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If We Want Students to Study, We Must Teach Them How

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“I need to study for my test”, I would say to myself.  With self-discipline I sat at the card table that was my desk at home in my high school years, textbook and class notes in front of me, and engaged in the mystery of studying.  Mystery, I say now almost 60-years after high school graduation, because the act and art of studying was so elusive, I might as well have been told to flap my arms and fly.  With little understanding of what it meant to study, I waddled through years of school tests relying on what I heard and observed in class and my reading of the assigned texts.  And so it goes still.  Last week I heard and saw a high school student in our high school library, as I prepared for a school board meeting, say to friends, “I need to study for my test.  I wish I knew what to do!”. 

I ask my readers to consider this article through the eyes and ears of a student in school.  Too many students throw up their hands in defeat repeating the last sentence in the first paragraph.  All students need us to teach them how to be successful in school.  Teaching them what will be on a test is important; teaching them how to study for a test is just as important.

The quick answer to “How should I study?” is that we need to teach all students to

  • Listen and pay attention in class
  • Build short-term memory through repetition
  • Read aloud
  • Focus on key words and ideas
  • Master automaticity of key facts
  • Understand what the problem wants you to do
  • Speak your solutions out loud
  • Study frequently

Listen and Pay attention

School, study and learning have gone hand-in-hand forever.  In the first instance, children are told to pay attention to what their teachers says and does daily.  Listen and watch, listen and watch – these two aspects of paying attention are a child’s first pass at learning.  Remarkably, children learn a lot just from listening and watching.  I was told as a student, “If you just pay attention in class, listen to your teacher, with a special focus on what the teacher writes on the board (now digital screen), you can pass every class”.  I also learned that the bar for passing classes was not very high – just attend school and pay attention.

In the second instance, if a student wants better than passing grades, a student must do more.  If being present and listening to and watching what a teacher says and does can result in a D grade or better, what does a student need to do be earn even better grades?  Study.  Here we go.

What to do:  When you tell students to pay attention, mean it.  Get their attention.  Don’t proceed until you have it.  Too often we say “Now, pay attention” and then proceed without getting their attention.

What to do:  When you tell students to “add this to your notes” check their notes.  If they wrote down the wrong things, they will study the wrong things.  If it is important enough to tell them to write it down, ensure that they wrote it down.

Short-term Memory

Short-term memory counts because most tests assess short periods of learning.  Quizzes assess the smallest amount learning.  Chapter or unit tests, think four weeks of learning, are the most common school assessments.  Semester and end-of-year tests by their nature assess the most important ideas and skills learned in 18 and 36 weeks.  Annual state tests cover learning over multiple years, usually going back at least two years.  Knowing this, short-term memory is the first key to studying for most tests.

Short-term memory is all about repetition.  Repetitive practice does not make perfect, as people want to believe, but it does make what is repeated permanent.  The brain needs reinforcement if we want it to remember something and the more often, we say or do the same thing, the more likely the brain will remember it.  When a child listens and watches the teacher, the brain gets an initial introduction to information, but it is not enough if we want the brain to remember that information for very long.

As a rule, when you think short-term memory think 5 to 7 repetitions.  Re-read the assigned information multiple times.  A chapter in a text or a book the class is reading or the handouts or a screen shot that was shown since a last chapter or monthly test is what will be on the next chapter or monthly test.  This information is what a student needs to re-read and re-look at multiple times.  If it helps, make chicken scratches on a bookmark for every time you read re-read this information.  Get to at least 5 preferably 7 scratch marks.  If your brain has 5 to 7 repetitions of the same material, your brain will be prepared to answer questions about this material on an assessment.

What to do:  Use class time to practice short-term memory.  “We are going to take five minutes for you to read that paragraph (word list, vocabulary definitions…) at least five times to yourself.  Start now.”  If you want students to know information, show them how and give them time, your time, to know it.

Re-read Aloud

One more step – read it aloud.  It is too easy to just skim over the pages when you read it silently.  Your eyes move but your brain does not engage.  Reading aloud means the brain must see and you must say every word.  Too many of us say, “I already read it.  I don’t need to waste time reading it again”.  However, reading once is not enough to create adequate short-term memory.  Read it again and read it aloud.

What to do:  Once again, do it in class.  Students can read aloud with soft voices.  Spread them out around the room and use all your square footage.  Then, listen to students as they read aloud.  Nod, smile, and reinforce.

