#daniel willingham

In the Clifford Stoll/Daniel Willingham tradition please add Joelle Renstrom, writer and instructor, at Boston University that seems clueless as to why any student would rather stare at a computer screen rather than listen to her presentations. Like Willingham before her, she wrote a rather extensive article, And Their Eyes Glazed Over, on Aeon.co bemoaning the fact that her students would rather stare at the screen on their laptops than listen to her. Can students that are on their devices actually learn, she wonders.

"Some researchers think that we’re addicted to our technology. Psychologists have for years debated whether to add Internet Addiction Disorder to the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual (Internet Gaming Disorder is currently in the ‘Conditions for Further Study’ section of the DSM). Advocates argue that internet addiction involves all the classic components of addiction: excessive use, withdrawal, tolerance and negative repercussions. But it’s tricky to distinguish between compulsion and addiction – some psychologists don’t believe that internet addiction is an actual disorder, but rather a consequence of boredom or unhappiness (similarly, television addiction isn’t an official disorder, either)."

This could have come straight from a Willingham lecture. Willingham once wondered why a student would be more interested in her Aunt's Cookie recipe than what he had to offer. What could possible be the reason?

And that is EXACTLY the question that every single one of these professors need to be asking.

Why is what is on a screen more interesting than what I have to say and what I am teaching?

There is very little self reflection from these professors. Are they good lecturers? Is the subject interesting? If not, how can it become interesting? Does my class reflect the needs of my students? Does my class offer a wide variety of learning strategies or is it sit and get? How can I meet the needs of my students and meet them where they are? Am I forcing students to adapt to my teaching style, or am I adapting to their learning style? Who is the customer here?

What have they done to make whatever they are doing more interesting than what is on the little screen? Renstrom even dips into the weird land of "Well, they are paying for it, they SHOULD be better students" when she says "One might think that the whopping $65,000 cost of attending Boston University for a year would provide ample reason to maintain focus during class, but one would be wrong."

I would venture to say that if I were paying $65,000 a year for an education, that the education better be the greatest education that I could ever get! Is it worth $65,000? It better use the latest educational methodologies. It better utilize the best teachers and the best teaching strategies. One of the teaching strategies she might use is the one where the teacher simply says "screens down" when they want students to pay attention. It is used in K12 schools around the world. Perhaps that particular strategy hasn't made it to Boston U yet.

Renstrom talks about having her students do reflection, and how they tell her how they procrastinate and are generally terrible students. But she never says how many of these distracted students actually do on her assessments? Do they all fail? Does she have a lot of failures compared to her colleagues? Is she passing her students because of that cool $65K they pop into the coffers every year? How does her failure rate compare to nearby similar universities? If her students are passing, then what is the issue?

I find it amazing on the lack of self refection that these professors do when they say complain about tech in their lecture halls. Then I get a chuckle when they use technology to complain about technology.

Cory Turner, NPR, March 17, 2015

In his new book, Raising Kids Who Read, Daniel Willingham wants to be clear: There’s a big difference between teaching kids to read and teaching them to love reading.

And Willingham, a parent himself, doesn’t champion reading for the obvious reasons--not because research suggests that kids who read for pleasure do better in school and in life.

“The standard things you’ll hear about why kids should read I actually don’t think are very strong arguments,” he says. “Because if the goal is to become a good citizen or the goal is to make a lot of money, I can think of more direct ways to reach those goals than to read during your leisure time.”

Willingham wants his kids to love reading because, he says, “for me it’s a family value. It’s something that I love, something that I find important. I think I gain experiences I wouldn’t gain any other way by virtue of being a reader. And so naturally I want my children to experience that.”

The professor of psychology at the University of Virginia uses his new book to map out strategies for parents and teachers hoping to kindle that same passion for reading.

What are a few things we can do when kids are young to set them on a path to being passionate readers?

Before preschool, probably the most important thing you can do is to play games that help your child hear speech sounds: rhyming games, reading aloud books that have a lot of rhyme in them and other types of wordplay, like alliteration. That’s helpful.

Once they get that basic idea, you can get a little fancier. And these are the games that kids really love--where you play around with speech sounds.

If you had a child named Billy. You could say, “Daddy’s name is Cory. What if we took the first sound in Billy’s name, and my name is now Bory?” That kind of stuff is comic gold for kids. I talk with a lot of kindergarten teachers who say it’s hard to get kids to stop doing stuff like that.

Banana-fana-fo-fana...

