School Thinking

Kevin Drum, thoughtful as usual, wonders if the memory of his quizzing of a four year old years ago is accurate, as a year or so later a kid who clearly had mastered basic math could hardly do it at all. It turns out there is some evidence that people learn on a "U" shaped curve, that we get a handle on a cognitive skill, demonstrate it well, start processing it deeply, and become confused before the skills become more deeply set.

There's evidence that this U-shaped pattern is common (this paper, for example, compares 7-year-olds and 9-year-olds on certain kinds of math problems and finds that 7-year-olds do better). So is this what happened with my four-year-old friend? Did she learn simple arithmetic, then get confused about it during kindergarten, and then learn it for good in first grade? Maybe. Maybe I didn't imagine the whole episode after all.

If this is true, it obviously has disturbing implications for the use of standardized tests in primary schools to evaluate teacher performance. If students routinely go through U-shaped learning curves, it means that a terrific third grade teacher might produce mediocre test scores if her kids tend to be in the trough of the U at year-end, while the fourth grade teacher who gets the kids the following year reaps the benefits.

I think we all have "U" shaped learning experiences, and for me it is another example of how the exigencies of profiting off of schools both politically and fiscally drive very simple minded "solutions" to educational issues. It also highlights a self-knowledge problem for students: what sort of kid might interpret the middle phase of her own learning pattern as a an end-point and thus evidence of inability and failure?

Something to think about.

Mindfulness

  It is only April, but teachers and students feel year's end acutely: there is a lot to do. The other side of seeing year's end approach is to cast an eye over what we've done. 

   One of our goals this year was to make the class schedule more rational and predictable. This sounds absurd; of course a schedule should be rational. But ours really wasn't. It evolved over the years out of a commitment to meeting what students considered important, be it particular subjects or class formats. For instance, our classes tend to be small, and our school year is divided into trimesters. As a result, we also tend to have vast number of classes, which can be quite labor intensive, and over all, rather confusing. So we have radically simplified things. Our transcripts now make much more sense. This is important, as most of our students go on to college.

  The variety of classes is still significant, but they are embedded in a larger class format such as American History or Science. 

   That has been one change, ongoing. A second has been quite a bit of experimenting with how to incorporate mindfulness into the curriculum. We begin the day with meditation, have a moment of silence at lunch, end the day gathered quietly. We teach yoga, martial arts, and meditation, and the psychology class is organized around developing self-awareness. Importantly, however, I think a TAS style is evolving regarding teaching mindfulness, and it has emerged from our typical approach: a bit freewheeling, restless, and very student driven.

  

  A mindfulness listserv I subscribe to provided an opportunity for some comments of mine:

All of our students...begin the day with any of a number of mindfulness exercises. It is a 25 minute period that I usually lead, and we begin with a modest ritual (sitting still, paying attention, lighting incense) and then I get a feel for where the group is at. Sometimes I have them do some pretty vigorous warm ups, and then some sitting. Sometimes we shake out our bodies and get pretty ridiculous about it. Sometimes we sit zazen, sometimes with a brief talk, sometimes not.   We may do a group shout, or walking about very slowly, deliberately, and then gradually speeding up to a manic run. This is a favorite of mine, especially in winter, as the kids are often so sluggish and dark. After the run around, I have them lay down on the floor, every which way, and ask them to notice their hearts beating, their breath slowing down, the changes in their body state. We do a simple body scan, noticing changes and warmth and discomfort, eventually becoming very quiet. I often end by asking them to notice what *they* want to do- stretch, lay there, pop up, and tell them they can leave the dojo when they feel like it. Ending in this way is very grounding and empowering. I strongly recommend some version of this.    I feel that responding to their states with a variety of techniques works well, and helps them develop a wide sense of the ways one can be aware, and learn to self-soothe.    We always have a moment of silence before the midday meal, and at the end of lunch we gather in the dojo again for five minutes of zazen to transition to the next part of the day.    At the end of the day, a small group of students lead a final meditation. Again, very empowering.    I suggest becoming familiar with Gendlin's Focusing training- check out Anne Wieser's book The Power of Focusing; it is very compatible with all mindfulness practices and adapts well to teenagers.    Again, I can't emphasize enough how important the vigorous physical movement is, and the grounding in the body. Also, I strongly suggest that when you lead groups do so by suggesting a given technique- for instance, "Now that your body is a little more settled, you might want to imagine a lovely little park, with a brook and sunshine and lots of trees...but if you would rather not, just try to stay still etc etc"   Giving choices like this allows the student to have a more personal and empowering experience. After all, there is no way of evaluating how they are doing, so it is a great chance to help them explore freely.    I also suggest creating a language of exploration, mystery, relaxation, and surprise- that their inner world is very much worth getting to know, that it is theirs alone, and no one can judge the quality of their experience. This is important. Without this, how can they learn to experience without reflexive judgement?

 More on this later in the week.

Sleep and other basic things

If your teenager is having trouble the first things to consider are sleeping, eating, hydration, and safety. Unfortunately, so much of the first three are habits long cultivated in the home, and are very difficult to alter once they become problems and are compounded during adolescence. Nevertheless, these are worth taking a long look at.
It is one thing to wring our hands over the poor eating habits and lack of sleep that characterizes the average teenager, it is another to engage them in a deeper look. Often enough things are not what they seem. Take sleep for instance. The everyday is understudied, and sleep, for all the research that has explored it over the last 20 years, is still not seen by many as all that worthy of consideration. The Times today has an interesting item on the subject, some speculating on sleep itself:

http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/04/21/what-is-sleep/

Counterintuition?

  The psychology class I am currently teaching is mostly about intimate relationships, and the way "attachment"  to a caregiver one's early years is such a profound influence. This following item is interesting...but as Ezra Klein asks, how does one regulate one's own attractiveness?

Physical appearance plays a crucial role in shaping new relationships, but does it continue to affect established relationships, such as marriage? In the current study, the authors examined how observer ratings of each spouse's facial attractiveness and the difference between those ratings were associated with (a) observations of social support behavior and (b) reports of marital satisfaction. In contrast to the robust and almost universally positive effects of levels of attractiveness on new relationships, the only association between levels of attractiveness and the outcomes of these marriages was that attractive husbands were less satisfied. Further, in contrast to the importance of matched attractiveness to new relationships, similarity in attractiveness was unrelated to spouses' satisfaction and behavior. Instead, the relative difference between partners' levels of attractiveness appeared to be most important in predicting marital behavior, such that both spouses behaved more positively in relationships in which wives were more attractive than their husbands, but they behaved more negatively in relationships in which husbands were more attractive than their wives. These results highlight the importance of dyadic examinations of the effects of spouses' qualities on their marriages. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2009 APA, all rights reserved)