The Art and Science of Remembering

 his week’s article summary is The Art and Science of Remembering.

I have always been fascinated by how and why we remember things. This article summary from last year focuses on the difference between episodic and semantic memories. 

Why is it that I can easily recall the theme song of Gilligan’s Island and the starting line-up of the 1967 Cardinals baseball team, but I struggle remembering Trinity parent first names?

As you’ll see in this article, remembering isn’t about how intelligent we are. Rather it’s about employing strategies that over time transfer information from working (or temporary) memory to long-term memory.

The essence of remembering is to frequently practice recalling the content over a period of time. (Proof that cramming the night before an exam doesn’t work.)

I remember the Gilligan’s Island theme song because I watched the show so often as a kid and probably sang it with my buddies and hummed it to myself on the bus to and from school. 1967 was the year I began to follow baseball and as the Cardinals won the World Series that year, their starting line-up (Lou Brock, Curt Flood, Orlando Cepeda, Julian Javier, Tim McCarver, Dal Maxvill, Mike Shannon, and Roger Maris) became my standard of a winning team.

Beyond frequent practice, pneumonic devices are an effective strategy in helping us remember a lot of information by organizing it into a concise, connected pattern. We often use pneumonic devices to help us remember things in our working memory;  for instance, when my wife asks me to pick up multiple items at the grocery store, I often create a goofy story with the 5-6 items to help me remember them. But pneumonic devices can also assist us in being able to frequently practice and recall information so it has time to ‘stick’ in long-term memory. Think of HOMES for the Great Lakes or ROYGBIV for the color order of the rainbow.

These techniques hold true in schools. As the linked article discusses, the content we learn, i.e., it’s stored in long-term memory, results from frequent practice over time like asking students to remember what was discussed the previous day, week, etc. Similarly short, periodic assessments on what’s been previously been covered helps content stick in long- term memory.

The biggest point for kids to know about remembering is that, except for a few vivid episodic memories that result from big emotional events, none of us remembers things without employing memory strategies and techniques. 

So, ideally, none of our current students when they get to college will ever have to cram for a final exam!

Joe 

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Cramming for the exam, repeating someone’s name: experts say they’re not that effective at solidifying a memory.

Memories don’t just happen — they’re made. In the brain,  the process involves converting working memory — things we’ve just learned — into long-term memories. Scientists have known for years that the noise of everyday life can interfere with the process of encoding information in the mind for later retrieval. Emerging evidence even suggests that forgetting isn’t. failure of memory but rather the mind’s way of clearing clutter to focus on what’s important.

Other research shows the process of imprinting memories is circular, not linear. “Every time a memory is retrieved, that memory becomes more accessible in the future,” says Purdue University psychologist Jeffrey Karpicke, who adds that only in recent years has it become clear just how vital repeated retrieval is to forming solid memories. This helps explain why people can remember an event from childhood — especially one they’ve retold many times — but can’t remember the name of someone they met yesterday.

Karpicke and colleagues have shown that practicing retrieval, such as taking multiple quizzes, is far superior in creating solid memories than doing rote memorization. Self-quizzing — with flashcards or other means — can be an effective way to solidify new knowledge into memories, but the best way is to space those quizzes out, rather than doing them all in one sitting.

One key to memorization as referenced in a TED Talk is associating the mundane with the interesting or even the bizarre. People have exceptional visual and spatial memories and the crazier, weirder, more bizarre, funnier, raunchier the image is, the more unforgettable it’s likely to be.”

Researchers have scanned the brains of World Memory Champions while they were memorizing facts and detailed images. The results showed that “superior memory was not driven by exceptional intellectual ability or structural brain differences; rather, superior memorizers used a spatial learning strategy, engaging brain regions such as the hippocampus that are critical for memory and for spatial memory in particular.” It’s not that memory champions are smarter than everyone else. They just work hard at remembering, and therefore apply more of their brains to the task.

If creating a Memory Palace seems too involved or absurd, there are simpler strategies you can try, like taking a nap or doing nothing at all for a period of time. Studies have shown that sleep is important for memory formation, and naps function just like overnight sleep.

Several studies show that sitting quietly and doing nothing — what’s called “awake quiescence” — helps people remember more. The idea is that when you learn something new, what you do next is crucial in helping you retain that information, and taking a pause might be the best choice to let the brain process new information.