Exactly. You know, Dr. Seuss is full of that. Nursery rhymes are full of that. And it’s been known for a while that kids who grow up in homes where they are exposed to nursery rhymes learn to read more readily than other kids.

But how do you foster a love of reading in young children?

The most obvious is to be a model of someone who loves reading. One of the things I hit hard in this book is the idea of creating a sense in the child that this is what we value in our family. I think a lot of parents don’t appreciate what a powerful message that can be for kids--like the things that are on your wall, the rules you set in your household, who parents talk about as the people they respect.

You should model reading, make reading pleasurable, read aloud to your kid in situations that are warm and create positive associations. But also setting a tone where our family is one where we like to learn new things. We like to learn about the world, and a big part of that is reading. Developing a sense in the child that I am in a family of readers before the child can even read.

The second big piece I would recommend is you have to make reading the most appealing thing a child can do. It’s not enough that the child like reading. If they like reading but there’s something else available that they like more, they’re going to choose that. The easy way to start is to put books in places that your child would otherwise be bored. The most obvious one is in the car. Part of that is also making sure you’re not providing other types of ready entertainment at every moment.

My wife put a basket in our bathroom, full of kids magazines. My 6-year-old reads them voraciously, and now his 3-year-old brother copies him.

My 9-year-old is a very passionate reader, and I think her younger sister is, too. But I think it’s in no small part that she grew up watching her older sister do this.

Do you think digital devices are a) keeping us from reading and b) keeping us from being able to focus?

LA Johnson/NPR

In his new book, Raising Kids Who Read, Daniel Willingham wants to be clear: There's a big difference between teaching kids to read and teaching them to love reading.

And Willingham, a parent himself, doesn't champion reading for the obvious reasons — not because research suggests that kids who read for pleasure do better in school and in life.

"The standard things you'll hear about why kids should read I actually don't think are very strong arguments," he says. "Because if the goal is to become a good citizen or the goal is to make a lot of money, I can think of more direct ways to reach those goals than to read during your leisure time."

Willingham wants his kids to love reading because, he says, "for me it's a family value. It's something that I love, something that I find important. I think I gain experiences I wouldn't gain any other way by virtue of being a reader. And so naturally I want my children to experience that."

Find Willingham’s entire interview with the NPREd blog here.

I first heard of Dan Willingham, as did most educators, when he came out with his book “Why Students Don’t Like School.” He even was nice enough to do an interview with me on my old website, which is now lost to the ages. Essentially, Willingham took the position that despite anything you may have heard about how the brain works and how kids are different than their chronological peers from long ago in terms of how they learn, the brain has not changed that much, and that teaching and learning should be fact based and full of rote memorization just like in the old days. The more facts you can remember about something, the better you can argue and solve problems says Willingham. All that stuff about multiple intelligences is hogwash, and the only brain based learning we should listen to is his. To hell with Medina and his Brain Rules. The idea of multitasking is not true, kids have just learned how to switch quickly from task to task (something I tend to agree with). All of those crazy brain based learning strategy professional developments you have been to? Pretty much a waste of time to Willingham and to you too he might say. Bloom? Throw him out the window!

Willingham is a real life cognitive psychologist and uses that background for both giving his arguments gravitas but also to brush off any kind of opposing argument. “I know what I am talking about and you don’t” is starting to become increasingly his modus operandi. His writings, especially those online, are becoming not so much those of a thoughtful academician, but more of Carl Fredricksen, the old man from UP. Get off my mental lawn dammit and turn off that cell phone!

This has become most apparent in a recent posting he made about students in classes using laptops to go “off task” during lectures. “What to Do about laptops in lectures?. In it, he goes all bipolar and says on the one hand he likes that some students can help him using technology: “In the middle of a lecture I might ask someone to look something up that I don't know off the top of my head.” On the other hand, he hates the ideas that students could possibly become distracted by the web. “On the other hand, the potential for distraction is terrible. I've walked in the back of the classroom of many of my colleagues and seen that perhaps 50% of the students are on the Web.” So he hates the idea that students can use the web when it suits them, but also likes the idea that students can use the web when it suits him. He cites some research about the effect of the effect of Laptops on multitasking, something I am almost certain he dismissed earlier that the brain is incapable of doing. (One wonders if students grades have suffered in his class since the rise of laptops? Are more students failing? Are more dropping out?

Many teachers, young and old, will take issue with the idea that it is their responsibility to be interesting.  “Damnit, Jim!  I’m a teacher, not a comedian!”  Please understand that there is a difference between being engaged and being entertained.  It is your job to engage your students.  If you don’t, they will find some other way to curb their boredom.

