Good pedagogy is good pedagogy, with Dan Meyer, Ph.D.

[00:00:00] Dan Meyer: Kids invest so much more effort and express their thinking with so much more clarity when they themselves are their audience, when kids are the audience for kids.

[00:00:13] Ana Torres: I’m Ana Torres, and welcome to Beyond My Years from Amplify. On Beyond My Years, we know educators never stop learning, and that’s why we’re here to help you extend your reach. Each episode, we share research-backed strategies and tried-and-true lessons from experts and experienced educators. And I am here again with Classroom Insider, middle school science teacher Eric Cross.

[00:00:38] I wish you had music attached to this. How’s it going, Eric?

[00:00:42] Eric Cross: Good, good. You remember, have you seen the WWE intros when the people come out, like the wrestlers, and they have this music and stuff?

[00:00:48] Ana Torres: Yes.

[00:00:48] Eric Cross: We should have it for our students. You know what? I think I’m going to have that, a little intro music for our students when they walk in.

[00:00:53] Ana Torres: The fact that you mentioned WWE does age us a bit, but we’ll keep moving.

[00:00:57] Eric Cross: Hey, it’s a hot thing. It’s still hot.

[00:00:59] Ana Torres: Eric, today we’re welcoming back our colleague Dan Meyer, senior fellow in learning innovation at Amplify. We’re talking about technology and pedagogy, and how to use whatever tools are in front of you to maximize student engagement and learning in math class.

[00:01:17] Eric Cross: I think this topic is something that is going to transfer to all topics, not just math, all subjects. But I’m also especially excited about Dan because Dan is a student of teaching. He’s put out so much content. When I was in my credential program, my professor showed me a video, a whole class, when I was becoming a teacher, and it was Dan’s video that he did at a talk back in the 2010s.

[00:01:41] And so all these years later, I’ve followed Dan’s writing or some of his presentations, and I really respect how much he’s stayed a constant student of how students learn the culture of the classroom, and just the best practices. He’s a student of teaching, and I have deep respect for that. I see myself as a student of teaching, so this is going to be great. I’m excited.

[00:01:59] Ana Torres: Let’s bring on Dan, and we’ll catch up after, okay, Eric?

[00:02:02] Eric Cross: Sounds good.

[00:02:07] Ana Torres: Over the summer, my colleague Dan Meyer had the chance to teach summer school to rising ninth graders in Oakland.

[00:02:15] Before he showed up, Dan learned that the laptop cart had been put away. Dan’s students wouldn’t have access to any screens over the summer, and that experience left Dan thinking lately about engaging students in any classroom setting, and how some of the best practices that have been honed with technology can still be applied in all environments. And for that reason, we’re going to talk to Dan today about technology in the classroom, print, digital, all that fun stuff.

[00:02:47] Dan, it is always great to have you back. I can’t wait to hear about this experience that you had with ninth graders in Oakland in summer school.

[00:02:58] Dan Meyer: Imagine how excited that they were to be there, Ana. They were not pumped, let’s say. So it was a great chance to try out, like in a tougher environment, all the best ideas that my team and I here at Amplify, all of us have learned about good teaching and learning, for sure.

[00:03:13] Ana Torres: And how long had it been, Dan, since you’d been in a classroom that you actually had to teach this grade level?

[00:03:20] Dan Meyer: I try to teach monthly. I’m in a class of eighth graders every week doing desk-side tutoring, so I taught for a good stretch and studied it in grad school, but I still don’t trust myself to keep a good picture of what teaching and learning is.

[00:03:34] It’s just too easy to backwards map teaching and learning onto whatever it is I was as a learner, and I was as a teacher. So I’m getting in there every week and every month as a teacher to try to keep my skills sharp, my ideas sharp.

[00:03:47] Ana Torres: But tell us about this specific experience, and no laptop cart, right? Right, Dan?

[00:03:54] Dan Meyer: Right.

[00:03:54] Ana Torres: How did this leave you thinking about especially now that parents are starting to scrutinize the quantity and quality of screen time in classrooms? And can I tell you, I am one of those parents.

[00:04:05] So tell us about your experience, Dan.

[00:04:08] Dan Meyer: Yeah, I respect the current moment we’re in with parents really re-evaluating screen time in schools. I think parents know, as well as anybody… I’m a parent of school-aged kids… just how easy it is to pacify a kid with a device. They know what’s going on. They live with that temptation every single day, in a restaurant, on a car trip.

[00:04:27] Throw them on a screen, and you’ve got the easiest kid management, easiest classroom management around. But it’s not particularly valuable time well spent in a classroom or a car or a restaurant for a kid. So parents know the game, I think, and they are looking to prune out a lot of that kind of non-nutritious screen time usage.

[00:04:46] I walk into that classroom. I see no screens. I’m like, “Oh, well, that’s a powerful tool I do not have at my disposal.” And I just ask myself, “All right, what is true with screens or without screens, paper, pencil, or digital? What does good learning and good teaching look like?”

[00:05:01] And that’s where I got to, and I pulled out a few different lessons that were really meaningful for me and might be helpful to talk about here.