Focus on What the Teacher Focuses On

Teachers give students clues about what is MOST important in the lessons they teach.   Most teachers tell their classes, “Write this down” or “Add this to your notes”.  Then they write or display the most important words or ideas in the current lesson on the board or screen.  If a teacher writes it, a student should also write it.  And write it exactly as the teacher writes it.  Treat these words and ideas like a giant billboard with flashing lights that tell you “Know this because it will be on the test”.

If a student’s notes only show what a teacher writes on the board or screen, that student has a start in preparing for the next test.  Build understanding from these key words and ideas.  If it is a word, define it – know what the word means.  If it is an idea, write several sentences about how the idea was explain in class.  For example, if the word is “germinate”, define it.  If the idea is “growing season”, write down an example of a growing season and what happens over time.

Then, build these definitions and examples into short-term memory with 5 to 7 repetitions. 

Listen and pay attention, copying key words and ideas, re-reading aloud and doing these things 5 to 7 times builds good short-term memory in language arts, social studies, most of science, second languages,

What to do:  Interview students.  Simply ask each student to “Tell me what you know about…”.  Formative assessments are not always quizzes.  A quick oral interview of a cross section of students will tell you if instruction has been successful in causing learning.

What to do:  Teach students to self-interview.  “What do I know about…?”, is a question a student can use as a studying check-up.

Math is Different

There is only so much that short-term memory can achieve in arithmetic and math.  In the primary grades, teachers work to create automaticity of facts.  Consider the tables students memorize and the urgency for knowing these facts on demand.  The clearest example is a multiplication table.  Repetition and short-term memory allow a student to quickly call out 63 when asked to multiply 7 times 9.  All students need to achieve automaticity mastery of math facts. 

This is not short-term memory but long-term memory work.  To build long-term memory students need 17-20 repetitions and then frequent repetitions over time.  What does this mean?  Teachers and students hammer the drill and practice with intensity.  Repeatedly until short-term memory cannot help but answer 63 to the 7 x 9 question.  AND, then repeated practice frequently but not intensely over time.  That means next week and next month.

What to do:  On demand and without fanfare ask a student to tell you their addition or multiplication or division tables.  Make the telling oral so that it quick fire.  Do this over time with all students to reinforce long-term memory.

Know the Language of Math by Writing Math Sentences

Once math facts are secure, math learning is all about understanding the language of a math problem.  What does the math language of the problem tell you to do?  Without fail, some students read the text of a math story problem or look at the numerics of a math problem and do not know what the language of the problem is telling them to do.  The have not learned to read the language of math; math is Greek to too many children.  Because students can read text, we assume they can read math, and this is not a leap we should make.

As always, demonstrate and over-demonstrate the skills of interpreting English sentences into math sentences by visibly interpreting the words or numbers into “math sentences”.  Do this each time a new math concept is taught.  “This is how you read the math problem and we will write each step of the problem into a math sentence.”  Once students learn to do this, the mystery of story problems is resolved.

What to do:  Each time you make a math assignment, demonstrate how to interpret the language of the problem into math sentences.  Say it aloud and write it on the board/screen.

What to do:  When circulating around the class while students do their assignment, don’t look for right answers/current solutions.  Ask students to tell you their math sentences.  This is the skill that gets them to the right answers.

The Template for Short Answers and Essays

Most quizzes and tests use multiple choice, true-false, and fill in the information questions.  These are easier to correct.  They also are easier to turn into the data of learning as the number of correct answers seems to equate to learning.  Given the factual nature of most multiple questions, m-c is a test of memory.

Many students frown when the test or quiz requires short answers or essays.  In multiple choices and fill in type questions, a correct answer or information leading to a correct answer is displayed in the problem stem.  This is not always true in short answers or essays.

Once again we teach students to write short answers and essays by teaching them how with frequent demonstrations.  How often has a student heard a teacher say, “You should have learned how to write an essay back in grade xxx”.  If the teacher has to say this, she already knows that a student did not learn how to write an essay back then.  We need to fill this gap in learning.

Additionally, an essay written in fifth grade will not satisfy the requirements for an essay in 8th or 11th grade.  We expect more sophisticated thinking in essay answers as students get older.  We need to teach students what “more sophisticated” looks like by providing models, requiring short answer and essay writing in daily and chapter work, and, here it is, providing ungraded, critical feedback to students about their writing.  Ungraded and critical feedback takes the pressure off students for on-demand writing and incrementally develops writing strength.