Helpful Hint #1: TALK LESS

One of the most frequent reasons that students begin to fidget or get out of their seats without permission is that we try to keep them still for too long.  A general rule of thumb is that the age of the student is about how many minutes of direct instruction s/he can handle.  At the middle and high school level, make 15 minutes your absolute maximum.

“How am I supposed to cover an hour of material if I can only talk for 15 minutes?!”

The easiest way is to break your presentation into chunks.  Talk for about ten minutes, or until you come to a logical cut-off point, and then ask the students to do an activity that requires them to process what you’ve said.

·       “Partner A, please tell Partner B everything you can remember about what I just said. . . . Partner B, what did Partner A leave out?”

·       “At the bottom of your notes, write one sentence that summarizes everything I just said.”

·       “Look over your notes and find something you don’t really understand.  Write a quiz question whose answer would clarify this concept for you.”[1]

While you may think you don’t have time to do activities like this, you actually don’t have time NOT to.  In the words of legendary basketball coach John Wooden, “If you don’t have time to do it right, when will you have time to do it over?”  Any of the above activities should take fewer than five minutes, including sharing time.  Neglecting to build in this processing time means that most of your students will never transfer the information from working memory to long-term memory.  Tomorrow, you’ll end up having to reteach most of what you covered yesterday. 

So keeping your students engaged not only cuts down on misbehavior but also increases retention and comprehension.  Additionally, it’s low-calorie and fat-free.

Helpful Hint #2: MAKE YOUR LESSON PASS THE SO-WHAT? TEST

I once watched a first-year middle school science teacher present a lesson on viruses and bacteria.  The PowerPoint was well-organized, the information was presented coherently, and at the end of the period, the students were able to articulate the difference between a bacterium and a virus, which had been the day’s objective.  By most objective standards, the lesson was a success. 

I could not help wondering, though, “So what?!”  If I’m eleven years old, why should I care what the difference between a bacterium and a virus is? 

The answer to this question has traditionally been, “Because it’s on the test.”  Unfortunately, your class may be filled with students who don’t care about grades.  Furthermore, let’s assume that it’s on the test because it’s important.  WHY is it on the test?  Why would anyone need to know that there are fundamental differences between viruses and bacteria?

Dr. Daniel Willingham, author of Why Don’t Students Like School? explained that the material we want students to know constitute partial answers to a bigger question.  By itself, the answers are not very interesting, but the question is.  Unfortunately, we teachers are sometimes so consumed with giving kids the answers that we neglect to spend much time letting them know what the question is.

If you let your lessons be guided by questions, rather than answers—spending a good portion of your planning time figuring out what the question(s) is/are—your students may find your class far more relevant and interesting than if you simply ask them to absorb answers. 

Let us return to the middle school biology class noted earlier.  Imagine if the teacher had begun the class by telling her students, “By the end of the period, I want you to be able to tell me whether it would be easier to cure a disease caused by a virus or by a bacterium and give me reasons from today’s lesson.”  Now the students have a reason to pay attention, to place all the bits and pieces of information in a context, and to exercise some critical thinking skills, rather than simple recall.

The same goes for any subject:

·       How can figurative language allow a writer to describe something that is indescribable?

·       How does long division help us keep things fair?

·       If the British had won the American Revolution, how would we describe the Boston Tea Party, the Stamp Act, the Boston Massacre, etc.?

Coming up with questions like these is probably the hardest part of writing a strong lesson or unit, but it is what will make your teaching dynamic and effective.

Helpful Hint #3: JUST BECAUSE THEY’RE ENGAGED DOESN’T MEAN THEY’RE LEARNING.

I think it was Ernest Hemingway who cautioned, “Don’t confuse movement with action.”  It is a wonderful thing when your students enjoy the activity you designed for them.  Unfortunately, a common misconception is that student engagement is synonymous with fun.  Engagement means the kids are interested.  They may be entertained or they may simply be very intensely focused.  As I’m writing this blog post, I’m highly engaged, but I’m hardly entertained.

A further misconception is that engagement/entertainment is a valuable end in and of itself.  The purpose of engaging students is to 1) cut down on misbehavior and 2) increase effort, retention and comprehension.  Don’t allow yourself to fall into the trap of wasting hours planning “cute” activities that do little to focus your students’ attention on the necessary learning.  You’re not a party planner; you’re a teacher.