Better Teaching: Only Stuff That Works

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Welcome to Better Teaching, Only Stuff That Works, a podcast for teachers, instructional coaches, administrators, and anyone else who supports teachers in the classroom. This show is a proud member of the BE Podcast Network, shows that help you go beyond education. Find all our shows at bepodcastnetwork.

com. I am Gene Tavernetti, your host. for this podcast, and my goal for this episode, like all episodes, is that you laugh at least once, and that you leave with an actionable idea for better teaching. A quick reminder, no cliches, no buzzwords, only stuff that works. My guest today is Blake Harvard. He is an AP Psychology teacher at a public high school in Alabama.

He is in his 19th year of teaching, and he's very interested in reading research and applying findings from cognitive [00:01:00] psychology. in the classroom to improve instruction and learning. is the author of a new book, Do I Have Your Attention? Understanding Memory Constraints and Maximizing Learning, which is available now for pre order wherever you get your books.

He's also the author of the effort Educator, a popular blog with nearly a million hits. Blake, it is so wonderful to have you on today.

Well, thanks for having me. It's It's always fun to talk with other teachers about the craft of teaching, so I love doing it whenever I can.

All right, that's great. You know, I know you just got back from festival of Education. And it's the second annual in Potomac, Maryland. And it's the second time you were a presenter there. Can you tell us a little bit about the festival and what your session was about?

certainly. So, it brings people, teachers Instructional coaches, administrators even journalists, really, in the education realm [00:02:00] together to talk teaching, right? I was a part of the Cognitive Science strand and this year I focused on attention. Specifically something called attention contagion, so the idea of the attention in the classroom, if one student is attentive or inattentive, is that behavior contagious, right?

So looking at three popular studies from attention contagion, And applying that to the classroom and talking with other teachers during my session about, you know, what they see in the classroom and how this applies to their to their teaching, really, and the environment they create. So, it's a great time, really.

The organizers that put it on do a great job and There's all types of different sessions too. It's not just, you know, all about one thing. There's panel discussions it's just a really good time. I would highly recommend anyone that can get there to get there.

Well, I know one of the things that they attempt to do, and they follow a model, a research ed model where it's one day [00:03:00] and it's affordable. That it's on a Saturday so teachers can go and, you know, if the district doesn't pick it up, you know, you're out 45 bucks or whatever for a great day and lunch. So, so it's a,

I, it's, you're right. It's a lot like research ed where. That it's incredibly affordable for teachers, which is you know, obviously that's nice not to pay it to pay hundreds and hundreds of dollars to attend this conference over three or four days and you're missing lots of days of school and things like that.

So that in itself just kind of tells you that they're putting it on with a teacher in mind, right? Which is a great place to start.

yeah absolutely. So do you do a lot of presentations outside or even inside your school?

I don't know what a lot is. I mean, I usually present at the beginning of the year, school year. We we have a couple of PD days just within my school system. And I'll present, you know, for one of those PD days for a little bit. I'll do, I don't do too much, you know, four or five presentations a year, most of them virtual.

On, [00:04:00] you know, these types of cognitive psychology topics of in the classroom but I don't think I would consider that a lot, but, you know, every once in a while. Sure.

All right. so the reason that I asked the question is whenever I talk to a teacher who's now still working on a staff who is, who I consider, well, they're well known enough that I knew who they were, you know, they have some sort of notoriety and they're not known in their own sight.

People don't know what they do. I remember talking to our friend, Zach Rochelle, and he would post about. How he went to some PD and how he didn't think it was very good. And he challenged the presenter. And I said, Zach, you know, and now you post this on social media. He says, nobody knows.

I do anything. Nobody knows who I am outside of, you know, so, so I, the reason that I bring that up is because I think there's just so much talent on staff that we don't take [00:05:00] benefit of. And we just, people want to contribute, but we don't even know who they are. And so,

Yeah. I think that's very true. I would say that I teach in a school with probably. Just shy of 200 teachers. So, 175 ish teachers. So, pretty big staff, pretty big school. And maybe a handful know that I'm on Twitter. Maybe a few more know that I've written a book. But, I mean, a large majority have no idea of the presentations and the things that I do.