The formation of new memories is not completed within seconds; rather activities engaged in for the first few minutes after learning new information really affect how well we remember this information after a week.

The ultimate takeaway is that improvements in recall may require the adoption of a process, even if it’s a conscious effort to spend some time not doing much thinking at all.

 

Growth Mindset in Cultural Competency

This week’s article summary is Growth Mindset in Cultural Competency.

 

As a grizzled veteran of life, I have been disappointed by the current ‘cancel culture’ climate. For those of you who aren’t familiar, ‘cancel culture’ results from looking at famous person’s life and if he/she ever did or said something inappropriate, objectionable, or offensive, then basically destroying or ‘canceling’ his/her career henceforth.

It makes me thankful I’m not a celebrity as I make mistakes and faux pas every day. Looking back on my missteps, I most likely would have been ‘canceled’ before my 23^rd birthday!

 

The ‘cancel culture’ phenomenon connects to this week’s article summary that takes Carol Dweck’s Growth Mindset and applies it to DEI work. 

 

As you all know, the premise of a Growth Mindset is we all are on a continuous journey towards improvement. We get better through hard work, perseverance, practice, reflection, and strong mentorship and guidance. 

 

And the article points out a Growth Mindset should extend to DEI work.

 

I know our country has become overly polarized, binary, sanctimonious, and intolerant of difference or dissent, yet my personal mantra is to try to keep an open mind, to recognize that no one side of a story is the absolute truth, and to avoid being judgmental.

 

No one is perfect and we all have made and will continue to make mistakes. Yet, unlike the ‘cancel culture’ climate, I don’t believe most mistakes (clearly the truly heinous, extreme ones are inexcusable and warrant extreme consequences) justify destroying a person’s career. How about some grace and forgiveness and an opportunity to atone and learn?

 

Using a Growth Mindset to counter the article’s myths on complex DEI topics and discussions can help us dialogue across difference, become more culturally competent, and work together for a more just and equitable society and world.

 Joe

 

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Everyone knows that conversations about identity, inclusivity, and cultural competency can be touchy. That’s why facilitators typically establish norms: “Lean into discomfort,” “Assume positive intent,” and “Listen to understand.”

And yet in a recent discussion on teachers’ implicit bias and the resulting underperformance and over-disciplining of students of color, one teacher erupted with “I am not racist! I treat everyone the same — I don’t care if my students are black, white, purple, or green; they all have a fair shot in my classroom!”

 

And yet after a teacher unveils an upcoming third-grade unit on family that will discuss different kinds of families, including adoptive parents, different race parents, foster parents, grandparents as primary parent figures, same-sex parents, and more, one parent raises serious concerns. “Children are so innocent, and they don’t notice these differences. Why do we have to expose them to ideas they’re not ready for?”

 

As an educator, facilitator, and trainer, I have found that the scenarios above are more common than not because many cultural myths proliferate. If we are willing to move beyond these myths and integrate a growth mindset into cultural competency work, we can progress toward the truly inclusive communities we all aspire to be part of.

 

I have incorporated a Growth Mindset into my diversity trainings and workshops, and witnessed significant shifts in minds and hearts. Several times, veteran faculty who, in the past, have responded to professional development with guilt, defensiveness, or outright dismissal have expressed a sudden understanding, a curiosity to learn more, and an eagerness to implement changes in the classroom.

 

When we unpack the fixed mindset nature of three common myths surrounding cultural competency, we see how having a growth mindset can help us move beyond the silence and paralysis, and surface political correctness that can hinder our forward progress.

 

Myth 1: All or None: The “All or None” myth teaches us that there those who are “with it” and those who are not.  Under this myth, those of us who understand or experience one of the societal isms (racism, sexism, classism, ableism, ageism, heterosexism, ethnocentrism, etc.) automatically assume that we understand the issues of other isms. “As a woman, I understand oppression — I know what it must be like to be poor in this world.” This myth also makes us unwilling to acknowledge privilege surrounding one of our identities because we experience oppression in another. “As a gay man, I wouldn’t know what white privilege feels like.” Finally, this myth implies that if we make mistakes or have an area of weakness or ignorance, it must be because we are not culturally competent after all. “You don't know what cisgender means? Wow…” This myth keeps us from asking questions when we don’t know; we spend more energy protecting our competency status rather than listening, learning, and growing. With a Growth Mindset, we understand that there is always room to grow. No one can fully master all aspects of cultural competency for all cultural identifiers, and mistakes are inevitable. With humble curiosity, we seek to better understand ourselves, understand others, develop cross-cultural skills, and work toward equity and inclusion.

