I wanted to be a reporter I could say it
was because of the noble role of the
public watch dog or championing First
Amendment freedoms but truth be told I’m
just nosy and I like to know the real
story and share the story with people
who don’t know it so we’re all on the
same page so if you think about it it
wasn’t a big leap for me to become a
teacher because that’s also what
teachers do isn’t it they know the real
story and they try to bring everybody up
to speed after a few years in the
classroom I came to love education so
much that not only was I a teacher I
became a teacher of teachers and worked
in professional development now I say
teacher of teachers loosely because
honestly I learned so much more from the
teachers that I worked with than they
learned from me and I had the privilege
of working with educators from across
the United States and eight countries
from Afghanistan to Uganda and I learned
that no matter what campus you go onto
no matter what school you’re at if you
ask the staff who’s the best teacher
here they can always tell you and when I
ask well what makes them the best
teacher they give you an answer along
the lines of they always get results but
there’s nothing quite like an answer
that just leads to another question
which is why do they always get results
what makes great teachers great and what
makes their instruction meaningful so
even though I was heading an
international nonprofit at the time the
nosy reporter in me got the best of me
because this was a question I wanted to
have answered so I did a lot of research
and I was especially excited by the work
of dr. William Glasser and what he wrote
about quality schools but that just made
me want to know more so I decided to
take an opportunity to embed myself
a public inner-city high school in
Brooklyn New York for two years where I
wouldn’t just do research as a casual
observer
I would actually roll up my sleeves and
be in the mix to really focus on what
makes instruction meaningful and learn
from other teachers after my time in
Brooklyn I embedded myself for an
additional year at a private middle
school in Tampa Florida my thinking was
that the polar opposite demographics
would help bring validity to my findings
after three years embedded in a
classroom and after a year of analyzing
the results I can say with confidence I
know what makes instruction meaningful
and the answer shocks me it turns out
that we all learn exactly the same way
now this flew in the face of years of
instruction that I’d received that
everybody learns differently now
learning styles prior knowledge social
economics factors all of these come into
play in how learning is manifested but
whether you are a baby boomer genex or
millennial inner-city suburban every
human being will master content let me
say that again every human being will
master content if instruction has five
critical characteristics first truly
meaningful instruction is real-world and
by that I mean the student can see a
reason outside of the classroom for
learning what’s going on inside of the
classroom second meaningful instruction
is hard work
the students are not throwing it
together the night before they’ve been
working on it a long time because
there’s a real risk of failure third
meaningful instruction is unpredictable
the answer cannot be looked up in the
back of the book
because it’s not there so the student
doesn’t know how the work is supposed to
come out it’s especially unpredictable
if the teacher doesn’t know how the work
is supposed to come out fourth
meaningful instruction is student-driven
meaning the learner is making
substantive decisions about how the work
is done and how they demonstrate mastery
of what they’ve learned five and this is
the big one truly meaningful instruction
is an emotional experience for the
learner meaning that the student has an
emotional interaction with the content
while they learn it we’ve always known
that when your brain takes in a new
piece of information the first thing it
does is it looks for a pattern what is
this like so it knows where to file it
in long term memory if it doesn’t see a
pattern it will file it into short-term
memory to buy you time after a certain
period of time if you haven’t figured
out where to file it over here it’s
going to dump it out of short-term
memory and is completely forgotten
hopefully after the quiz in that class
and not before but it’s gone research by
Eric Jensen and dr. Pierce Howard shows
that when your brain takes in a new
piece of information in an emotional
setting that information bypasses
short-term memory and goes directly into
long-term memory that’s quite a trick
isn’t it wouldn’t it be great as a
teacher or a parent to say hey I’ve got
some really important information in
fact I’m just gonna open up your brain
and stick it right into long-term memory
so you’ll always have it you’re welcome
it turns out we can do just that
many years ago I was a sophomore at
Piper high school in Sunrise Florida I
was sitting in a biology class taught by
mr. Tony Oh Rico and on this particular
day he was talking about scalp fungus
and how it gets transmitted from one
person to another okay some of you are
already having an emotional interaction
with the content that’s terrific he said
I want you to imagine this five-year-old
kid who has a scalp fungus and you know
because there’s a hole in his hair where
you can see his scalp and he goes in to
watch a movie in a theater and he’s
crunches down in the seat and puts his
head on the back he watches the movie he
leaves you come in for the next showing
you scrunch down in the seat you get the
scalp fungus like 50 of you just shot
straight up in your seats
I don’t know what grade I got on the
quiz that came after but I guarantee you
I got the scalp fungus question right to
this day I can’t scrunch down in a
theater seat because mr. Rico is lodged
in my brain what a gift
the one that keeps giving teachers
cannot write emotional interaction in
the content in their lesson plan that’s
unfortunate but they can create
conditions like mr. Rico did where it’s