[00:05:07] Ana Torres: Absolutely. Talk to me about the experiences, the lessons you’ve unpacked. What were some strategies you used?

[00:05:15] Dan Meyer: So the number one for me is creativity. Whether it’s on paper or digital, students need to be creating. And the reason for that is that teachers need to know what students know. And they can’t know what students know if they’re just asking students multiple-choice questions or asking kids to respond with just numbers. It just doesn’t give enough body to a kid’s knowledge.

[00:05:36] And then teachers are left throwing a dart at a board in a dark room, basically, with their teaching. So you’ve got to know what kids know. And on digital devices, those devices can be extremely valuable tools for creativity with kids creating art out of functions or talking about what they know, sketching, predicting.

[00:05:57] Basically I go into just paper, pencil. I’m like, “All right. Well, look, here’s the deal. We are going to be watching a video of someone doing a thing up on the front board here, and you’re going to sketch. I’m not going to ask you to calculate something or tell me a number or a multiple-choice response, but sketch what you saw happening up there on the board.”

[00:06:14] And in those sketches, that creativity, I learn what kids know about functions, about intercepts, about slope and rate and all of that. So I just want to say, both paper, pencil, screens, both of them, kids need to be creating, and those creations look different depending on the medium, if it’s clay or paint.

[00:06:33] But that’s number one for me.

[00:06:35] Ana Torres: Creativity. And this, the advice that you’re giving as far as being able to translate this into both of these worlds is really, really important, ’cause that can be applied to any particular subject, not just math.

[00:06:49] Dan Meyer: Yeah, totally.

[00:06:50] Ana Torres: Just the idea of here’s a video. Create this.

[00:06:54] Dan Meyer: And the kids appreciate this because, for lots of reasons, but one is their creation, their sketch is different from the other kids in the classroom. They have something of themselves to impose on what could be, “You all either get the same right answer or you’re wrong in potentially different ways,” but they don’t.

[00:07:12] Kids would add notes to their sketches, they would draw drawings of what was happening in the video. They would have extra little flourishes, very detailed, where your kids would call out moments in the video that other kids wouldn’t, so there’s a lot of angles here. One is the cognitive, where I need to know what you know to effectively teach you.

[00:07:28] And the other is there’s some social elements, too, where kids want to show up and show out and stand out. Here’s what I’m bringing to the class.

[00:07:35] That was a big one for me. Student screens, Promethean, just a whiteboard, chalk and slate, it doesn’t matter. The medium does not matter. Good pedagogy is good pedagogy, and it can and should find a way.

[00:07:48] The other thing I was pulling out of that was feedback in that experience. So kids all have offered something that is uniquely them and expresses their personality and knowledge. What do we as teachers do with that with feedback?

[00:08:00] Ana Torres: Definitely.

[00:08:01] Dan Meyer: And I’ve got to say, a lot of what happens on screens and on paper is kids just get told, “You’re right,” or “You’re wrong.”

[00:08:08] And that’s fine as far as it goes, but we’ve learned from so much research that a lot of the feedback that teachers give kids doesn’t actually support their learning. It does damage to their learning, and that’s because it’s not high information enough. It doesn’t tell the kids enough about what the kid did and knows.

[00:08:24] Ana Torres: It’s not specific enough, right?

[00:08:25] Dan Meyer: It’s not specific. It’s not speaking to the kid. On devices, if the kid has sketched on a device, what we do is we say, “Press play,” and we’ll play your sketch, and you’ll see the world respond to your sketch.

[00:08:39] And you’re noticing like, “Oh, I didn’t mean for that to happen,” and go back and change this, and modify that, and then replay it. That’s high information. On paper and pencil, I was feeling a little bit hamstrung, ’cause I can’t let you play your sketch in the same way.

[00:08:53] So instead, I would point at a certain kid’s sketch and say, “Here is what your sketch is telling me about the thing up there, this playground moment that you’re trying to graph. It says that the kid is 42 feet above the ground right now. If that’s what you wanted to say, keep that. If that’s not what you want to say, then change it.”

[00:09:10] All I’m trying to do is, “Right and wrong. Those are fine things to say to a kid, but there’s not enough information there to work with. So I’m trying to be that high-information feedback, have kids get that, whether they’re on paper or on devices.

[00:09:23] Ana Torres: And we also know good pedagogy too. Immediate feedback is crucial. With having that digital aspect, like you mentioned, students could get that immediate feedback, dig a little bit deeper. You try to do your best to be able to give feedback.

[00:09:39] I remember as a fourth-grade teacher, and our focus too was writing. That was our end-of-the-year state assessment. And man, being able to give that immediate feedback can be challenging, Dan, as far as I want every student to know exactly where they can improve, meaning I took what you said, I want to look at your strengths and talk about those strengths versus those right or wrong.

[00:10:05] Dan Meyer: The deficits, yeah.

[00:10:06] Ana Torres: Correct. So I appreciate that you said, “Hey, you know what? I was able to do that,” but probably not on a big scale as you would’ve liked to be able to give the feedback. Is that a good assessment there?

