground. But what are we hoping to accomplish with all the splashing, thrashing, and death grips on past systems that don’t serve everyone? What if we normalize the kind of discomfort that bends toward progress, inclusion, and shared humanity?

Maybe the next best step is to calmly look inside at what is causing the turbulence, ground ourselves in our values, and then confidently and slowly start moving in a direction that aligns our value systems with the external systems that demand our attention? In that slow motion, one shore starts to loom larger. We can belong to our messy selves, and we can move with those folk who want us among them exactly as we are.

Stefanie Whitney, EdD, works with the Curriculum and Instruction team in Rochester Public Schools (RPS). She's also been an English teacher, an AVID instructor, and both a high school and a middle school instructional coach in RPS.

Saving Students & Saving Ourselves

12/12/2021

by Amit Sood (with a frame by the Third Eye Education writing team)

No question, this school year has started off like no other. On Third Eye Education alone, these last few months have been fodder for a handful articles rooted in frustration (see: You Have Learned Something/You Have Lost Something, Finding Our Portals to Transcendence, and We Are the Leaders We Seek). Add in the fact that many entered this year thinking it would be a ‘return to normal,’ and it can be a very hard pill to swallow.

When stuck in a situation (or a series of situations, to be honest) that is disquieting, it can be easy to dwell on the on the negative. When drowning in a glass that’s half empty, it’s hard to acknowledge that it’s also half full.

Which is why here we lean on Amit Sood, who we’ve collaborated with before, to highlight (1) a way we can reengage students and (2) a way we can reengage ourselves.

1 | Reengage Students with Voice

In January of 2021, Sood noted the following in his Dear Friend column, first published in the Rochester Post Bulletin:

Want to help someone feel good? Let them speak

Do you know what is common between dark chocolate, surprises, gambling, winning the house in bingo, and meeting people who agree with us? Each of these experiences causes a surge of a chemical dopamine in our brain’s reward network. That surge feels uplifting, sometimes intensely so.

Another activity that increases dopamine in our reward system is talking about the self (saying the word “I”). “I do this,” “I do that,” “This is how I feel,” “I like this,” “I don’t like that,” and so on. Research shows when we talk about ourselves, our reward network activates, and we feel happy.

No wonder 40% of speech and 80% of social media content is people talking about themselves.

When you choose to listen to others mindfully, even if you cannot solve their concerns, you are helping them. This is because when they inform you, their brain’s pleasure center activates. People would even give up a monetary gain in favor of the joy of sharing information. At least that’s what the research shows.

So, a simple way to connect with others and make them happy is to sit back, relax, and enjoy hearing them speak — about themselves. Try this today with someone who may have missed an engaged sympathetic ear for a long time.

Listening to others with complete presence is such a simple way of spreading happiness. No wonder we have two ears for each mouth!

To transfer this to the classroom, might it be possible to increase student engagement by increasing opportunities for students to use “I”?

I felt this book was challenging because…
I think this rubric wasn’t fair because…
I turned this assignment in late because…

It doesn’t mean we can’t still push deeply into content:

I felt this book was challenging because…might lead to ➡ and here are three examples from the text that highlight my point!
I think this assignment too hard because… might lead to ➡ I still don’t understand how to use math mountain—can I use another way to get the answer?
I turned this assignment in late because… might lead to ➡ I don’t understand how this applies to the field I’m planning to go into. Does it apply? Can you show me?

2 | Reengage Ourselves with Antidotes

In March of 2021, also in his Dear Friend column, Sood noted:

Give no one the power to affect your health

Hera was the wife and sister of Zeus, the sky and thunder god in ancient Greek religion. Hera was known for her jealousy and vengeance, which came partly as a reaction to Zeus’ infidelity.

The difficulties Hera faced weren’t unique to her life or her times. Many of us face difficult interpersonal situations that awaken a different Hera within us — the Hera of Hatred, Envy, Revenge and Anger (the kind that produces violent rage). Research shows this HERA predisposes us to a multitude of medical conditions.

Just as a physical body fighting an external infectious agent becomes inflamed and injured, and a country at war finds it difficult to keep its citizens peaceful, when we intend to hurt others — either because they hurt us or because we feel hatred or envy — we hurt ourselves.

Research shows a mind fighting itself or others predisposes the physical body to cardiovascular disease, cancer, infections, inflammation, dementia, and even premature death. In one of my workshops on forgiveness, a participant got up in the middle and said, “I can’t give my ex the power to increase my risk of dementia. That’s a good enough reason to forgive him, as much as I hate to do that.”

