Tag Archives: learning

Teaching and Trust

I surveyed our Grad 9’s a couple days ago. Coming from middle school, and getting stuck in a single cohort, they really didn’t get the experience at our school we wanted for them. At Inquiry Hub our students usually connect across grades, and interact as a larger community, which is important in a really small school. But although we were able to give them full days, unlike large schools with a lot more cohorts to manage, the environment our 9’s came into is far more like an extension of a single class in middle school than a high school. That said, they really don’t know what they are missing compared to a regular year here… they’ve never seen it.

I asked them to write on a piece of paper, a positive, a challenge, and/or a suggestion or wish, and I collected them. They could write about any or all of these.

Here are a few of them:

The challenges and suggestions were all related to covid restrictions, with less clubs, and a lack of connection with other cohorts. Beyond that the comments were very positive.

“I like the open and just overall welcoming environment.”

“I like how you can structure your own day…”

“I like how our courses let us set our own goals and learning paths.”

“Even though our community is so small, I like how close we’ve all gotten.”

One comment in particular was quite interesting to me:

“I love how much the teachers trust us here.”

I agree that our teachers give students a lot of freedom, and choice. And students at iHub get a fair bit of unstructured time to work on what the want/need to work on. But I never thought of this through the lens of trust, like this student.

When students feel trusted, they feel empowered, they feel they have a responsibility to keep that trust. It’s an interesting lens to see the dynamic of the classroom through. How does the relationship between the students and the teachers change when trust is given and valued? Where does the responsibility for learning fall in a trusting relationship? What else is fostered in a trusting environment?

Kudos to our teachers for creating such a wonderful learning environment in these challenging times.

Obstacles become the way

When I wrote Learning and Failure I struggled with the word failure. Setbacks and obstacles that some see as failures can often become the impetus for far greater learning than if the roadblock never needed to be faced.

Here is the end of the post:

“The learning potential of failure is significant. If the work is meaningful enough, there can be more learned from an epic failure, than a marginal success, where the measure for success was set too low.”

One of our students at Inquiry Hub is working on developing an artificial intelligence (AI) program that can listen to a song and determine the key of that song. The workings of this are far beyond my understanding, but in his reflection about his learning so far, (after doing a great job explaining the process), he shared this in his ‘Log of Milestones’:

– Made a python script to automatically take a mp3 file, and find its music key by making a query to Tunebat. I got blocked by Tunebat, because they identified my automated queries as an “attack” on their server.

– Wrote a Firefox web extension using javascript to make the queries to Tunebat not seem automated, and therefore not rejected. Managed to work.

And then later:

– I found there was a way on Python to fake a web request to Tunebat without getting blocked.

I love seeing this creativity and resiliency. The obstacle becomes the way. He sends hundreds of automated requests to a website, essential to give him the large amounts of data he needs to train his AI; the website sees these automated requests as an attack on their server (this is known as a DOS attack); So he writes first a web browser extension, then later a python program, that tricks the website into answering his thousands of requests without seeing them as an attack.

The roadblock or failure isn’t a failure, it’s an opportunity to adapt, be creative, and learn new skills.

F ailure

A lways

I nvites

L earning

The invitation is always there, the opportunity to overcome can become the place where amazing learning happens. A potential failure can become the impetus to build resilience and to create new and unforeseen challenges to overcome. It can become the thing that makes the learning experience a worthy experience to remember… more memorable than the easy ‘A’ on a cookie-cutter style learning experience where the outcome is uniform for all the students who jump through the same hoops to get that ‘A’.

The obstacle can be the failure point where people give up, or it can be the opportunity to overcome. The learning invitation is there, as long as the drive, resilience, and effort are there to push a student.

Sure in this example he might not have been able to fool the website, and maybe his efforts could have come up short, but I don’t think that would have stopped him anyway. His attempts at a workaround could still have provided a lot of learning that he never would have had otherwise. The obstacle became the way, and while the positive outcome this time was rewarding, so too could have been a so-called ‘failure’. There is nothing artificial about this kind of learning.

More like real life

I enjoy seeing teachers talk about assessment like this:

The best part of the clip is when Mrs. Lemon says, “I wrote better tests that focus less on recall and more on application.”

Although, I love the ending too… “At the end of the day, this is more like real life. There are very few circumstances where are you don’t know the answer to something and can’t look it up.”

What future are we preparing students for? How is our assessment demonstrating this? Are we showing what we value by what we measure, or are we just measuring what’s easy to measure?

Still a rookie

I sometimes need to remind myself that I’m still new to archery. Yesterday I did something bizarre. Twice in less than an hour, I launched an arrow into the wall about 8-10 feet above my target, mid draw. My trigger release didn’t misfire, I somehow pulled back at a bad angle and let the string slip out of the release. Both times I was shocked. Both times I had no idea what I did to cause this. Both times I knew it was human error and not my equipment, but didn’t know what to do differently?