I think teachers are interesting in that they're They have a lot of knowledge that other teachers need to know, but they also do a lot of assuming that if I know this about teaching, everyone else must too. So they don't see it as anything special. Right? But I think every, like, you know, every teacher has this thing that, that other people need to know.

Right? And like you kind of said, like, within a building, there are a lot of people who have a lot of knowledge that, you know, we can learn from.

yeah, [00:06:00] no, absolutely. So, let's talk about your book a little bit, and it's called, Do I Have Your Attention? Understanding Memory Constraints and Maximizing Learning. There's a lot in that title, but can you expand a little bit on that, and who was your main audience when you were writing this?

Obviously not the teachers at your site.

Well, I mean, yeah, actually. So. The book is split up into two parts. The first part is talking about kind of memory processing from sensing the information into working memory, long term memory and what that process looks like. Interestingly enough a lot of teachers don't understand the process of memory and how we remember things, which to me seems kind of like baseline for teachers to understand, right?

If we're in the business of teaching students, right, and they need to know more when they leave the classroom than when they enter the classroom it only stands to reason that, that they should understand [00:07:00] kind of to a degree how our brain works and how our brain processes memories. And then I'll use from the book, the choke points and the pitfalls.

So like things that get in the way during that process that stop us from taking information from just sensing it and paying attention to it to long term memory. And that's kind of part one is talking through that process And then I think there's seven or eight different kind of constraints, things that get in the way of us being able to remember.

And of course, I'm applying that to the classroom, and I'm applying that to, you know, how we can best set up our learning environment and instruct students So that we make it as seamless as possible when we're trying to have students remember what we're teaching them. So that's kind of part one.

And then part two, I go into a couple of specific strategies that are that a lot of people know about. Retrieval practice and spaced practice. Look at, you know, a century of research on both of these. These are not new things, right? But then I talk [00:08:00] specifically about how I apply them in my classroom.

And why retrieval practice has so many experiments showing its validity and showing how it works better than, you know, simple, like, re study or re reading notes and things like that, why it is so much better than that. But then also same thing with space practice. Over a century of of research showing how advantageous it is versus cramming for a test or things like that.

And then in the book, talking about how I show this to my students, how I show them that it works better, but also how they can apply it to their studying and talking about how, you know, this doesn't just apply to my classroom. This is like learning in general for the rest of your life. Your brain is going to kind of, And this is the way we best understand information, and we best can again, process that to that long term memory.

Well, I want to thank you for the opportunity to have a chance to preview the book. And I think one of the things that was most powerful to me about the book when I was reading it [00:09:00] was the classroom examples, because I think that's important for teachers to see that well, I may not have known the research, but I've certainly seen this, you know, like, contagion, like, you know, Uh, I was really happy to read that bit about contagion because I've been working with, you know, doing training for teachers with 20 years and we would always talk about limited attention and the other thing we would talk about is that you always know, and how do you always know if you're in a secondary classroom, a couple of kids talk, And then a few more kids talk and then all of a sudden there's this crescendo and, you know, so it was so wonderful for me to see what the research was on that and it is absolutely contagious.

Yeah, I think that's kind of one of my, I won't say strong suits, but that, I think that's kind of the advantage of a teacher in the classroom writing a book about teaching, right? And there's certainly nothing wrong with someone outside the classroom in education writing a book, but I,

Thank you. Thank you for saying that. Thank you for saying

I can say specifically yeah.[00:10:00]

But I can say specifically, like, here's exactly how I do it. Right? Like, I'm in a classroom with 90 kids, you know, I got three blocks of 30 students, basically, every day, Monday through Friday. And this is how I talk to them about it. And this is how I show them what this is and how I talk to them about Attention Contagion.

And what it is and what it isn't. So, yeah I I think kind of like this podcast, like if you're going to read a book, they need to leave the book with things they can take and use in the classroom. Right. Without, I mean, you know how it is. If I can't use it, why am I even in this professional development?