The other reason HERA damages our system is that once we are mired in the habit of getting angry, feeling hatred, harboring envy, or seeking revenge with one person, we deploy these missiles to the rest of the world. We paint the world with our negativity and seek out reasons to validate our inner negative feelings. These feelings start defining our life’s course.

Locked in the HERA prison, we start despising the world, jeopardizing our peace.

HERA often sneaks in from an unguarded corner of the mind when you aren’t watching. It then multiplies, like a newly hatched virus against which you have no immunity. Carefully guard your mind — not just its living room, but also its attic, basement and backyard — from any elements of HERA, and sweep it clean when you find them hatching.

Crowd your space with the antidotes — gratitude, compassion and forgiveness. Transform your negative thoughts, so they surrender to these higher values.

When you convert your hatred into compassion, envy into inspiration, revenge into forgiveness, and anger into acceptance, you’ll save yourself and the people you love from much suffering.

To transfer this to our educator selves, might it be possible to “Crowd [our] space with the antidotes — gratitude, compassion and forgiveness?

I’m going to lose my prep hour to sub for a teacher out quarantining…might shift to:
- …but this way at least I can meet the students who I’ll have in class next year. (gratitude)
- …I hope he doesn’t actually end up getting Covid. (compassion)
- …yet I’m not going to make do with the lack of sub notes considering he likely had to leave on short notice. (forgiveness)
I can’t believe she used that racial slur…might be followed by:
- …at least I have a strong relationship with her and we can talk about this. (gratitude)
- …it hurts me to think she may be others who thinks that okay. (compassion)
- …but I’m going forgive this instance of poor word choice now that we have discussed it and start fresh with her tomorrow. (forgiveness)
That email I just received really cut to the quick…might be followed by:
- …yet, at least I know they’re engaged and passionate about this. (gratitude)
- …I wonder what’s troubling them that they felt the need to be so curt and condescending (compassion)
- …I’m going to share this with my principal to loop her in, and then just delete this so I can move forward. (forgiveness)

Perhaps we can use Amit Sood’s ideas as our life raft: two tools that might help us dry out and float. Once safely on a raft, our clothes no longer waterlogged, it may just be easier to see that the glass we’re floating in is also half full.

Dr. Amit Sood is one of the world's leading experts on resilience and wellbeing, executive director of the Global Center for Resiliency and Wellbeing, and the creator of the Resilient Option program. He has also athored many articles and books, including The Mayo Clinic Guide to Stress-Free Living.

The Gift of Reading

12/5/2021

by Heather M. F. Lyke

We all know reading is important. I mean, just take a look at this infographic (aka: my attempt to summarize all the layers of importance).

Since reading is such an essential skill, it’s not surprising that the questions I receive most in my role as Teaching and Learning Director for Dover-Eyota schools revolve around reading.

How can I help my child read more?
Do you have books suggestions for my reluctant reader?
My grandkid seems to be reading below grade-level: how do I get him up to speed?
My niece once loved reading, but now never picks up a book—is there a holiday gift I could get her to help her reengage?

Simply put, there is a lot of passion out there for helping our youth become strong readers.

Plus, ‘tis the season of holiday sales, gift giving, vacation days, and new year’s resolutions…

Combine these truths, and this becomes a perfect time for finding and sharing books, for having extra time to enjoy literature, and for setting new reading goals.

So, what can we do to support young readers and to foster within them a desire to read that lasts a lifetime?

Here are three sets of ideas:

Model It --

Read aloud to your child.
According to Scholastic (2019), a powerful predictor of kids’ reading frequency is having a parent [or other adult] who personally reads aloud to/with the child 5-7 days a week. Commonly, this is something we do with younger children, but recent studies have shown that even middle-school-aged youth love to be read to.

Read around your child.
Show the children in your life that you, too, are a reader. “Children who see adults reading and enjoying it,” according to Pearson Education (2021), “are much more likely to want to read themselves.” Maria Russo and Pamela Paul, authors of How to Raise a Reader, note that “when I’m sitting there on my couch, reading a book, and my kids are doing their own thing, I like to think, I’m parenting right now—they can see me reading this book”—conversely, if “right after dinner, the first thing you do is scroll through your phone, open up your laptop, or watch TV, kids are likely to take note.”

Listen to audiobooks together.
Audiobooks support literacy skills in ways that physical books sometimes can’t. The web resource Reading Rockets (2003) shares that audiobooks model strong interpretive reading, make difficult vocabulary words or dialects more accessible, and enhance listening skills among other things.

Tip: there are a lot of ways to access free audiobooks. Visit the website LibriVox or try the app Libby (you just need a public library card!).