[00:10:18] Dan Meyer: Definitely. The devices as we use them here at Amplify, they enable not just instant feedback, but good feedback on a… timely feedback. It’s not just about if I tell a kid immediately you’re right or wrong. That’s like telling them immediately something that’s not helpful for them necessarily.

[00:10:33] With low-tech environments, what teachers ought to orient themselves around is less around evaluation and more around interpretation. That’s the fundamental shift in mentality that gets kids the feedback they need, is to look at a kid’s work, and if I tell the kid they’re right or they’re wrong, thinking stops on some level. Especially if there’s no more to think about.

[00:10:54] Instead I’m going to tell you, “Here’s what you’re making me think about” or “This is wrong, but you answered a different question correctly.” And tell them the question that they answered correctly, giving them more to think about, and then walk away.

[00:11:06] Ideally, whatever feedback I give ought to multiply. It takes me 10 seconds to say a thing. That should multiply and be three more minutes of student thinking and extra work there.

[00:11:17] Ana Torres: So the feedback does align to student thinking, obviously. So as you are saying this, I wonder if our educator listeners are thinking, “How can I as a educator develop this ability, especially without the help of a digital tool, Dan?”

[00:11:33] So sounds like it requires some quick thinking, right?

[00:11:37] Dan Meyer: Yeah. I think that in PLCs and department meetings, what I love to see happen is for someone to bring a piece of student thinking that’s wrong but very common, to bring a common wrong answer.

[00:11:47] I’m in our servers. I’m looking at the most common wrong answers to various questions in our curriculum, and every single one of them is a super thoughtful but wrong answer. And so as a group to develop this muscle around interpreting student thinking instead of evaluating it, asking ourselves, okay, “What might the most common wrong answer be here?” And then see that, “What is the student thinking about that’s correct?” and talk about that. And then, “How could we respond in ways that develop a student’s thinking?”

[00:12:15] You can’t get strong in your body as a human without hitting the gym, hitting the weights, doing something. This is the weights, the exercises, that teachers can use to develop that kind of automaticity around approaching student thinking with interpretation rather than evaluation.

[00:12:30] Ana Torres: I like that. Interpretation, not evaluation. And not to say that evaluation doesn’t provide us useful information, but I like the idea of collaborate in your PLCs.

[00:12:43] Extrapolate what those common wrong answers are, meaning obviously students are thinking in similar ways, and why are they thinking in those similar ways? Yes, you have to be on your feet, but I think collaboration with that would be a great way to start for those who don’t know where to start because Dan Meyer is a guy that thinks quickly on his feet.

[00:13:04] I just wanted to make sure this was accessible to those maybe newer teachers out there thinking, “How do I even begin?”

[00:13:10] Dan Meyer: Totally. Just being a student of your students is the one of the best things a teacher can be. Know that it’s a journey. It’s not like a quick fix. Nothing is that works in this world or in education.

[00:13:22] Ana Torres: Well, that is the tagline of Beyond My Years because teachers, we never stop learning.

[00:13:26] Dan Meyer: There you go. There you go.

[00:13:27] Ana Torres: We want to continue to learn in order to make the impacts that we want to make in our classroom.

[00:13:34] So you mentioned creativity. You mentioned feedback as far as some strategies for teaching kids with or without screens.

[00:13:44] Anything else you want to add, Dan?

[00:13:47] Dan Meyer: I think the big learning in that class and the other summer school class I taught was just how much kids think about audience for their work, and how as the audience changes, so too does the amount of effort they invest in their creativity.

[00:13:59] Ana Torres: Ooh. Tell us more about that.

[00:14:01] Dan Meyer: Well, paper, pencil, or screen, so often the audience for student work and creativity is sometimes it’s the software which tells you you’re right or wrong or it’s even a teacher who says you’re right or wrong.

[00:14:14] And I just notice that kids invest so much more effort and express their thinking with so much more clarity when they themselves are their audience, when kids are the audience for kids.

[00:14:24] Ana Torres: So the peer audience.

[00:14:25] Dan Meyer: The peer audience, yeah. Kids tolerate school in so many ways because that’s where their friends are. And you go there and you want to learn about yourself in relationship to others.

[00:14:36] When we use digital work, we are having kids see what other students said to a question on the screen. We’re having them create challenges for one another. They gather data and we put that all on the same plot, and all that generates so much interest.

[00:14:51] With paper and pencil in this classroom, what I did was not go to each student and respond with interpretation at each desk, but pulled one up for the front of the room that was halfway between wrong and right.

[00:15:03] It was halfway between imprecise and precise. There was stuff there to celebrate and stuff to talk about. Had the kid put that up on the board and ask the class, “Think to yourself, share with a neighbor, share out loud one thing you like about it, one thing you’d change.” And that conversation, I could just sit back and let the energy of that peer engagement just drive the whole thing for me. I was there as a emcee. I was passing the mic around. But I didn’t have to… Kids had the energy to talk about kids.

[00:15:32] Ana Torres: So with that, and you gave an example, how could teachers feel more comfortable with this peer-to-peer sharing in that way that makes it feel safe?

[00:15:41] I know one of the strategies that I use, that back in the day when we were taught, Dan, it’s like, “Come to the front of the room and work out this multiplication problem or division problem,” which I always dreaded, and they always made me do it.