Exactly. Yeah. Yeah. No, absolutely. Well, the other thing that's interesting, and I don't know the proper term. I don't want to talk to a psychology teacher and a cognitive scientist. But it's almost meta, the way that you talk about it, because you have this content, you teach psychology, and yet you're teaching how to learn, and you're teaching the students how to learn.

And so, do they sometimes you're in a [00:11:00] class, and I think this happens a lot in in our pre service, is that we don't think about the content we're learning as it relates to the profession. We just relate it to how do I become a successful student in this class and present this information back to the teacher.

How do the students Respond as students trying to pass a test or do they take it to heart as you teach this?

Well, I mean, I mean, I think that the easy answer is some do and some don't. Right. But I literally just the week before last, we finished our unit on memory, right? So like, I was just talking about all of this with my students, and I tell people all the time, I am lucky enough. Like, I'm teaching my students about learning, but it's literally written into my curriculum.

I, I have to teach this to prepare them for the AP exam. So I use the word meta a lot during that time. That's not exactly how you're describing it. Like, we're learning about learning. And I'm telling you how to learn, how you learn, probably learn [00:12:00] best, right? And the things you should do to study the best, and you should study this way when studying about this stuff.

Which makes it kind of meta. But I definitely try to take it beyond just know this for the AP exam. All right? I try to grow learners in my class. I want them to be better learners at the end of my class than at the beginning of my class and that involves a lot of conversations around these topics which, I mean, again, I'll go back and say it, that a lot of our teachers haven't even had conversations about.

But it's so, I think it's so powerful. I was talking with someone at the Festival of Education about this. It's so powerful for students to, to share the research with them on this. So when I'm talking about why you should study using retrieval practice and not just rereading your notes, I can show them studies where students in Group A did better.

with retrieval practice than students in group B that didn't, right? Like, and it's not just a, [00:13:00] hey, do this because your teacher said so, it's a, I have research proving, well, I don't want to say proving, showing that in this circumstance, it was much more advantageous to study this way than other ways, and I think that makes it more impactful for the students, whether they realize it or not.

Again they get, they're told so many things by teachers. Hey, do this, don't do this, right? And, a lot of the times they're not told why they should or shouldn't do this. But, when your classroom is centered on research and evidence of why we're doing these things or not, it's incredibly powerful to let them know why.

I think you get more buy in from the students and then that makes it something that they're, that hopefully they're thinking not just, I've got to pass this test, but I can apply this to all of my classes right

Yeah.

literature class, whatever I'm doing because it applies across all

So you, [00:14:00] you teach AP, which you have students, which almost by definition are motivated students. So, so when you speak like you did, you do sessions at the Festival of Education or you do PD at your site do you change the message at all with respect to students who may not be as motivated or are you ever challenged or does the message stay the same or?

I'll say for the most part, it does kind of stay the same. I definitely have very motivated students. But, you know, not all of them are equally motivated, right? I definitely have the kids in class who are, I want to be valedictorian, I want to go Ivy League, right, but then I have other students in class who are just in there because they want to try out an AP class, or they want to take psychology, right?

But I don't really change it very much. I think that it, you know, if, I think it would be kind of patronizing if I had students in there that weren't as motivated and I kind of, you know, I didn't talk to them at the level of the motivated students, right? Like, what I've kind of found is [00:15:00] that if I talk to them as if they are, you know, students who are like learners and they're going to grow and be better people because of this, if I talk to them at that level, a lot of the times they'll rise to the occasion, right?

It's kind of like expectations. If I set low expectations for them, they're going to reach those low expectations, right? But if the expectations are a little higher, A lot of the times they'll reach higher. And it's fun to see students who, you know, are in an AP class, and they're not your traditional AP student because, or they didn't think they were the AP high achieving AP student, and you treat them like that.

And then they, you can almost like, oh, well, I am an AP student, like, I can do this, like, I can reach up here and do these, you know, bigger, better things and that's incredibly empowering for students, so I really love, more than a lot of things in my class, I love to see that, when a student realizes, I'm capable of a lot more [00:16:00] things than I thought I was so on that I really don't change the the message, I actually I kind of, you know, When I present for other teachers I almost change it for the other teachers more than I change it for my students.