Remove Barriers --

Keep literature in reach.
Pearson Education (2021) shares a few tips: at home, have books on accessible shelves and coffee tables; when traveling, toss a few books in the car or suitcase; and when headed to an appointment, have a book at the ready should there be time spent in the waiting room. Personally, I’m currently reading 4 books: an audiobook, a bedside-table book, a living-room book, and one waiting-in-line book (which I actually access electronically on my phone).

Embrace whatever text they choose.
From nonfiction to fiction, from poetry to graphic novels, from magazines to thick novels, from comic strips to junk-mail…anything with text is an opportunity to build vocabulary, to increase interest, and grow reading stamina. Additionally, each genre has its own unique trends when it comes to plot structures, character development, and literary techniques: reading widely exposes one to all the trends, making it easier to navigate future works of the same genre.

Look past levels.
Once a reader is able to decode basic words, according to the School Library Journal (2020), which is typically around first grade, students should be encouraged to “read a wide range of texts…they should read easy books to things that kick their butt. The variation of difficulty does matter.” Simpler texts can build fluency, enjoyment, and stamina; while a text outside of one’s comfort level can introduce a reader to new vocabulary and increase understanding of what skills they’ve yet to master.

Encourage Interests --

Ask questions.
Reading teachers and authors Karen Szymusiak and Franki Sibberson (2007) share the tip that adults should “…talk about the books they [the students] are reading” by having conversations rooted in “open-ended questions they can use in discussing their reading.” They suggest questions that fit each of three layers:

questions about the self -- How are you like the character of Rory?
questions about the text -- You said it was set in Texas: how do you know? Can you show me where it says that in the book?
questions about the world -- What you read reminds me of what we saw at the grocery store yesterday. How is the puppy in a vest that you just read about like the one we saw with the women getting milk?).

Leverage hook books.
Reading a book series, going on author binges, rereading a favorite book—these sometimes get bad reps. Yet, they are integral to creating lifelong readers. Author Devon Corneal shared on Read Brightly (2021) that rereading helps learners develop strong word recognition, notice patterns, enhance fluency, strengthen comprehension, and foster confidence. Similarly, a reader who is hooked on a series deepens their connections with characters, increases comprehension, spends more time reading, and quickens the process of finding what book to read next, according to Edutopia (2016): likewise, reading multiple books by the same author can have similar impacts.

Celebrate books and reading.
Make literacy a reward. Make going to the library, visiting the bookmobile, or browsing at a bookstore a regular and joyful event. Combine reading with what your learner enjoys. For me, that was lunch with my father at Wong’s in downtown Rochester after spending a summer morning with my mom at the library. For my third-grade niece and nephew, it’s being allowed time to read uninterrupted in their small, end-of-bunkbed nooks they created with their father last year—simple plywood nests filled with blankets, pillows, and a few favorite reads. Lifelong reading is fostered by the memories of contentment we nurture now.

If you ever want to dig more deeply into reading, I’d love to connect! Until then, I hope you and the youth in your life find a great piece of literature to cuddle up with and enjoy this holiday season.

Heather M. F. Lyke is the Director of Teaching & Learning for Dover-Eyota Schools and author of numerous articles focusing on quality education.

Bringing “Extra”-Curricular Activities Into the School Day

10/30/2021

by Sweta Patel

I’m a teacher and also serve as a “Seniors Transitions Advisor” at a local alternative high school. This involves meeting with seniors one-on-one and talking about their plans for after high school and how to best support them. Often, I help our seniors with college and scholarship applications. There is one question that always makes them pause:

What extracurriclar activities have you participated in?

Now, when I see that question, I think about my 9 year old and 5 year old. Regularly, I find myself in the position of a taxi driver, stopping in front of art and dance studios, soccer fields, tennis courts, piano lessons…and the list goes on.

But for our seniors? They usually name classes or activities they participated in at some point during their time at our school:

I volunteered with the Foods class at Channel One and helped stock and organize food items.
I took the music class with Mrs. B. Does that count?
I played in the staff versus student basketball game.
Remember that Service Day we did last year? I volunteered at the Senior Care Center.
I took the Youth Build class and we went to ReStore to volunteer.

I believe there is a population within all of our schools that doesn’t have access to these types of ‘extracurricular activities’ due to any number of factors, including financial constraints, transportation barriers, or needing to work after school.

And yet time spent in these activities often leads to feeling a sense of community and teamwork, learning a skill that may become a lifelong hobby, or even developing a sense of what career path we’d like to pursue.

At our school, as a staff, we agreed that this list of benefits is equally as important as our academic standards. They are not “extra” to us… They warrant being a part of our school curriculum and culture. We want our students to be exposed to a variety of new experiences so that they can identify new strengths and interests and carry them beyond graduation.