 

Myth 2:  Mistakes and Moral Worth: The “Mistakes and Moral Worth” myth teaches us that those who offend or hurt must be doing so because they are bigoted and morally deficient, and good-hearted people do not speak or act in ways that marginalize. Under this myth, those of us who make an offensive comment, even if unintentional, are attacked as though we had professed to be a member of a hate group. “You are such a sexist pig for saying that!” We feel morally justified in treating others inhumanely for their ignorant behavior. “People who act like you should be fired.” We deny hurt feelings of others when they point to our words or actions as their cause. “I am a good person – what I said was not homophobic.” Consider the social media response to any public figure caught saying anything remotely offensive, as well as the public figure’s defensive responses. This myth leaves us afraid to speak our mind for fear of public shaming. It keeps us focusing on our intentions rather than on our impacts.  We try to prove our moral worth by debasing others who have displayed shortcomings. With a Growth Mindset, we understand that good people can make mistakes. Mistakes do not define us. And when others make mistakes, we are likely to respond with patience and desire to teach, understanding that it’s possible to dislike an action without disliking the person.

 

Myth 3: Tonsils of Bias: For the final myth, I borrow heavily from Jay Smooth’s TEDx talk, “How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love Discussing Race.” The “Tonsils of Bias” myth teaches us that bias and prejudice are like tonsils. We either have them or we don’t — and we can get them removed. Under this myth, those of us who’ve had some training to understand another’s identity and difference assume that we have learned everything we need to be competent. “I took a workshop on ageism last year.  What else is there to learn?” We also believe that relationships can “fix” our misconceptions about a whole group of people. “I have lots of friends who are immigrants. I’m not xenophobic.” This myth leaves us slipping into complacency and clinging to a false sense of mastery, reluctant to look for authentic understanding and growth. It makes us think, “If we just find the right all-school read, the right professional development workshop, we can fix all the problems at the school.” With a  Growth Mindset, we understand that bias and prejudice are more like plaque. There is so much misinformation in the world reinforced by history, systems, and media. If we are to keep the myths at bay, we must get into a regular practice, much like brushing and flossing every day. And just as good oral hygiene does not guarantee we will never have bad breath or have food stuck in our teeth, a regular questioning, learning, and engaging across difference can only decrease how much our bias and prejudice show up in our daily thoughts, words, and actions.

 

Our schools can have great intentions, powerful mission statements, ample professional development and training, and people from diverse backgrounds. Without regular practice, however, these elements become mere artifacts to protect our competence status. I hope schools will embrace a Growth Mindset as a critical component of their cultural competency work. Only then can diversity, inclusion, equity, and cultural competency transform from professed values to lived values.

 

Content Knowledge and Reading Comprehension

 This week’s article summary is Why Deeply Diving Into Content Could Be The Key to Reading Comprehension.

 

Let’s put the phonics versus whole language battle to bed.

 

As Rhonda frequently points out, phonics and the ability to decode words are essential to learning to read, and the ability to read is the basis requirement—but as the article below attests not the only—for reading comprehension. Expecting kids to learn to read naturally and organically by providing loads of engaging books will work for some kids but not for the vast majority who need direct instruction as learning to read is not innate and instinctual in humans; we have been reading and writing for only 5000 years, which is less than a millisecond in our evolution.

 

So while formal reading instruction is critical in elementary schools, the point of today’s article is reading comprehension skills are also supported through exposure to rich, varied, and wide content. We all better comprehend what we read when we have familiarity with and background knowledge of the topic. (The study from the 1980s mentioned in the article is one example of many.)

 

The two books referenced in the article--The Knowledge Gap and Why Knowledge Matters—do espouse a more traditional view of education: kids as empty vessels that need to be filled with gobs of content to thrive as learners. (While I am more of a progressive-leaning educational moderate who believes kids are naturally inquisitive learners, I did agree with macro point of both books about the importance of content and background knowledge.)