The starting point is for each student to understand a five-part essay template:  introduction sentence, three supporting sentences, and a concluding sentence.  Just like math facts and vocabulary definitions, students need an immediate response to an essay assignment.  They immediately begin an outline of five parts.

What to do:  Have faculty agreement in a five-part essay template.  Remove the mystery of how to write an essay or short answer.

What to do:  Write essays frequently.  Remove the on-demand paralysis by making writing essays a general practice.

What to do:  Essay practice should be like basketball practice; we don’t keep score in practice sessions.  Instead, give critical feedback on how the clarity of each part of the essay, the strength of the supporting information, and the interpretation of the conclusion.  Build essay muscle.

Cramming is Guilt Studying

Lastly, keep students from doing what what I did.  Cramming for tests is a student’s attempt to resolve guilt for not doing the daily and weekly practices that build readiness for school tests.  If we teach and build study habit practices into usual teaching and learning, there is no need for cramming.  All the above is designed for daily, weekly and repeated practice.  

What to do:  If it is important that students learn to study, teach them how to study.

The Big Duh!

There should be no surprises in school tests.  All information and skills should be clearly taught and practiced so that a test is a natural wrap-up to what has been taught and learned.

Equally, there should be no mystery in how to study.  Every student should be taught independent study skills just as they are taught their A, B, Cs.  When we accept that study habits are not innate but are learned practices we teach students, then we are the right track of causing every student to become a strong learner. 

No Time For Dull Teaching Tools

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I turn wood on a lathe.  A sharp edge on a steel tool is required to ensure clean cuts expose the beauty of the wood and the shapes I design.  As a rule, I sharpen a chisel or gouge after 15 to 20 minutes of use.  The contrast between using a sharp or dull chisel is apparent when I stand back and examine my work.  Dull tools leave torn and ragged wood fibers, uneven edges, and the appearance of sloppy craftsmanship.  Products I will not display.  Who would choose to use tools that are not sharp?

How does this apply to causing learning?

Professionally speaking, sharp tools also cause better results.  A professional tool is a strategy or methodology used to cause a positive response or to eliminate an unwanted outcome.  Some professional tools are hardened steel, but most are mental or dispositional or best practices for doing the work.  Prospective teachers in their teacher preparation programs learn a variety of pedagogical strategies for causing children to learn content, skills, and ways of considering their world.  They take methods classes and use student teaching to practice and learn to apply the strategies of teaching.  This is an introduction to the tools of their profession.

A teaching tool is the philosophical construct used to design units and lessons of instruction.  Sharply cut designs engage children with questions and problems and ideas that get into each child’s head at the start of a unit or lesson.  Good designs cause children to want to know what comes next.  Every lesson in a unit needs to fit into this pre-conceived pathway along which the teacher uses other specific teaching tools to shape student knowledge, skills, and dispositions for learning. 

Teaching tools include strategies for introducing and engaging children in a daily lesson, leading a discussion with insightful questions, using positive reinforcement to strengthen learning outcomes, or reflection and reteaching to correct or strengthen lesson outcomes.  Drill down on any of these, the use of positive reinforcement for example, for the explicit words, phrases, body language, and context for giving a child reinforcing positive messages.  Each teacher will find their personal use of specific words, a way of saying those words, and a way of looking at a child when saying the words that causes the most positive reinforcement for that child.  This is a sharp tool.  Conversely, using the dull tool of a casual comment leaves a child unsure of the strength of their learning, uncertain that their learning matters, and more likely to disengage.

While there are general pedagogical tools used by all teachers, there also are grade level and subject area tools that are required across the 4K-12 continuum.  Down on your knees physical proximity to a young student works wonders but not so much with a high schooler.  Shared glee with a kindergarten child is not only contagious but an essential tool shaping their young ownership of their learning.  Inquiry and problem-based learning strategies are strong tools for social studies teachers.  Sharply honed lessons with timely propositions, strategic access to resources, time outs for “tell me what you know and what you need to know next”, and opportunities for differentiated presentation of results hook children into being avid learners at all ages. 

Specific tools are used by teachers of children with special education and gifted educational needs.  Some exceptional needs children need tasks and ideas broken down into smaller tasks and ideas with special consideration for sequencing and pacing and reinforcement.  Others require more room for creativity than the classroom and teaching skills and mentoring that push the teacher as much as the student.

And, the universe of teaching tools is constantly being added to and modified, even though we think good teaching practices are timeless.