The Duiring-the-School-Day Solution

To that end, we completely overhauled how Wednesdays look at our school. On these days, we go by a different bell schedule and master schedule. Each teacher teaches 5 sections - advisory, academic help, and 3 seminars (single or a double block).

During advisory time, students spend an hour deepening their relationship with each other and their advisor. Advisors also use a part of this time to have one-on-one conversations with each advisee, following a set of weekly questions created by our social workers. Past topics include: goal-setting, healthy relationships, coping with stress, and self-talk.

During academic help time, we give students a built-in pause during the school week and use this time to re-teach concepts and help students one-on-one with assignments. This helps to prevent the end-of-the-quarter mad rush that often happens to catch up on the past 8 weeks’ worth of learning.

And during seminar time, teachers choose engaging experiences to offer students, such as:

Batik Pillows and Paper Making
Cooking Competitions
Social Justice Leadership Team
Archery
Rock Climbing
Introduction to 3D Printing
Guitar Lessons
Chess
The Art of Henna

The Logistics

At our school, we are on a 9-week quarterly system. We broke each quarter up into two rotations, consisting of 4 Wednesdays each. We call these our “Student-Centered Wednesdays” because the students get to self-select what their schedule looks like for each rotation. Some rotations, students might be heavy on academic help hours; and during others where they’re feeling academically strong, they might have one advisory period with 4 seminar experiences. Their schedules are centered around their learning needs.

Prior to Each Rotation

Teachers decide what seminars they’ll offer during the upcoming rotation (for the duration of four Wednesdays).

We update the course guide (via Google Slides).

The links take students to individual slides with a longer description of the seminar.

During advisory, students use the course guide to complete a paper schedule. (Our students meet in advisory for 15 minutes each day and for 1 hour on Wednesdays.)

Advisors officially register students on the registration document (via a Google Sheet) by class year (this rotates - sometimes seniors are first, then juniors, and so on).

Students follow their Wednesday schedule for the next four Wednesdays. And the process repeats.

Rotations & Collaborations

While it’s definitely more work to be on this type of rotation system, we feel it’s necessary for the following reasons: Students can try out many different types of experiences throughout the year. Also, if they don’t end up liking an experience, they only have to make it through three more Wednesdays (same goes for the teachers!). But most importantly, it allows teachers to more easily partner with community organizations.

For example, for our Chess Seminar, we’re partnering with the Rochester Chess Club. One of their chess instructors comes out to teach our students, and they only have to commit to four Wednesdays at a time.

Future Plans

As we continue to reflect and revise what these Wednesdays look like, our hope is that we’ll eventually be able to take students to off-site trips (for example, hiking at Quarry Hill or volunteering at a care center). Right now, our experiences are all on-site.

Implement With Purpose

Some may argue that these types of experiences don’t belong within the school day, but at our school, we argue back: We all agree that extracurricular activities have value, but it’s a matter of access to these opportunities. Because our students can’t participate in after school activities, we’re trying to integrate these activities into their school day.

Related listen: Giving Students a Say

If you’re interested in doing something similar at school but can’t on this larger scale, one idea is to replicate it for the last week of each quarter or even a few days each quarter. You’ll be surprised by how many students as seniors will remember these experiences when it’s time to complete that “extracurricular activities” box on an application.

But there’s even a greater reason for more schools to jump in:

When I was younger, I took piano lessons, and this led me to introducing music into my daughter’s life. My husband played cricket and badminton, and he continues to play now as an adult as part of his fitness routine. My 9-year old daughter takes art and dance lessons, and through these, has developed dreams of selling her art one day and making it on the high school dance team. So many of us have these stories.

We’re hoping that through our Student-Centered Wednesdays, our students will generate similar stories of their own. A particular seminar just might change the trajectory of their life.

Sweta Patel is an English teacher at the Rochester Alternative Learning Center in Southern, Minnesota. She also teaches Cell Phone Photography, Personal Finance, and a motivational class for seniors (co-taught with a community college). She feels lucky to work at a small, alternative school that encourages creativity and innovation.

You Have Learned Something / You Have Lost Something

10/24/2021

by Jean Prokott

Part of my classroom décor involves 8 ½ x 11 laminated prints of quotations, in color, that line like a 1990s-inspired wallpaper border. These quotes are about art, or education, or books, or our existential place on Earth, no big deal. I'm not sure the students notice them (perhaps when they zone out they'll take a glance), and, in fact, I forget them, too; they've become omniscient words of brilliance that mean something only when a body needs them to.