 

So, while we need to teach phonics and decoding, we also need to ensure our students have ample opportunities to deepen their knowledge base of varied topics in many disciplines. Natalie Wexler, the author of The Knowledge Gap, points out that schools can fall into the trap of focusing so much on reading skills that reading assignments act more as vehicles for reading skill development rather than as a means to also strengthen students’ knowledge base.

 

So while in particular, E.D. Hirsch, the author of Why Educational Matters, has a negative reputation among many educators (his book Cultural Literacy remembered in infamy), I agree with him in that we need to make sure our kids are exposed to rich, deep content so that their strong knowledge base can support them to further learn and comprehend.

 

Joe

 

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A lot of people are concerned that American kids aren't learning to read.

 

The National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) shows only about a third of fourth-graders are proficient in reading. Much of the recent debate has been a return to an old battle between advocates of phonics instruction versus those who favor a whole-language approach to teaching the building blocks of reading. Education journalist Natalie Wexler has a whole different argument to make that on why kids often don’t comprehend what they read.  

 

“There are really two different aspects to reading,” said Wexler. "One is decoding, just matching sounds to letters. That really is a set of skills that you need to be taught directly. But reading comprehension skills are different."

 

Wexler contends that most elementary schools teach reading comprehension as free-floating skills, detached from the content a child is reading. The teacher is focused on teaching students how to make inferences or find the main idea, regardless of the topic.

 

For her book The Knowledge Gap Wexler dove deeply into the cognitive science of reading. She found that the most important element of reading comprehension is knowledge and vocabulary about the topic.

 

There’s an iconic experiment researchers like to cite from the 1980s about baseball. Researchers chose baseball because it’s the type of topic that kids who might not be all-around good readers would know something about. The goal of the study was to figure out what was more important to reading comprehension: general reading skills or knowledge of the topic. “What they found was the kids who knew about baseball did very well, regardless of whether they tested as good or poor readers,” Wexler said. And even more telling, the kids who knew more about baseball, but had been identified as “poor” readers, performed better on the baseball-focused reading comprehension task than children who were deemed “good” readers, but who didn’t know much about baseball. Wexler says that study has been replicated in many other contexts.

 

This “knowledge gap” that concerns Wexler also helps explain the achievement gap. Largely mirroring growing income inequality, the achievement gap has remained stubbornly wide, despite concentrated efforts to close it. Wexler contends it’s not just about being rich or poor, it’s about the education level of parents. And, generally speaking, wealthier parents are more highly educated.

“Children with highly educated parents are immersed in sophisticated knowledge and vocabulary from birth, so they start school with more of that type of knowledge,” Wexler said. And, when they get to school, they continue to build on all that they knew before, whereas less affluent children often start school with less exposure to knowledge, and the gap only widens.

“So if schools are not providing content-rich curriculum in a systematic way, they can get to high school with huge, really crippling gaps in their knowledge,” Wexler said.

The severity of this comprehension gap often doesn’t make itself fully known until high school, when teachers assume students have more knowledge, the content is more complicated, and the texts more complex.

When kids sit down to take their standardized reading test, most often the passages aren’t anything they’ve been learning in class. In fact, they’re designed that way, to prevent any group from having an advantage. But Wexler contends most elementary schools aren’t teaching kids much content anyway. Instead, they read one-off articles about a topic that allow kids to practice the “skills” of reading comprehension.

The type of knowledge Wexler is referring to, the kind that leads to really good comprehension, is a long-term project. Each bit of knowledge builds on something that came before, so it can’t be measured in one or two year increments. It’s something that continues from year to year.

“If we want change to occur, we can’t just rely on teachers alone to do it,” Wexler said. “They do need to be on board, but building knowledge is a gradual, cumulative process and one teacher is not going to be able to do it.”

France inadvertently provided a massive case study on content-rich curriculum in 1989. E.D Hirsch details the change in his book Why Knowledge Matters. French lawmakers passed legislation changing elementary school education in France to a skills-based approach to reading. Prior to 1989, the national curriculum had been focused on content. French children performed well compared to their international peers, and wealthy kids performed at about the same level as poorer kids. After the switch, however, things changed. In just a few decades, French children’s performance on international tests overall declined and the gap between wealthier and poorer students grew.

For Wexler, it would be ideal for elementary school classrooms to dig into one topic for several weeks. Teachers could use read-alouds to expose children to complex texts, ones with more complicated syntax and vocabulary. In this way, kids learn about the topic and become familiar with the vocabulary. Together the class could discuss those ideas and connect them to the information they’ve already learned. Then, students might read simpler texts on their own about the same topic, but they will already be primed with some background knowledge and vocabulary.