I spent the rest of that practice paying so much attention to my draw that I didn’t shoot very well. Today in practice I looked down at my hands just before I drew and I saw the problem.

Before I begin the draw cycle, I put tension on my bow string to get the feel of my bow into the right spot in my bow hand. I don’t know when I started doing this, but I was pulling on the release with my thumb up. However, the draw cycle involves drawing back with my pinky finger up. So, I’d put tension on the string, thumb up, raise my bow, and as I started my draw cycle I’d have to rotate my wrist 180°. In that process I must have twisted my pinky finger too far back allowing the string to slip out of the release… twice. Two arrows destroyed, and at the time, not a clue why?

Today I shot very poorly in my first round, then mostly much better the second round. Mostly.

I scored a 280 and my personal best is 281. But I don’t see the the good shots, I see the 7 in the red outer circle of the third target.

I don’t see the perfect score in end 2, I see the two 8’s in a row in end 6… the 7 after the two X’s overshadow the X’s in end 8.

Cognitively, I know that I need to ‘let go’ of the mistakes. To learn from them. To not let the previous shot affect the next shot. I like archery because it can sometimes feel like meditation. But then I treat it like a competitive sport and get mad at myself for not being better than I am… Like I’m not still a rookie, learning the ropes and shooting arrows accidentally, because I lack body awareness.

I’m my own worst enemy, placing too much pressure on myself, and not celebrating the successes. I forget that scores under 270 were a regular thing for me just 3 months ago.

I forget that the journey is what matters, and that I’m on a good path to getting better. And I forget that the path will be faster if I focus more on doing things right, again and again, rather than being upset and clouding my brain with unproductive thoughts and feelings.

I’m just a rookie, and I’ve got a lot to learn. 1,000 arrows from now I will be better. How much better? Well, that depends on if I can keep my expectations realistic, and focus on improving rather than beating myself up with unrealistic expectations. 280 is a great score, I only got 281, my personal best, a few days ago. I learned a valuable lesson today, and hopefully won’t ever release an arrow during my draw again. I am getter better!

Tied my personal best

Today I a shot a 280. The last time I scored a 280 was January 30th with my old bow. I still had a few inconsistent shots, but in a way that is good news. If I clean up those loose shots, I’m going to easily beat this score.

I also found a great app to score for me. It gives you the option to mark the spot on the target where your arrows landed. Then it tallies the score and shows you a final set of targets with all your shots marked on it, and also a set of targets for each round.

I still have so much to learn, and hopefully this app will help me see patterns in my shots that will help me. And now ‘I just need to shoot my next 1,000 more arrows’, my mantra on this wonderful learning journey I’m on.

Habits vs Distractions

The kids that are perfectionists, work for hours on something that was good enough long before they consider the work to be finished.

The kids who loves to do research collect so much of it that it becomes overwhelming.

The kids who are easily distracted spends too much time catching up on work that should already have been handed in, and are perpetually putting off work that should be done now.

The kids that stress about the class they don’t like, spend less time and energy on the classes they enjoy.

The kids that work on more than one thing at once end up doing less of everything as they bounce from task to task.

The kids that should ask the most questions ask half as many as the kids that really don’t need to ask, but want to make sure they understand, or are doing things correctly.

It’s not always a lack of trying, it’s not always a lack of effort. It’s the lack of the understanding of where to put effort, what to do next, when to ask for help, and when to either remove distractions or remove themselves from distraction.

But the good news is that habits are learned. Success can provide as much serotonin and reward stimulus as distractions do… but only if the habits are in place to make the rewards consistent. Otherwise, video games, social media, and the illusion that multitasking is actually a thing, trump the rewards of good habits.

Sometimes we give kids too much choice, too much time, too many extensions. Sometimes what they need are high expectations, and hard deadlines. Sometimes they need a teacher checking in on them, asking to see work in progress, and giving timely and precise feedback. Sometimes kids need teachers to help them with their plan of action, and then hold them accountable to the plan.

Because sometimes the appeal of distractions are too strong, and giving a kid time to choose what they should do next isn’t really giving them a choice. Because sometimes distractions are too strong, and kids are not really choosing, they are falling back in the habit of doing the things that feed their brains with serotonin. They don’t get the same rewards from hard work, because they don’t have the habits to ensure that hard work pays off. Sometimes we need to make the choice for them, then instead of praising the work, we need to ask them how they feel getting the work done. Sometimes we need to help build good habits for them, because the alternative is to let the distractions win.

Removing the obstacle

Since buying my new bow, I haven’t had a new personal best score. I’ve made a lot of adjustments and changed arrows, and have learned a lot, but my best score hasn’t moved up. One challenge I’ve had is that the fatter arrows I purchased are harder to keep on my tiny arrow rest while I draw the bow. I start to pull the string back, and the arrow bounces off of the rest and I have to let down the bow, reposition the arrow, and draw again. With a 50 pound bow, those extra draws that are unsuccessful get really tiring.