I find myself saying, like, so here's how I tell my students this, or here's how, this is exactly what I tell my students, and how I talk to my students about this. So I, I change it more for the teachers than the students, really.

Interesting, so what are the things that as I was reading you said? You know, especially in part two when you're talking about retrieval practice. That was part two, right? I remember correctly. You know, you talk about the different ways that you do it, the different ways that you have tweaked. And like, for example, you did you have something called Brain Book Buddy Model. What's that? But briefly, I don't know if a brief review of retrieval again if you could, and then how this is a little modification.

Sure, so, retrieval practice, right, at its [00:17:00] simplest is just providing opportunities for students to get the information that they should know to retrieve it from their memory and get it out. Right, so like that can be a multiple choice question. That can be a discussion, right? It can look like a lot of different things.

It's some form of assessment where students are attempting to use the information they should know about a particular subject, right? And again, can be pencil and paper. It can be an essay or it

Just a, I'm sorry to interrupt you, but just a clarification with respect to what they should know. They should know because you previously taught it and they do it during the lesson. Okay. It wasn't just, they came in with it. Yeah.

Of course. Yeah. Yeah. So yes I have presented this to them and now let's see if they can retrieve it from their memory in some form or fashion. Right. And then, you know, I won't say that I invented brain book buddy. I'm sure I heard it somewhere years ago or, you know, or some fashion of it tweaked it for my classroom.

But what I found a lot of students doing and I bet [00:18:00] this probably sounds familiar is, you know, you come into a classroom Let's just say for instance, Hey, we're going to review what we did yesterday and you got 10 questions, right? And they answer all 10 questions. You go over the 10 questions.

And, you know, you give them feedback, here are all the right answers, and at the end of that activity, they look and they say, hey, I've got all the right answers. And they leave believing they know everything, because I've got all the 10 answers here. But in reality, before we went over the answers, they maybe only got six right.

So that's really what they knew, but, you know, I wasn't, I'm going to paraphrase Dr. Fine, Richard Fineman, he said something like, to the effect of, we must not fool ourselves, and we are the easiest person to fool. So I started thinking to myself, like, how can I help students see what they really know and then still provide the feedback, of course, of what the right answer is.

And so I kind of did the brain book buddy. So the first time through a retrieval. Retrieval practice of information. I have them only use [00:19:00] their brain. They use nothing else like if this was the Summative assessment of this information. This is the test. This is the AP exam What do you know? Right, and they go through and they answer it to the best of their ability, right?

And then the second time they go through because they're gonna see okay I knew you know, I knew numbers one two, seven, eight, nine, ten, whatever but they're also gonna see what they didn't know, so I have them highlight what they didn't know. So it's very clear as day, I did not know these answers, even well enough to maybe even attempt to get it right.

Then the second time through, they go through with their notebook, with their notes that they have, which should include All of the answers, right? So then they go through a second time, and they're using their notes to fill in the answers they didn't get using only their brain, and they're also kind of checking the answers they did write down and correcting them if they need to.

And then the third time through you know, well in a perfect world they get it all right with just using brain, right? [00:20:00] But chances are, that's not going to happen every time with every student. Hopefully then they go through with the notebook. the second time through and they've got all the answers, but sometimes they missed notes.

Maybe they went to the bathroom, maybe they're absent that day. We went over that stuff and they didn't get the notes at all. So then we go through a third time with a buddy or a peer, right? And they can bounce, you know, they have a discussion with their peers about, hey, did you know this? I didn't get this.

Where did we, you know, did y'all take notes on this? So they're having a discussion. Right? And they're, it's kind of forcing them to think about, well, why didn't I know this, and they knew it. And again, was I absent that day? Did I? Did I leave the classroom for something? Did I zone out? But they know it and I don't.