After students have learned a fair amount of background knowledge from a teacher, in discussion, and from their own reading, they might dive into an inquiry project to investigate an area of particular interest to them. Wexler is concerned that some progressively-minded educators throw students into project-based learning or an independent inquiry when they don’t yet have much background knowledge on the topic.

 

 

Teacher Praise and Student Focus and Behavior

 This week’s article summary is Teacher Praise Helps Students Focus and Behave Better.

 

Every morning before school I complete a number of daily crossword puzzles and other word games on my iPad. On one game, once I complete my daily challenge, my screen fills with fireworks and written comments like ‘Nothing can stop you!’ or ‘Great work! Keep it up!’

 

I know these comments are a result of objective binary coding, not a personalized assessment of my performance, but I must admit, it feels good to get a compliment on my crossword puzzle completion.

 

The article below provides research evidence of how praise and positivity in the classroom rather than reprimands, threats, and negativity lead to better student behavior and attention.

 

If you’ve been at Trinity for a few years, you have probably heard Jill, Marsha, and others talk about John Hattie and his research. And I’m sure all of us are familiar with Carol Dweck’s Growth Mindset.

 

To Hattie, for teacher feedback (including praise) to be effective it needs to be specific about what’s good and clear about what needs to be improved and how.

 

Similarly for Dweck, only praising effort (‘Good try, Billy! I like your determination!’) doesn’t lead to successful learning. Fostering a Growth Mindset must include providing students with strategies how to improve.

 

Completing the Holy Trinity of educational pundits in this article is a warning from Alfie Kohn that too much praise can have a negative impact on the development of intrinsic motivation in students. If the goal becomes an external reward,  students may develop a Pavlovian response to working not to get better at something but strictly for the prize.

 

So, while praise is clearly better than reprimands and punishments, we all need to remember that for student competence and mastery, praise needs to be constructive and instructive and not only focus on effort.

 

Joe

 

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When teachers use more praise and fewer reprimands in the classroom, it seems to help students stay on-task and behave better, according to a new study.

Researchers found that there was no magic ratio of praise to reprimand that worked best. Instead, they found a "positive linear relationship" between the two. 

There is a body of research that finds praise can be an effective way for teachers to produce better behavior and academic performance. This is particularly true when teachers' praise specifies and describes the behavior.

But research contains a lot of caveats on the practice of praise and feedback, too. 

It’s important that teachers praise students' competence, rather than their natural ability. 

Alfie Kohn, who writes a lot about motivation, points out that praise can undermine intrinsic motivation by leading people to work for praise itself. 

Researcher John Hattie zeroed in on praise and other forms of teacher feedback in his book Visible Learning: Feedback. For Hattie, many teachers think more feedback, and better feedback, will improve their students' learning. But the practice needs to be more rigorous than that.

"When teachers spend hours and hours writing comments, if there's no feedback providing concrete steps for the students to improve, students will argue themselves blue in the face that they never received anything," he said.

"The key question is, does feedback help someone understand what they don't know, what they do know, and where they go? That's when and why feedback is so powerful, but a lot of feedback doesn't—and doesn't have any effect."

Praise and feedback can also come into play as teachers work on cultivating a "growth mindset"—the belief that intelligence can be developed—in their students. Carol Dweck, who's known for her work to define growth mindset, said that one of the most common misunderstandings about growth mindset is that it's about praising students' effort. But praise is only one slice of that work, she said.

"Students need to try new strategies and seek input from others when they're stuck," Dweck said. "They need this repertoire of approaches—not just sheer effort—to learn and improve."

Effort is "a means to an end to the goal of learning and improving," Dweck wrote. "Too often nowadays, praise is given to students who are putting forth effort, but not learning, in order to make them feel good in the moment: 'Great effort! You tried your best!' It's good that the students tried, but it's not good that they're not learning."

The growth-mindset approach, she said, is designed to help children "feel good in the short and long terms, by helping them thrive on challenges and setbacks on their way to learning." When students are stuck, teachers can recognize what they've accomplished so far, but also help them move forward, by making comments like, "Let's talk about what you've tried, and what you can try next," Dweck wrote.