likely for emotional interaction to
happen what if you’re not a teacher what
if you’re a parent or a grandparent or
an older sibling you have a role to play
two years later when my daughter Natalie
was in third grade
she had a science project to do and she
was always interested in cars even from
a young age and she decided she wanted
to see if the width of a wheelbase on a
car would make it more stable so her
brother Philip had a racetrack set and
we commandeered that and we set it up in
her room and she started running cars
around the track and they would fly off
and she’d count how many times they’d
fly off on a curve and after every time
she’d pushed the wheelbase out just a
little wider and what she discovered was
that the wider the wheelbase the fewer
times the car will fly off the track on
a curve when it set speed she called it
fast on fours and she references that
science project to this day even though
she’s almost 30 there was a lot of
emotion in the process of learning that
there was the excitement of running the
experiments there was the thrill of
doing important work that was uniquely
hers and I like to think there was some
pretty awesome father-daughter time
involved as well and I know that’s what
makes it stand out in my mind so in the
process of that she learned an important
principle of physics so how can we help
cause meaningful instruction to occur in
even greater numbers throughout our
schools well for one thing policymakers
can help facilitate this by shifting the
focus away from high-stakes testing
micromanagement and compliance
back to where it should be supporting
teachers in the classroom in creating
truly meaningful and struck
second second if you are an
administrator you’re under a lot of heat
especially in the current political
climate how our government and
communities are looking at schools your
main job as an administrator is to act
like styrofoam insulate your teachers
from the heat don’t pass it on because
when teachers feel safe and protected
they will unleash their creativity in
the classroom and indulge in their art
with reckless abandon and if you are a
parent a grandparent or an older sibling
you can play an important part when you
have your student come home in the
afternoon from school help them with
their homework don’t just make sure that
it gets done but sit with them and
actively learn with them many parents
are hesitant to do this because they
don’t want their child to see that they
don’t know something but there’s no more
powerful and example that we can set for
young people in our homes than to sit
with them and actively learn and show
them that the process of learning is a
gift and something to be cherished
throughout life if I’ve done my job well
today you’ve had an emotional
interaction with the concept somewhere
along the way and maybe years from now
you’ll be telling somebody one time I
heard this amazing TED Talks I can’t
remember that guy’s name but I remember
one thing for sure
never scrunch down it at the other seat
thank you
[Applause]
[Music]
was because of the noble role of the
public watch dog or championing First
Amendment freedoms but truth be told I’m
just nosy and I like to know the real
story and share the story with people
who don’t know it so we’re all on the
same page so if you think about it it
wasn’t a big leap for me to become a
teacher because that’s also what
teachers do isn’t it they know the real
story and they try to bring everybody up
to speed after a few years in the
classroom I came to love education so
much that not only was I a teacher I
became a teacher of teachers and worked
in professional development now I say
teacher of teachers loosely because
honestly I learned so much more from the
teachers that I worked with than they
learned from me and I had the privilege
of working with educators from across
the United States and eight countries
from Afghanistan to Uganda and I learned
that no matter what campus you go onto
no matter what school you’re at if you
ask the staff who’s the best teacher
here they can always tell you and when I
ask well what makes them the best
teacher they give you an answer along
the lines of they always get results but
there’s nothing quite like an answer
that just leads to another question
which is why do they always get results
what makes great teachers great and what
makes their instruction meaningful so
even though I was heading an
international nonprofit at the time the
nosy reporter in me got the best of me
because this was a question I wanted to
have answered so I did a lot of research
and I was especially excited by the work
of dr. William Glasser and what he wrote
about quality schools but that just made
me want to know more so I decided to
take an opportunity to embed myself
a public inner-city high school in
Brooklyn New York for two years where I
wouldn’t just do research as a casual
observer
I would actually roll up my sleeves and
be in the mix to really focus on what
makes instruction meaningful and learn
from other teachers after my time in
Brooklyn I embedded myself for an
additional year at a private middle
school in Tampa Florida my thinking was
that the polar opposite demographics
would help bring validity to my findings
after three years embedded in a
classroom and after a year of analyzing
the results I can say with confidence I
know what makes instruction meaningful
and the answer shocks me it turns out
that we all learn exactly the same way
now this flew in the face of years of
instruction that I’d received that
everybody learns differently now
learning styles prior knowledge social
economics factors all of these come into
play in how learning is manifested but
whether you are a baby boomer genex or
millennial inner-city suburban every
human being will master content let me
say that again every human being will
master content if instruction has five
critical characteristics first truly
meaningful instruction is real-world and
by that I mean the student can see a
reason outside of the classroom for
learning what’s going on inside of the
classroom second meaningful instruction