And it kind of brings that realization that, okay, I need to pay attention better. Or if I was absent, I should have come back and said, Hey, what did I miss? Can I get your notes? Something from their peers to, to be caught up there. But, you know, and then at the end of it, obviously we're grading this and they can see like, okay, [00:21:00] when I only use my brain, I got a six out of 10.

So that's what I really knew. Then when I went through with my notes, I got a 9 out of 10, right? So my notes knew 3 more that my brain didn't know. And then lastly, when I talked to my peers, I got that last one right. And I ended up with a 10 out of 10. I got all the right answers, I got to have a discussion with my peers about it, I got to check my notes, but then I also really know and I think that is so important not only for them to see exactly what they know, but it makes students get more comfortable with attempting retrieval, knowing they're going to get it wrong, but also knowing that's not the end of the process, that I'm going to get it wrong this time, but I'm going to end up with all the right answers and then the next time we do it, I'll hopefully do better.

Right? So we talk about, again, how retrieval practice of the same information over and over again, you're gonna get better. You're gonna see improvement of that stuff. And BrainBookBuddy, in my estimation, does the [00:22:00] best job of bringing that to light for students to see and making them more comfortable with the whole process.

Well, you know, what's interesting about that? A cliche, we let go. And that cliche was high expectations. And what you just did, you operationalize that right now is that, you know, I have high expectations for you, but I don't expect 10 out of 10. don't expect 10 out of 10 from yourself, so you're gonna work to get it.

And I think some teachers believe, you know, that, well, they didn't get it, you know, they, they didn't get it, and retrieval practice doesn't work, which leads me to something that I hear all the time in the science of learning, when I listen to the folks and they say, well, you know, the reason it didn't work, there was a lethal mutation.

And so, so here's my question for you. I mean, I'm a coach. That's my focus as a, as an instructional coach or any type of coach, but as an instructional coach I want a [00:23:00] teacher to try something and I don't care if it didn't work. It's just like getting six out of 10. I don't care. Now we can move forward.

What's your thoughts about, you know, the lethal mutation? Type of thing.

So, first thing I'll say though is that another thing we need to do better in teaching is, Normalize forgetting. Everybody forgets. No one remembers everything. And once we normalize that, hey, we forget, right? There's nothing wrong with forgetting. There's nothing wrong with getting that six out of 10.

What's wrong is not attempting it because we're afraid to know what we forgot, right? So, you know, having those conversations around, we're all going to forget things, but by attempting to answer it, that's where we know what we know and what we don't know, and then we can move forward knowing that, right?

You know, and lethal mutations of retrieval practice are going to be rampant, honestly, right? Again, it's something that has over a [00:24:00] century of research behind

Can you describe something that I know you've read a lot more about what would be considered a lethal mutation where I might as a coach say, that was the first try, you know, so can you describe from what the literature says about what a lethal mutation it might be?

For like retrieval practice specifically?

yes, yeah,

Yeah, I think, well, I guess when I see retrieval practice, I don't want to say done poorly, but when when I cringe a little bit is when people see it like as a program of there's one right way to do it or one wrong way. At the end of the day, Retrieval practice is all about students thinking and using the information.

So, I mean, I don't, what I don't want teachers, or students especially, any type of learner to do is to think that I have to do it this way, or I must try to retrieve this four times. And if I don't do it four times, it [00:25:00] wasn't worth it. And, you know, Again, my dad says this a lot, a little bit of something is better than a lot of nothing.

So, you know, like you kind of mentioned before, I would rather you try and get it wrong and then we can move forward using it than not try it at all because you're afraid to do it wrong. So any retrieval practice is better than no retrieval practice. And The, I guess, a fear I have is that people start to see it as there's a pretty package for how you're supposed to do it and if you don't do it this way, you're doing it wrong, when in reality, again, like I said a while ago, retrieval practice is just getting that information out.

It doesn't have to be in a multiple choice question. It doesn't have to be in an essay. It can be a discussion between students as long as they're using the information. They had to retrieve it. So I guess the lethal mutation that I guess I'm most afraid of with retrieval practice is that there, that it's starts to be seen as there's one way to do it.