[00:15:53] I took it a step further with it wasn’t just one person. We would have multiple people do various steps, and I would allow the students to pick, “Who would you like your partner to be? Let’s talk more about this.” That was my feeble attempt to make sure that voices were heard.

[00:16:10] How would you take what you just said, and for our audience that’s like, “Wow, that sounds great, but what are some ways that I can create that space in my classroom where students do feel safe?” Because there is a thing called math anxiety, if you haven’t heard.

[00:16:26] Dan Meyer: For sure. I’m familiar.

[00:16:28] Ana Torres: And I still have it, Dan.

[00:16:29] Dan Meyer: I appreciate you having me on still even though we have this boundary between us here around math anxiety. But I hear it totally, and some ways to create that safety with the digital environment, I appreciate that our software allows teachers to anonymize these various contributions so we can speak about them candidly.

[00:16:45] I get the kids, who made the thing that we’re talking about, talking about the thing as though they didn’t themselves make it, which feels it’s an indicator of safety. In the paper/pencil classroom, I want to make sure that I am modeling at every step, like what it looks like to talk critically, but in an asset-oriented way around student thinking, like, “This is wrong, but it’s so smart in these ways,” or, “We can improve this in these ways.” And then when it comes to turning that microphone over to the kids, to ask them first to think to themselves, give them space to think with a partner, to increase the audience size for their ideas is so important.

[00:17:20] Otherwise, you as the teacher, you’re at the front of the room and no one’s talking with you about this. There’s no conversation happening. Kids haven’t had time to rehearse their thinking and prepare it for the class

[00:17:32] Ana Torres: Well, and those are routines that are obviously good practice. Have students think about their thinking, share their thinking, share it out with everyone.

[00:17:42] And so I think it’s worth repeating that those safe environments are created by us, are created by us showing students how that space should look and feel. So I can imagine those students had a blast with you this summer with you passing the mic and just your presence.

[00:18:03] Dan Meyer: The kids I’m sure would rather have been at 100 different places other than learning math with me during the summer, but kids definitely vibe with the teacher’s enthusiasm for their subject, and especially their enthusiasm for the kids.

[00:18:17] Kids get it when teachers are students of their kids. When teachers find kids interesting, kids respond and treat the class as interesting. That’s just a fact.

[00:18:25] Ana Torres: Sounds like the students had a really good time, but also learned a lot as well.

[00:18:31] Dan Meyer: Yeah, both are true.

[00:18:33] Ana Torres: Invite me next time ’cause I would love…

[00:18:35] Dan Meyer: Will do.

[00:18:35] Ana Torres: … to be part of this.

[00:18:37] Dan Meyer: Rock on. Sounds good.

[00:18:38] Ana Torres: Let’s talk big picture, Dan.

[00:18:40] Where does this leave you? Did it have you thinking more about technology integration and how as educators we can serve students best?

[00:18:50] Dan Meyer: It had me thinking two things. One was that I really appreciated not having like a piece of glass and metal in between me and the student. Not having that barrier was just good for our relationship.

[00:19:04] I appreciated being able to see what was on the paper, like flat, face up on the desk versus hidden, I’ve got to walk around behind someone, so there’s just pieces I liked about that. I obviously definitely miss a lot of the power of technology as we’ve built it at Amplify.

[00:19:20] But the other thing I was thinking about is that, look, you move a class to paper and pencil, there is no guarantee of anything. Things weren’t great in the paper and pencil era. Teachers found ways to kill time in frivolous ways in paper/pencil. In paper/pencil, there’s no guarantee of student creativity.

[00:19:39] I just want to keep myself focused on what is the pedagogy that supports student learning, and then whatever medium I have in front of me, paper/pencil, screens, chalk, slate, papyrus, whatever, like I want to use that to the best of its ability to do that kind of teaching.

[00:19:54] Ana Torres: Well, and that has me thinking of this whole paradox with digital, print can both work together best.

[00:20:04] And coming from the man who works, you’re the, I call you the Amplify Desmos Math guy. So I do want you to talk a little bit more about Amplify Desmos Math for those listeners who may not be as familiar with it or are interested in learning more about it.

[00:20:23] Dan, how does Amplify math help educators achieve this ideal integration that you have mentioned? And you’ve mentioned our platform in our conversation, but I want to hone in a little bit more on it now if we could.

[00:20:36] Dan Meyer: I think it’s a couple things. It’s challenge by choice, and it’s the right medium for the right math.

[00:20:41] What I’m talking about is, there’s math where if kids are doing that sketch of that graph, I want to show them some interesting animation based on that sketch, and that’s where the devices sing in real nice harmony with student thought.

[00:20:54] But there’s other kinds of math, kids scribbling down their solutions, working with algebra, moving around tangram shapes, or working with cubes or ten frames, where it’s just like, “No, what we’re going to do is we’re going to have something up on the board the teacher can project that gets kids thinking, but the right medium for the math is not devices there.”

[00:21:14] And challenge by choice is just that if you as a teacher are feeling better about paper and pencil or bring student devices into the picture, we will meet you at every moment on that continuum and say, “All right. We’ve got you. We’re going to give you the best possible pedagogical resources, mathematical resources, given your level of interest here.”