How often does an educator stand back to inspect the effects of her teaching tools – the sharpness of her teaching practices?  Inspection is a meta-self-analysis of a teaching practice and the individual tools a teacher uses to shape student learning.  It requires taking lessons apart after they are taught for tool inspection.  “What did I say and what did I do?  And, how did students respond?”. 

Once examined, how often do we resharpen our teaching tools?  Sharpening is focusing on the “What did I say and what did I do” that could be reworded to provoke a clearer meaning, a more specific direction, a more illustrative modeling, or a leave a student with a better understanding.  Sharpening is changing unit and lesson designs to ensure that the next time the lesson is taught, the teacher will use these sharper tools.

The children we teach are our products.  Sharp teaching tools cause children to be successful learners and achieve educational outcomes we can be proud of displaying.  Just as in wood turning, dull teaching tools cause dull products.  How often do we inspect – not often enough.

Why is thus?

  • Every teacher is the product of a teacher-as-student academic preparation program.   The teacher-as-student learns the content knowledge and skills to be taught and the pedagogical tools of teaching.  Colleges and post-baccalaureate teacher prep agencies provide the prospective teacher with an initial toolbox of teaching skills.  Learned and practiced in student teaching, these are the tools a teacher brings to her first classroom.  This academic and sheltered preparation is intended to be adequate for her to be a successful teacher of children.
  • The first year on the job is a test drive of teaching skills.  Just like a new car owner test drives a vehicle that has passed assembly line inspections yet needs to be road tested to create confidence and assurance, a first-year teacher tests her tools against the realities of school and a classroom of children.  Absent mentor observation and coaching, the test driver also is test assessor.  Yikes!  It is hard to make critical self-assessments while trying to steer a test drive.
  • We assume that continuous practice keeps teaching tools sharp.  However, the school year is a constantly moving conveyor belt of units and lessons.  The school calendar does not stop for an inspection of tools, or the effects caused by teaching tools.  A teaching tool literally is used and placed back in the teacher’s toolbox for a next use without dedicated inspection or consideration of its sharpness.  The pace of schooling creates its own obstruction to tool inspection and sharpening.  The calendar presents little to no time to do so.   
  • Each child and class of children is like a new specie of wood to be turned on a lathe.  A teaching strategy that worked well in causing one child or one class to learn may not be as efficient or effective with other children.  Tools are constantly being modified rather than remaining constant, hence sharpening a tool is sharpening a constantly changing tool.
  • Teacher evaluation systems take a broad view of teaching effectiveness and efficiency.  Pedagogical skill is less than 25%, perhaps 10%, of the evaluation process.  Wisconsin’s Effective Educator system looks at planning and preparation, learning environment, instruction, and professional responsibilities.  Inspection of effective teaching tools is smothered by non-instructional concerns.  Combine a flaccid EE with the statutory fiat prohibiting the use of student achievement scores on state mandated assessments to describe a teacher’s effectiveness and the sharpness of teaching tools falls out of evaluation conversations.

What to do

When facing obfuscation, don’t go there.  Obfuscation is all the reasons we tell ourselves or others that the status is okay or even very good.  Or, it is the reasons we accept for why we cannot change.  Instead, make new declarations for improvement of teaching tools at the school site level.

Principals need to declare that the conscientious use of universal learning designs is prioritized by all teachers.  If adopting UDL, declare that a teacher’s application of UDL will be part of the teacher’s professional development and professional evaluation.  Tools that are embedded in UDL need constant professional discussion, demonstration, refinement, and critical examination.  Walk the talk of engagement, representation, and action/expression.

Use lesson studies.  Record teachers’ classroom teaching and establish collegial, non-evaluative study groups to provide the teacher with feedback on what they see in the recordings.  When every teacher records and every teacher provide feedback, every teacher grows sharper teaching practices.

In the sequence of professional development make learning new teaching tools, refining teaching tools, sharing knowledge and experience of teaching tools, and evaluating the effectiveness of teaching tools in causing student learning an essential part of the school culture.  Important things in school a given time in the calendar; give discussion and examination of teaching important.

Don’t abide teaching that is chronically not sharp.  I have known some great people, really kind and caring people, people who will do everything asked of them at school, who could not teach a coherent lesson.  They did not have nor did they work at acquiring sharp teaching skills.  Help them find their way to another profession.

The Big Duh!