And that's it.[00:26:00]

and I know one of the ways that is done is Okay, remember tell us everything you remember from yesterday in class and I go holy cow I mean just blank, you know and There are so many times I will be in classes with you know Observing classes and a teacher will ask a question and we'll get crickets And I'm thinking, I have no idea what you just asked.

You know, I have no idea. And so you are thinking that the kids don't know. something you're asking where in reality, they just don't know what you're asking. And so that's what I enjoyed about your book is it gave, you know, there wasn't one way. Here are several ways to do this. And in many ways, you didn't say this, but this is the way I interpreted it is that instead of that situation that I just described, where tell me everything, you know, and they don't, that there are scaffolds that there are, let me give you a hint.

We talked about [00:27:00] three things yesterday. What were those three things? And, oh okay. But it's not that they didn't know it. They just like, like, I have no idea what you're asking.

course. Yeah. And unfortunately, teachers sometimes forget that like my class wasn't the only class they went to yesterday. Right? My students go to three other classes for 90 minutes. So when you ask them what they learned yesterday, I mean, that's tough. And again, if they only encountered it in a lecture and then never use that information that you presented to them.

That's going to be tough to remember, right? You got to get up using it a lot. So, yeah, we're, teachers sometimes are our own worst enemy, right? Where we think we've asked a question clearly, or it was important to me, or it stood out to me, so it must have stood out to the students. It's not always true, right?

So, I have a feeling I have an idea what you're going to say, but I want you to imagine that you were in a teacher prep program at the, you were teaching in a [00:28:00] pre service program at a university and you wanted to provide teachers with some things that they needed to know. What would be the one or two things that they're not getting now that you would want them to know?

Yeah, I mean, how memory works, like, that's where you got to start. There's there's a book that I quote at the very beginning of my book, and the book is called Cognitive Load Theory. And the very first sentence of that book is, Without knowledge of memory processing, instructional design is blind.

Right, which is basically inferring that if you don't know how the brain works, if you don't have memory works, how do you know that you're designing the learning environment? in an efficient and effective way. And then how do you know that you're designing instruction in a way that fits with what we know about memory?

Right. So the F the first thing would definitely be like, Hey, let's have, definitely have some classes here on here. Here's what we know about memory. And memory processing. And how should that [00:29:00] apply to the decorations you have on the wall? How should that apply to your seating chart? How should that apply to how you're presenting information to your students?

That, that's, I mean, that would be at the very top of my list. And then after that I'm going into the. Here are strategies we know with evidence showing their effectiveness. The biggest bang for your buck, right? All ability levels, all ages of students. There are some of these strategies that we've seen researched across the board.

And there's positive effects and those are the things that, that teachers really need to know that I'm not, I know that my, I have a Master's in Secondary Education and I didn't get any of that I do believe it's more prevalent in the United Kingdom just from Twitter and different social media, but I know in the U.

S. that, that's mostly absent, and man, I mean, that's like, that's a swing and a miss, Coach. Like how can you not be [00:30:00] teaching students how, or how can you not be teaching teachers how we learn if that's what they're here to do, you know?

All right. Well, Blake, it has been a pleasure talking to you and a little bit about your new book. And your new book, again, is Do I Have Your Attention? Understanding Memory Constraints and Maximizing Learning, which again, you can pre order now, wherever you get your books. And when's the Anticipated date

Right now we're hearing December 30th, so yeah, a great book for the new semester for all the teachers.

Sounds great. Well, Blake, thanks again for being on and sharing sharing some important information for folks.

Well, thanks for having me. I, again, I love having the teacher talk. I love talking about this stuff. So thank you so much for having me.

If you are enjoying these podcasts, please give us a five [00:31:00] star rating on Apple Podcasts, and you can find me on Twitter, x at G Tabernetti, and on my website, tesscg. com, that's T E S S C G dot com, where you'll get information about how to order my books, teach fast, focused, adaptable, structured teaching, and maximizing the impact of coaching cycles.

Thank you for listening. We'll talk to you soon