Speed Teaching Ourselves

At this past weekend's NMSA conference, I learned the concept of “Speed Teaching” from a session on "The Adolescent Brain: Reaching and Teaching" presented by David Vawter. So I've applied the basis concepts of the Six Rs -- Reflexes, Reflection, Review, Reteaching, Relevancy, Ready for what is next -- to how my colleagues and I might make the most of what we learned at the conference.

Reflexes: The brain is designed to add physicality to learning.
For Friday’s 2-3 minute presentation, use blocking or gestures to represent the most significant thing you learned at the conference. (Don’t be afraid to be silly.)

Reflection: “If you want long-term retention, you must have reflection.”
Blog (or journal) your responses to something powerful you learned at the conference. Share something valuable with a “neighbor” at the coffee station or at lunch or by email. Tell a story – let Susan videotape you? -- that makes connections to emotions to establish memories (or memory retention). Pass anything relevant along to me, and I will be happy to disseminate it.

Review: When the brain creates new connections, it immediately coats that link with a chemical to make it forget what it learned (this is to avoid a brain-wide meltdown). To overcome this, we must consciously create a coating of mylin so it won’t be forgotten. Thus, it is not a matter of how long we study, but of how many times we briefly review what we have learned or how many times we use a new concept. The first review creates one coat of mylin; the fourth creates four coats of mylin. Add up four reviews and you have ten coats of mylin, and a long-lasting connection.

So, review your notes from the meeting. Pass along what you have learned at the NMSA in more than one way: email a colleague, tell stories, teach via blogging, make school-wide proposals on the wiki (I’ve created a space for this), copy a handout for our shared file (to be placed by the copier) and write a note about its relevance. Each time you do something, you will be making the connections stronger in your own mind.

Re-teaching: Contrary to popular belief, it is not the same thing over again only louder and slower. Re-teaching involves new strategies or formats. Teach to a different learning preference each time: oral, auditory, visual, kinetic. Use students who “got it” the first time.

Don’t be afraid to tell people something they’ve heard before. Put it in a new format, perhaps a PowerPoint or iMovie?

Relevancy: This comes in two varieties – making it relevant to your life and making sense of why you are doing it.

Come up with a way you can immediately apply something you’ve learned in one of your classes (thus, making it relevant to your life). Remind yourself you are doing this because it helps you retain what you have learned (thus, meta-cognitively reinforcing your learning)

Ready for what is next: preview.

Give me a blurb of your “nugget” for Friday’s meeting? Pique our interest? I’ll create a trailer? Okay, maybe an agenda?

"My Summer Vacation" Revisited

Yes, it's a cliche, but think about it. Summer is a time when we experience something other than "school" life. What we do on our summer vacations is important, whether we are remembering how to gear down and re-charge or taking off for adventures into the unknown. It's a time worth exploring with our students, worth tapping into to learn what matters in their lives, what their interests are. So I ask some simple questions below that might be used in a classroom, and give my own answers as examples. I'd love to hear your answers too.

1. What is your favorite thing to do in the summer?
That's easy. Read for pleasure. This summer I finished The Known World by Edward P. Jones and re-read Watership Down with my 10th-graders as summer reading. I've started Rand's The Fountainhead, which I've been promising my husband forever that I would read, and I'll be re-reading Black Boy, by Richard Wright, along with my seniors. I've also read some articles in The New York Times, a few issues of The New Yorker, some stage monologues, and lots of stuff on the Internet. For me, it's fun just being able to browse in this and that.

2. Describe something new that you learned how to do this summer.
My husband taught me how to play backgammon. He has yet to beat me at acey-deucey. It's rare for me to be interested in games that don't involve words, but I liked using my mind in a different way, strategizing and taking risks. It was fun.

3. Describe a place that you visited for the first time.
We stayed in the foothills of the Blue Ridge Mountains for a week, on the border between Georgia and Tennessee. Our cabin was built into the steep bank of a creek, and we could hear the creek burbling constantly. At night, we left the windows open to let in the fresh mountain air and the sounds of happy frogs and crickets. We had no Internet or cell phone access, unless we went to town. We hiked to the top of Amicalola Falls (well, Larry did -- I wimped out about halfway). The mountain landscape was simply beautiful -- calm and relaxing, just what I needed.

If these were student writings, I would point out all the possible topics that might be worth pursuing. Plus, I would hope that readers might see a different side of me, learn something about my interests, or find further details about what you already know. Maybe we even have a connection we might not have guessed previously?

So, what about you?