is hard work
the students are not throwing it
together the night before they’ve been
working on it a long time because
there’s a real risk of failure third
meaningful instruction is unpredictable
the answer cannot be looked up in the
back of the book
because it’s not there so the student
doesn’t know how the work is supposed to
come out it’s especially unpredictable
if the teacher doesn’t know how the work
is supposed to come out fourth
meaningful instruction is student-driven
meaning the learner is making
substantive decisions about how the work
is done and how they demonstrate mastery
of what they’ve learned five and this is
the big one truly meaningful instruction
is an emotional experience for the
learner meaning that the student has an
emotional interaction with the content
while they learn it we’ve always known
that when your brain takes in a new
piece of information the first thing it
does is it looks for a pattern what is
this like so it knows where to file it
in long term memory if it doesn’t see a
pattern it will file it into short-term
memory to buy you time after a certain
period of time if you haven’t figured
out where to file it over here it’s
going to dump it out of short-term
memory and is completely forgotten
hopefully after the quiz in that class
and not before but it’s gone research by
Eric Jensen and dr. Pierce Howard shows
that when your brain takes in a new
piece of information in an emotional
setting that information bypasses
short-term memory and goes directly into
long-term memory that’s quite a trick
isn’t it wouldn’t it be great as a
teacher or a parent to say hey I’ve got
some really important information in
fact I’m just gonna open up your brain
and stick it right into long-term memory
so you’ll always have it you’re welcome
it turns out we can do just that
many years ago I was a sophomore at
Piper high school in Sunrise Florida I
was sitting in a biology class taught by
mr. Tony Oh Rico and on this particular
day he was talking about scalp fungus
and how it gets transmitted from one
person to another okay some of you are
already having an emotional interaction
with the content that’s terrific he said
I want you to imagine this five-year-old
kid who has a scalp fungus and you know
because there’s a hole in his hair where
you can see his scalp and he goes in to
watch a movie in a theater and he’s
crunches down in the seat and puts his
head on the back he watches the movie he
leaves you come in for the next showing
you scrunch down in the seat you get the
scalp fungus like 50 of you just shot
straight up in your seats
I don’t know what grade I got on the
quiz that came after but I guarantee you
I got the scalp fungus question right to
this day I can’t scrunch down in a
theater seat because mr. Rico is lodged
in my brain what a gift
the one that keeps giving teachers
cannot write emotional interaction in
the content in their lesson plan that’s
unfortunate but they can create
conditions like mr. Rico did where it’s
likely for emotional interaction to
happen what if you’re not a teacher what
if you’re a parent or a grandparent or
an older sibling you have a role to play
two years later when my daughter Natalie
was in third grade
she had a science project to do and she
was always interested in cars even from
a young age and she decided she wanted
to see if the width of a wheelbase on a
car would make it more stable so her
brother Philip had a racetrack set and
we commandeered that and we set it up in
her room and she started running cars
around the track and they would fly off
and she’d count how many times they’d
fly off on a curve and after every time
she’d pushed the wheelbase out just a
little wider and what she discovered was
that the wider the wheelbase the fewer
times the car will fly off the track on
a curve when it set speed she called it
fast on fours and she references that
science project to this day even though
she’s almost 30 there was a lot of
emotion in the process of learning that
there was the excitement of running the
experiments there was the thrill of
doing important work that was uniquely
hers and I like to think there was some
pretty awesome father-daughter time
involved as well and I know that’s what
makes it stand out in my mind so in the
process of that she learned an important
principle of physics so how can we help
cause meaningful instruction to occur in
even greater numbers throughout our
schools well for one thing policymakers
can help facilitate this by shifting the
focus away from high-stakes testing
micromanagement and compliance
back to where it should be supporting
teachers in the classroom in creating
truly meaningful and struck
second second if you are an
administrator you’re under a lot of heat
especially in the current political
climate how our government and
communities are looking at schools your
main job as an administrator is to act
like styrofoam insulate your teachers
from the heat don’t pass it on because
when teachers feel safe and protected
they will unleash their creativity in
the classroom and indulge in their art
with reckless abandon and if you are a
parent a grandparent or an older sibling
you can play an important part when you
have your student come home in the
afternoon from school help them with
their homework don’t just make sure that
it gets done but sit with them and
actively learn with them many parents
are hesitant to do this because they
don’t want their child to see that they
don’t know something but there’s no more
powerful and example that we can set for
young people in our homes than to sit
with them and actively learn and show
them that the process of learning is a
gift and something to be cherished
throughout life if I’ve done my job well
today you’ve had an emotional
interaction with the concept somewhere
along the way and maybe years from now
you’ll be telling somebody one time I
heard this amazing TED Talks I can’t
remember that guy’s name but I remember
one thing for sure
never scrunch down it at the other seat
thank you
[Applause]
[Music]
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