Teaching children is the most important profession in the world.  It also is incredibly hard.  And, teaching is impossibly hard without efficient and effective teaching skills.  We no longer can assume that skills learned in a baccalaureate program are sharp enough to last a career.  Professional development of our pedagogy needs to be a way of life for every teacher.  If it isn’t sharp, sharpen it.  If it can’t be sharpened, find a new tool.  If professional work isn’t sharp, find a new professional.

Biliteracy Is An Achievable Advantage

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“No hablo espanol.”  “Je ne parle francais.”  “I do not speak your language (fill in the language).”  If these statements are true, you may be a pilgrim in a foreign land even in your own nation or community.  The value of interpersonal communication remains incontrovertible and communicating in a common language is essential.  Our trending away from second and third language instruction in school contradicts what we know about our world and the importance of personal communication.  Consider the Seal of Biliteracy as a next school district goal for educating our children to thrive in tomorrow’s world.

More than 400 different languages are spoken in the United States today.  English, Spanish, and Chinese are the most prevalent; English being our nation’s unofficial language.  Unofficial language, yes.  The United States does not have an official language.  And, there are regions and communities of our country where non-English languages are commonly spoken among recent and generations of immigrants.  By the way, recall that all non-Indigenous languages immigrated to our country, including the English language. 

One solution is to obstinately hold to an English only requirement.  Speak to no one who does not speak English.  In the presence of growing numbers of persons whose first language is not English, this may be counterproductive and purposefully obstructive.

Another solution is to grow our capacity for second language learning.  Second languages include both spoken and signed languages.

The WI DPI Seal of Biliteracy application details how a variety of language acquisition programs can result in our recognizing students who demonstrate proficiency in a second or in multiple languages.  Administratively, it is important to note that biliteracy is a proficiency that can be attained both in school and out of school – assessment indicates attainment not the source of learning.

https://dpi.wi.gov/english-learners/wi-seal-of-biliteracy

For schools with traditional world language instruction, awarding a Seal to high school graduates can be a tangible reward that assists students and families to understand the value of persisting in second language proficiency.  The Seal is a recognition of a graduate’s capacity to communicate with non-English speakers that has value in post-high school education and career pathways.  Along with academic knowledge and skill sets, the ability to speak and communicate in other languages is a very real addition to a graduate’s resume’.

Many secondary students discontinue classes in a second language in favor of a course they believe will provide more post-high advantage or, given their course load, may be easier.  The Seal of Biliteracy can give students more motivation to complete a third or fourth or fifth year of a world language in school.

Learning a second or third language does not stop once a student graduates.  There are beaucoup online apps and programs that instruct a person in learning other languages.  There is, however, a time in life when one’s language acquisition is more flexible and efficient; later in life is not that time.  The earlier one starts learning a second language the better and beginning prior to age 6 or 7 is best.  The young brain uses all seven senses to assist in language learning and learning multiple languages is natural for youth.  There is evidence that starting to learn another language gets to be more difficult after puberty.  Personality, including language, begins to coalesce into who a learner will be as an adult and preferences prevail.

As with many things in education, we know that being multilingual provides adults with personal and professional advantages.  As educators we know how to cause children to become multilingual.  We also know that creating these opportunities is our choice just as engaging in these opportunities is a student’s choice.  The Seal of Biliteracy is a clear pathway to giving children another educational advantage that will serve them well in life.

Unheralded Educators

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A friend of mine drove a local school bus.  Driving was a second or third job for him as the two hour early morning and mid- to late afternoon runs created time for mid-day and evening work.  Driving, however, is what drove him.

“Never had a ticket.  Never had an accident.  Never had a lost child.  Never got lost myself”, he would humbly say about his time in the driver’s seat.  At Halloween and Christmas he put masks on the front of his yellow bus.  He had a perpetual gleam in eyes even when he needed to look up into the large rear view mirror to tell a young boy, “Sit down, Mark”.  I don’t believe he ever turned in a discipline referral to the school principals, because he talked with the children on their bus, not his bus. 

Every fall there would be a moment resembling Forrest Gump’s first greeting with his school bus driver.  Forrest introduced himself and she introduced herself and they began a morning and afternoon routine that lasted for years.  Some years there were as few as thirty-some children on his bus, but most years there were 40-plus riders.  He knew of them before their first day on a school bus and he knew about them years after they graduated.  He knew their parents and their parents knew him on a first name basis.  He never left a dropped off young child until he saw a wave from a parent at the door or in a waiting car.  He was a parent in absentia for dozens of children twice each school day.