[00:21:33] Ana Torres: Well said. You also mentioned the high information feedback and connecting as we share this particular pedagogy. We want to connect students’ thinking.

[00:21:44] You also mentioned the power of the Amplify platform. Can you tell us more about those powers that the platform has?

[00:21:52] Dan Meyer: The platform, if you want to jump up to that level where, first of all, it has the teacher presentation screens where teachers have these manipulatives and interactives, and they can use in front of the class to support student thinking. Like, “What do you think would happen if we changed a two to a seven here?” And then kids talk about it, and you can show it, for instance.

[00:22:11] But the platform, when kids are on devices too, lets the teacher see what students are thinking to jump into each screen and see the summaries. It’ll show you the summary of student thought and create this discussion moment live in the moment to support further engagement.

[00:22:25] And I love how it lets me like pause the class work on devices and say, “You know what? I’ve got some amazing thinking to share with you folks. Time out. Put your laptops down to a fist. Apples up. Pac-Man your laptops.” Whatever the words is that you use in a classroom.

[00:22:40] But, “We’re done with devices for now. The devices have served their purpose in getting you thinking and making that thinking available to me. Now devices are down. We’re going to have a whole-class conversation about what you all are thinking.”

[00:22:52] Those are just some of the powers that the platform offers teachers.

[00:22:57] Ana Torres: I do assume there are people out there thinking, “Well, how do you do that, Dan?” Meaning, okay, great. I have the best of both worlds. We can have some paper/pencil. We can have this Amplify teacher screens that can have some anonymity as it relates to what students answer. I can pause. I can really get that peer-to-peer collaboration.

[00:23:19] But how do I get students to pause? How do you set that up, Dan?

[00:23:25] Dan Meyer: I just love teaching math as though it were a story. And I think we set teachers up for that kind of pedagogy really well, where the first screen is always something that any kid can bring an idea to.

[00:23:35] I watched a fifth-grade teacher in Yuma, Arizona, recently just show kids trapezoids, parallelograms, like, “Which one of these doesn’t belong?” And you had a kid that stood up and was like, “That one doesn’t belong because it’s got a beak. This shape has a beak.” She said, “It’s like a bird.”

[00:23:51] And there’s room in the curriculum to bring kids in at that level before then, over the course of the lesson, leveling them up and helping them understand the vocabulary around all these ideas. It’s like a story.

[00:24:04] Ana Torres: And as it should be, and it allows those access points for all students to be able to participate. One of our other colleagues, Dr. Kelly Serpa, talked a lot about that. That first five minutes, super critical to get all learners engaged. And the fact that the Amplify Desmos Math curriculum itself, the platform itself, really prioritizes that. I think that’s where we really see it.

[00:24:31] Dan Meyer: Yes.

[00:24:31] Ana Torres: So thanks for sharing that, Dan.

[00:24:33] Anything else you want to share about Amplify Desmos Math, the engagement aspect for students? Can it be used in any classroom setting, Dan?

[00:24:43] Dan Meyer: Yeah. K-12, we’ve got. I think we have TK through 12 now. We’re up and down the grade bands and just every single day thinking about, “How do we get kids to create, bring what they know? How do we help teachers respond to that knowledge in ways that are supportive of their math knowledge and their knowledge about themselves as people?” Just all the way through, I’m really proud of this team and its work.

[00:25:05] Ana Torres: It’s great work. Fawn Nguyen also is out in schools and really working with teachers on something that you also said. We have to be able to work our muscle, work our learning muscle. And so she’s seeing and getting great feedback from folks on this platform. And again, that could be used, the strategies that you talked about can be used in any classroom.

[00:25:29] Anything you wish folks out there would know? Any another tool to highlight or anything out there that could be misunderstood as it relates to the platform?

[00:25:39] Dan Meyer: Oh, my. I don’t know. I would just say that there’s a lot.

[00:25:42] Ana Torres: I caught him off guard, y’all. Oh, my.

[00:25:46] Dan Meyer: Well, artificial intelligence is of course the technology that people are watching out for, and I would say here at Amplify, I think we’re working pretty thoughtfully and really waiting to put our pedagogical mark on this technology.

[00:25:59] Ana Torres: One of the things, too, as you know, that I wanted to follow up on.

[00:26:03] Besides being my colleague, I know you have an amazing Substack. This episode’s coming out in late October. Anything listeners should be looking for on your Substack?

[00:26:17] Dan Meyer: I’ll tell you, I’ve got some video. I collaborated with a teacher in Yuma, Arizona, I mentioned. I’ll be bringing some videos of some really interesting grade five teaching, a sequence of four lessons. This teacher’s just doing some stuff that blows my mind.

[00:26:31] Keep an eye out for some videos and some stories of real teachers doing good work in hard situations. It’s awesome stuff.

[00:26:38] Ana Torres: And I appreciate that you spotlight that good teachers doing great things in this area of “What is best, living in this digital world, living in this print world?”

[00:26:52] I’m a believer that we can combine the two to have that creativity that you mentioned, that peer-to-peer audience. I think all of that can happen in both.