Not long ago, I needed a quote about education to jumpstart a journal for my philosophy students. And, like a student I'd jokingly **tsk tsk**, instead of observing my environment, I Googled "quotes about education," which led me to Pygmalion playwright George Bernard Shaw[1]'s: "You have learned something. That always feels at first as though you have lost something." It sounded familiar. I glanced up, and there it was in the wallpaper, written in Georgia font with colorful floral flourishes surrounding it. It'd followed me from classroom to classroom since 2009, when Georgia was still an acceptable font choice.

The line comes from Shaw's play Major Barbara, which is perfectly British in that it hits you over the head with themes of morality vs. materialism. Spoiler: in the end, utilitarianism wins.

If I sit with the quote, it takes different forms. To learn something is to lose naivete. Naivete might be synonymous with innocence, or childhood, or even nostalgia, which makes the loss heartbreaking. Shaw is suggesting the antithesis of ignorance is bliss. Instead, he says knowledge is worth loss. And/or he's saying loss is not loss. And/or: anti-intellectualism is bad. And/or: have you seen Pleasantville?

The quote reminds me of an essay I teach in creative writing that students often love, called "The Things I've Lost" by Brian Arundel. The essay explores the literal and the abstract things we lose throughout our lifetimes, how the small and the large can be one in the same. On Brevity, an education piece by Shuly Xóchitl Cawood notes, "[part of Arundel's essay] is largely focused on beliefs he has lost, and isn’t that the sign of wisdom gained through life lessons?" Wisdom comes from loss, because loss makes us grow; the holes that come from loss need to be patched, and quickly, with the sticky substance of knowledge, which is defined in many ways: grief, hope, intellect, power, reflection. What we've lost is just as much our personal identity, our autobiography, as the things we are or the things we've done.

While this allows for lovely existential reflection, there are ties to education as well--how we learn/lose and how our students do the same. When I showed one of Third Eye Education’s founders, Heather Lyke, the quote, she gave me a perfect response: It's not about "best practices"--it's about "better practices." We have to let go of what we knew was best to find the next best--often there is something better.

There was a time in history when teachers of yore were very excited about worksheets, how they would help students become stronger readers. (I like to think of this conversation: "No, no, see--I'll leave blanks and the students have to fill them in.") There are times when worksheets are great--the blanks are a metaphor for loss, I mean--but I think consensus is that worksheets should never do the heavy lifting. We know now students learn better when they are creating and questioning and writing their own worksheets. Research does not reach an endpoint. We do not say okay, we won research! That's a wrap! Everyone go home! We learn, ∞. This is social science and hard science in harmony. Think of how dull the field of education would be if we ever reached a finish line.

Doing the Deep Work of Education: 3 Reasons It's Needed, 3 Ways to Get Started

3 Reasons Why Deep Work is Needed

3 Ways to Reclaim Time to Do Deep Work

Meandering Through the Messy Middle, Searching for Solid Ground

“...fantasy of control….” – “...the centre cannot hold….”

A bit about belonging

Heart is sea,
Language is shore.
Whatever sea includes, will hit the shore.

Untethered Moments

The Students’ Take

Treading Water

Saving Students & Saving Ourselves

1 | Reengage Students with Voice

2 | Reengage Ourselves with Antidotes

The Gift of Reading

Model It --

Remove Barriers --

Encourage Interests --

Bringing “Extra”-Curricular Activities Into the School Day

The Duiring-the-School-Day Solution

The Logistics

Prior to Each Rotation

Rotations & Collaborations

Future Plans

Implement With Purpose

You Have Learned Something / You Have Lost Something

Archives

Categories

Doing the Deep Work of Education: 3 Reasons It's Needed, 3 Ways to Get Started

3 Reasons Why Deep Work is Needed

3 Ways to Reclaim Time to Do Deep Work

Meandering Through the Messy Middle, Searching for Solid Ground

“...fantasy of control….” – “...the centre cannot hold….”

A bit about belonging

Heart is sea, Language is shore. Whatever sea includes, will hit the shore.

Untethered Moments

The Students’ Take

Treading Water

Saving Students & Saving Ourselves

​1 | Reengage Students with Voice

2 | Reengage Ourselves with Antidotes

The Gift of Reading

Model It --

Remove Barriers --

Encourage Interests --

Bringing “Extra”-Curricular Activities Into the School Day

The Duiring-the-School-Day Solution

The Logistics

​Prior to Each Rotation

Rotations & Collaborations

Future Plans

Implement With Purpose

You Have Learned Something / You Have Lost Something

Archives

Categories

Heart is sea,
Language is shore.
Whatever sea includes, will hit the shore.

1 | Reengage Students with Voice

Prior to Each Rotation