Yesterday I went to the archery store just before they closed and they installed my drop-away rest that I had on my old bow. This rest isn’t a tiny ‘V’ blade that the arrow sits on, it’s a big ‘U’ that cups the arrow and drops down and out of the way before the fletching at the back of the arrow hit it.

I then went and shot a round. First I had to recalibrate my sighting and get my bow adjusted to the slightly different location of the new rest, then I shot 30 arrows and scored a 278.

My personal best is a 280. Looking at my score card, the first round, when I was still adjusting my sight was the only round that I didn’t score at least one 10 or X in the round (you always score high to low score as opposed to by the order the shots went in). Also, I only shot 3 arrows outside the yellow 9-ring.

I shot two 8’s and a 6. The 6 was a really bad shot that I know my mistake. Part of the issue was I hadn’t lined everything up properly and was trying to readjust myself at full draw of the bow. I should have let down the bow and restarted, but having had the old rest where I kept having to redraw with the arrow falling off, I was accustomed to fighting through to avoid this. An old habit I’ll gladly break soon.

Still, if that 6 was even an 8, my other worse score on the card, I would have tied my personal best on my first attempt with this arrow rest on my bow. I know that not having to draw the bow so many times, frustrating me and tiring me out, will go a long way in getting me to my new personal best score.

After a couple weeks of dedicated shooting over the break, I saw no progress in my score. Then I remove one obstacle, and I shoot the best I have in a while and get close to my personal best. This reminds me of the quote, ‘the obstacle is the way’. That thing getting in your way is the thing to figure out, or it becomes the path forward. I thought I could persevere and learn to use the tiny ‘V’ blade but couldn’t. The archery shop has ordered a wider blade for me and I might try again… it is a better rest than the drop-away one. But for now, I’ll use this one, I’ll draw my bow back 30 times to shoot 30 arrows, rather than 100 times, and I’ll smash my personal best score very soon.

That BS kid

I was one of those kids. You know the type, every report card my marks were somewhere between average and good, with comments about me not meeting my potential… The ‘BS’ grade of ‘B’ but only a ‘S’atisfactory for effort, rather than ‘G’ood. With a few exceptions the marks could have been ‘A’s. It got worse in university where my marks became further divergent, with me getting ‘A’s in the courses I liked and ‘C’s in the ones I didn’t.

It took my Teacher Ed degree at 29 years old before my marks started to actually represent my abilities, and even then it was partially because I surrounded myself with people who pushed me. I can still hear Anna-Christana’s voice, “Dave, look at our calendar, we have 3 big things due, one on Thursday, two on Friday next week, so you need to start at least one of them this weekend, ok?”

It took me almost two decades of schooling to figure it out on my own before starting my Masters. And now, despite knowing these kind of students, despite being one of these students, I still don’t know a magic formula to move a ‘BS’ to a ‘BG’ or an ‘AG’. As a side note, it’s not as much about the ‘A’ mark as the ‘G’ for effort, that I’m really interested in seeing… change the effort, grades will eventually follow.

In high school, favourite teachers of mine could get me to put more effort into things, but they didn’t decide to be a favourite teacher, I decided. That speaks a lot to the importance of relationships in teaching, but kids don’t always meet you there. Yes, we can excite these students about a project that are in their areas of interest. Yes, we can give them more choice in assignments and ways to demonstrate learning, but at some point they need to step up too.

I wish there was a secret I could reveal. I wish I could look back in time and say, ‘If only I had done this‘, or i’If only someone had provided me with that‘, well then things would have been different. Maybe there is something, but for me it was my age and my willingness to put the effort in. Until then, learning on someone else’s agenda was pretty much BS to me.

Axe throwing

I went axe throwing for the first time today. It was a lot of fun. It’s the kind of activity where a little coaching and a little practice can go a long way. I really enjoyed throwing one-handed as opposed to with two hands over my head.

https://daily-ink.davidtruss.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/03/img_7624.mov

One of the coaches showed us an underhanded technique as well. I was far less consistent with most shots going too low, and some too high, but I found the bullseyes a few times with that technique too.

This would be a lot harder if the target distance changed, they set you up at a perfect distance for one full rotation of the exe. But even for archery I do the same thing, shooting again and again from the same distances. I imagine that after 1,000 throws, changing distances would be easy to learn.

For anyone that wants to try a fun activity with an easy entry point, this is a great activity to do with your family.

Tech patient rather than savvy

I spent hours today trying to figure out some technology that was new to me. Hours.

Google and YouTube didn’t help. I spent unnecessary money buying an app I didn’t need. I asked for help. I finally got far enough that youtube can help me, but I’m done for the day.

I get stuck trying new things and get single-minded about it. I dig, I try, I fail, I try something different, I fail again. People always ask me for tech help and think I’m tech savvy. I’m not. I’m patient, I’m persistent, I’m stubborn, and I want to know how things work. Sometimes it feels like a gift, today it felt more like a curse.