[00:27:01] Dan Meyer: For sure.

[00:27:02] Ana Torres: Now, Dan, before we go, you know we’re going to do our Wisdom Nugget segment. And so we’ve got a couple of different questions for you this time.

[00:27:11] So are you ready? We’ve got a fresh batch for you. You ready?

[00:27:13] Dan Meyer: I will try. I will try. Let’s do it.

[00:27:16] Ana Torres: He’s smiling ear to ear ’cause he loves this part.

[00:27:20] If you had to teach one subject other than math, what would it be?

[00:27:25] Dan Meyer: I do love to write. So I’d probably like move towards like creative writing.

[00:27:30] But I’ve got to be real. My talents are quite limited as a teacher outside of math and in creative writing, so I’m not recommending that anyone hire me to be a teacher of creative writing. But I would teach that if I had to get out of math.

[00:27:43] Ana Torres: Well, you know what, why I like to follow you on LinkedIn, I love your Substack, and I do see the creativeness there, and also the wittiness there as well.

[00:27:53] And I do see the comments that come through, and you respond to literally each one of them. So I see creative writing in your future.

[00:27:59] Dan Meyer: All right. All right. Appreciate that. Appreciate that.

[00:28:01] Ana Torres: Now, is there a particular piece of teaching advice that has stuck with you, Dan?

[00:28:06] Dan Meyer: So much. I think Tom Sallee, a guy at UC Davis, where I learned math and math teaching, he had his “two lies of teaching,” which I appreciated.

[00:28:16] Ana Torres: Two lies.

[00:28:17] Dan Meyer: You ready for this? He said, “Lie number one is that if I taught them, then they learned it.” And lie number two was that, “If they learned it, then I taught it.” Which always, those two combined always keep me like a little bit distrustful, in a healthy way, distrustful of like what kids pick up from my voice, and also trying to keep my eyes on the fact that kids are picking up stuff that I didn’t say and might not have anticipated.

[00:28:44] But kids’ learning is just a really mysterious thing, and we ought to treat it with a lot of respect and reverence.

[00:28:50] Ana Torres: Absolutely. Wow. Yeah, those are two lies. That’s very deep, Dan. Okay.

[00:28:56] Now, I know that there was a song when I would commute to work, especially my early years, my song was “I Will Survive.” Is there a song that you listen to on your way to work?

[00:29:08] Dan Meyer: Getting much less deep here, considerably less deep. I used to listen to Lil Wayne on the way to teach in Sacramento.

[00:29:18] Ana Torres: I’m a little older than you then, Dan. You’re a Lil Wayne fan. I love it.

[00:29:22] Dan Meyer: Uh, well, I mean, this was like the Carter II, if that helps age me. Not the Carter V, but it was back then.

[00:29:29] Ana Torres: Okay. And actually, Lil Wayne is from my hometown of New Orleans.

[00:29:32] Dan Meyer: There you go.

[00:29:33] Ana Torres: And so, okay.

[00:29:33] Dan Meyer: Didn’t know that about you.

[00:29:34] Ana Torres: Just facts that others didn’t know.

[00:29:37] Dan Meyer: Connections.

[00:29:37] Ana Torres: Oh, okay. Now, what is something that you wish non-educators knew about the teaching profession?

[00:29:44] Dan Meyer: The non-educators I hang with most often are tech folk who did really well in school and probably didn’t need school all that much, and I just, I wish they knew, number one, how many kids are not like that profile of person who could learn K-12 with just a library card. That’s not how it is.

[00:30:04] And also to know just how much of school learning is cognitive but also social, that those two are both happening every day, every minute, and they are very hard to split apart. People often want to say, “Oh, we’ll do social stuff over here, and but here we’ll do the learning stuff over here,” and it’s like, “Nah, kids don’t appreciate that.”

[00:30:23] Ana Torres: No. And we’ve lived it and breathed it. Kids sniff that out really quick, that social aspect…

[00:30:28] Dan Meyer: Really quick.

[00:30:29] Ana Torres: Definitely needs to be integrated.

[00:30:31] Now, I know you did this last time, but is there another school or district you’d like to shout out this time?

[00:30:38] Dan Meyer: Ooh, I’m going to repeat my shout-out for Oakland Unified. Every teacher I work with in Oakland Unified is just like…

[00:30:43] Ana Torres: Ooh, Oakland Unified.

[00:30:43] Dan Meyer: It’s just an absolute banger. I always learn stuff, every observation, every conversation. Oakland just knows how, how to do it.

[00:30:50] I do also do some work recently with Walnut Creek ISD here in the East Bay. Wendy Beatty and her team of teachers, I love seeing a cohesive department with a lot of trust between teachers and coach and coach to teachers, and see the kind of magic that can happen under those conditions. I’m into it.

[00:31:08] Ana Torres: Oakland and Walnut Creek, you get your shout-outs from Dan Meyer today.

[00:31:13] Dan Meyer: There it is.

[00:31:13] Ana Torres: Well, Dan, as always, thank you. You’re leaving me with a lot to think about, not only as an educator, but also as a parent. And so always great to have you on the podcast. Can we do it again for Season 4?