Like all veteran school bus drivers, he had his share of criers and pukers, kids whose forgotten lunch on the morning bus he delivered to the school offices, and kids who stood at their morning stop without a hat or mittens/gloves.  He carried a box of spares.

One of the most meaningful moments of every school year occurred in the first week of June.  On the last days of the school year, he would say with what some might call teary eyes, “I remember when she started Kindergarten.  They are all so small and she was a brave one.  She rode every day; seldom got a ride to school, until she got her driver’s license.  For the last year or so, she drove to school with friends.  I watched her grow up from a five year old to a fine young woman.  This week, she rode every day and today she brought me a ‘Thank you’ card of being her driver and friend.  She’s one of mine.”

He and our team of school bus drivers are unheralded educators of children.  We are a rural district where most children ride our yellow buses to school.  Let’s do the math.  With approximately 170 days of school each year and an average route time in our district of 25 minutes, bus riding children spend more than 140 hours each school year on a school bus.  That is equal to the amount of time a student spends in a secondary classroom for math or ELA or science.  If a child rides every day of their Kindergarten year through tenth grade, the year a child can get a driver’s license, a child really grows up on a school bus with more than 1,500 hours of riding time or had a class each day with the same teacher for 11 years. 

That is a lot of driver-rider contact time in which there is one driver and dozens of children on a school bus traveling back and forth between homes and school.  We trust children to the safe driving care of our drivers.  We trust their well-being and that a driver who knows them watches out over them every morning and every afternoon.  Across the decades, our driving unheralded educators deliver every day.

Your Personal Pantheon of Teachers

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Miss Blaine knew.  She knew I liked stories and histories and language.  If I could read about it and begin to imagine it, I could know it and the more I read and imagined the more I wanted to learn.  And, she knew I was a quiet student seldom raising my hand but could give illustrated answers when called upon.  Miss Blaine knew me.  She was my teacher for two years – 4th and 5th grade, back-to-back with Miss Blaine – in the late 1950s.

Miss Blaine knew Carol and Richard and Mike W and Bruce.  They topped all the weekly charts for the 32 students in our classroom; those were early Boomer years when all classrooms were bulging.  Spelling, arithmetic quizzes, science check tests and annual ITBS assessments – these were our straight A’s champs week in and week out.   She fed them more assignments than the rest of us, and more comments on their projects, and more difficult books to read.  The more she gave, the better they did.  Miss Blaine knew Dick and Donnie and Steve Y struggled to read and do their math and she gave them more of her one-on-one time.  She knew when a child needed the boost of leading the class from her room to Miss Snyder’s art room, the little self-esteem boost of being picked by Miss Blaine to lead.

Miss Blaine knew how to hook each child in her classroom to cause each of us to learn.  She never looked at us sitting in our rows of desks with a solitary gaze but flitted her eyes from child to child as she spoke so that we knew she was talking to each of us intentionally.  She was short in stature and did not need to kneel or bend very far when she stood by my desk to comment on my work or ask a guiding question to keep me on track.  With eyes shut I can still summon her presence and my want to be a better student, to get more problems right on my nemesis math assignments, because she thought I could.

I would like to think that every student in every school experiences their own Miss Blaine.  Across the fourteen years of 4K-12 education, a random draw of Miss Blaine’s in elementary, middle, and high school, in grade level classes and in subject classes, is enough to make school and learning meaningful.  It is enough hooking by master teachers to keep children self-invested in their learning.

Consider your own history as a student.  Can you name your Miss Blaines?  Can you remember how specific teachers made a difference in your school life?  In your heart of hearts you know them as they knew you.

Miss Blaine, Mrs. Wendlent, Mr. Marshall, Mrs. McArthur, Mr. Cummings, Mr. Chute, Mr. Mixdorf, Mr. Hubacek – I am eternally grateful that you taught me. 

My listing these names does not mean I did not learn from each of the 80+ teachers who were mine in my kindergarten through senior year experience.  I indeed learned from all.  But, there really is a difference in a child’s connections with their teachers.  Some connections are as routine and pedestrian as the spending of common time and the management of 180 days’ of school work.  Other connections mark you for your lifetime.

My Miss Blaine is long gone, as are almost all my teachers.  So are many of my classmates.  We know that the effects of a person’s lifetime are short-lived, but while we live and remember the effects of the teachers who knew us and hooked us as learning children, the glory of their good teaching prevails.