[00:31:26] Dan Meyer: I hope so. I hope so.

[00:31:27] Ana Torres: Save the date, Dan. Save the date.

[00:31:29] Dan Meyer: Will do. Take care. Thanks, Ana.

[00:31:30] Ana Torres: You’re welcome.

[00:31:34] That was Dan Meyer, senior fellow in learning innovation at Amplify. Check out the show notes to learn more about some of the great tools and resources coming out of Amplify Desmos Math that Dan mentioned. We’ll also have a link to Dan’s Substack.

[00:31:49] And now let’s welcome back our Classroom Insider, middle school science teacher Eric Cross.

[00:31:57] Classroom Insider Eric Cross is back with us. So Eric, big picture, what did you think?

[00:32:05] Eric Cross: Well, as I expected, there were going to be a number of things that I could talk about, but to stay true to form, I picked three.

[00:32:12] Ana Torres: Okay.

[00:32:12] Eric Cross: But Dan delivered as always.

[00:32:14] Ana Torres: He did. So let’s start with first takeaway.

[00:32:17] Eric Cross: The one that resonated with me first is a practice that I try to do, and it’s ask students to create something that reveals their thinking.

[00:32:23] And this is something that can happen in every subject. And there’s research on this called generative learning where students, they deepen their understanding when they’re doing things like explaining and visualizing and drawing and mapping and modeling.

[00:32:34] This is a big thing for science teachers, and it’s … I want to separate it. It’s not making students draw. It’s having them create representations that force them to make their thinking visible. There’s a difference between the two.

[00:32:45] Ana Torres: Yes.

[00:32:45] Eric Cross: So in science it might be what’s happening with particles, or right now my students are using microscopes, and I’m going to have them draw today what they think is happening. Why are the images getting bigger?

[00:32:54] You don’t really think about that. You know it’s a lens, but like why? What do you think is happening? And it’s not so much about right and wrong, it’s more so about them turning their thinking inside out and putting it out loud.

[00:33:04] And then in elementary school it can show multiple ways of how you represent a problem, show your thinking. But again, it’s having students create these visual representations and models.

[00:33:13] Ana Torres: I love the takeaways related to science. And you mentioned earlier that this could be applied to any subject area.

[00:33:22] Any other subject areas and how you can link this to maybe social studies, ELA even?

[00:33:28] Eric Cross: So like in an English class, it’d be students are always reading. They’re looking at character dialogue. So maybe they sketch the relationship between different characters, and they annotate why. So that’s one they can really flesh out the drama between the two, and they’re drawing it.

[00:33:40] Or in social studies they’re creating a model similar to science where they’re explaining why an event happened, whether they do a graphic novel, or they just do a simple model to represent it.

[00:33:49] In every subject, being able to visualize something, but having the students create that visual and then being able to explain it is huge, and that helps them reveal their thinking.

[00:33:58] And there’s so many different mediums that you can use, whether you’re going analog, paper, pencil, colored pencil, or you’re going digital. There’s just so many things you can use, and I have fun with that.

[00:34:08] I have my students do things where pen and paper they’re making a model, but then I also have them create Netflix shows where they get up and they present. I have a whole template that they do. And they have to get up and they have to pitch their episodes to me, and I’m the CEO. But it’s in the context of whatever they’re learning.

[00:34:23] These creative outlets, it’s just, it’s so much fun when they get to create things versus they’re just consuming things.

[00:34:29] Ana Torres: Would love to be a student in your classroom. I mean, creating a Netflix show, and pretending that I’m a CEO and connecting the learning.

[00:34:36] That generative learning, I really think that is beneficial for us to always understand the research behind what we do. So thank you for bringing that up and having our listeners chew on that a bit.

[00:34:50] I know you had another takeaway, and, listeners, he is chomping at the bit to tell you this one too.

[00:34:56] Eric Cross: This one actually relates to the first one. And Dan said it. It’s giving student work an audience that’s beyond the teacher.

[00:35:02] Ana Torres: Oh, I love that he brought that up. Yes.

[00:35:03] Eric Cross: This is big. I can personally attest to this in my entire career. The audience for student work, it changes the effort that students put into their communication and thinking.

[00:35:12] Once they realize it’s not just going to Mr. Cross, which, which is great that they feel safe and comfortable, but sometimes they can let off the gas a little bit too much because Mr. Cross isn’t going to put them out publicly.

[00:35:24] But now when they have to explain to their peers or to people from other classes or the broader public, all of a sudden it takes on something more real.

[00:35:32] Ana Torres: It changes, right?

[00:35:33] Eric Cross: It does.

[00:35:33] Ana Torres: It’s a shift. It’s a big shift for them.

[00:35:35] Eric Cross: It is. And I’m a big believer in, our students are growing up in an age where a lot of them, they’re content consumers, but we want to create content creators in this case of learning. And so I loved…

[00:35:46] Dan said something that I’m going to apply immediately. It’s showing work that’s complete and incomplete understanding, and asking students… These two phrases were great. It was, “What do you appreciate about this thinking?” and, “What’s one thing you’d change?”

[00:35:59] And I know I’m getting to the minutiae of how the words are said, but you know the statement, “What’s one thing you would change?” It’s non-judgmental. Just because I’m changing it doesn’t mean it’s bad. It’s not “What’s one thing that’s wrong?” It’s not one thing they could have done better. It’s just one thing you would change.

[00:36:13] Ana Torres: And so for Eric to be immediately saying, “Wow, this is impactful and I’m going to use it right away” says a lot.

[00:36:20] I actually even appreciated that he used the word appreciate. That word appreciate means it could be anything. We’re not talking right or wrong. “What do you see? What do you appreciate?” It’s not even minutiae, Eric. It’s super important how we phrase things and how we make students think about things.

[00:36:37] Eric Cross: Words matter.

[00:36:38] Ana Torres: Words do matter.

[00:36:39] Anything else you want to add to this second takeaway?

[00:36:42] Eric Cross: Yeah. To build on that, the important part is that it’s structured. So if you’re just telling students to share with a partner, that’s not in and of itself not necessarily powerful. Giving them a criteria for noticing, teaching them how to give feedback, how to compare, how to ask questions, how to improve the work, these are things that are going to produce some meaningful thinking.

[00:37:00] So as a teacher of 12 and 13-year-olds, I always have to remind myself that I can’t just give them the task. I also have to teach them how to do it and how to think through it.

[00:37:07] Ana Torres: Exactly.

[00:37:07] Eric Cross: And so we have to teach them. “I have to teach you how to give feedback that’s meaningful and useful. I have to teach you how to receive it.” So when we do that, then that collaboration, that audience becomes more powerful, and then you start getting into these Socratic seminars where students are participating more because they have the language to be able to operate in that environment and feel comfortable.

[00:37:27] Ana Torres: The structure and the intentionality matters. I remember when I first started teaching, I didn’t realize how much that mattered, Eric, meaning, teaching students how to give feedback, how to talk to each other. So that in my third year, we had it so perfected that I remember I had to literally use the bathroom one day and I just had to go and I couldn’t find anybody to watch my class.

[00:37:52] So I’m like, “Guys, I’m going to step out literally for two minutes.” My principal walked in while I left, and all my babies were in their centers doing their thing, and I literally came back and I saw her, and she’s like, “Ana, what was going on in your classroom is amazing. Your children are on task. They’re having conversations. They’re doing a lot of thinking.” Mind you, I was already blown at the fact that she walked in and I wasn’t in the room. But the fact that she’s like, “What was happening in this classroom was magical,” but it took time to get there. And so invest the time.

[00:38:25] Don’t you love to see the progress when they’re able to do that? To me, that’s magical.

[00:38:30] Eric Cross: 100%.

[00:38:31] Ana Torres: And so takeaway three, Eric, can’t wait to hear this one.

[00:38:35] Eric Cross: I saved this one for last because it’s the one that’s the most personal to me because of so much of the work that I do beyond the classroom and I love that Dan leaned into this. It’s start with the pedagogy and then choose the technology. I mean, this is a big thing.

[00:38:49] But just some key points. Instead of building lessons by saying, “How can I use this technology?” start with, “What do the students need to do? What is it that they need to practice, notice, discuss, revise?” And then choose the tool that best supports that mental work.

[00:39:06] Ana Torres: I like it.

[00:39:06] Eric Cross: And so working backwards. “Where do I want to end up?” And sometimes that might be a technology tool, and sometimes it might be an analog tool. In this semester by itself, my students go from using Expo markers on the desk to using advanced digital tools in the classroom. They’re doing both.

[00:39:21] And so now what I’m doing is I’m looking at every piece of my lesson and every activity and going, “What’s best for the cognitive work?” Maybe my warm-ups, I’m going to do that analog. I want them to write in the warm-up. But when we get to simulations or visuals, I want that digital ’cause I need to collect all that information. I love being able to get forensic with my lessons now that I’ve done it for so many years.

[00:39:41] Ana Torres: And look at you using your science term, forensic. He likes to get forensic, y’all. But I appreciate that you’re saying, “What’s the outcome of this lesson and what tools do I need in order… What are the best tools to use?”

[00:39:54] Eric Cross: The effectiveness of education technology is on how it’s used instructionally rather than whether the students have access to it. So how we use the tool.

[00:40:02] And we know we’re in the age right now of the screen usage debate, and I’ve heard it being said a lot of times, and sometimes it can, I think, can create a false dilemma when it’s framed like either schools embrace digital learning and students get too much screen time, or schools return to paper.

[00:40:17] Ana Torres: That doesn’t address the real issue, does it, Eric?

[00:40:19] Eric Cross: No, it doesn’t.

[00:40:20] Ana Torres: Either, or.

[00:40:20] Eric Cross: It doesn’t. The reality is I want, as a teacher, I want to have access to more tools. When I first got my own apartment, I had one of these little toolboxes. It’s like a screwdriver and a hammer and a measuring tape. And so, every problem that you have has to be solved with these five tools.

[00:40:37] Ana Torres: It would, with those tools, yes.

[00:40:39] Eric Cross: That’s all you get, and so you need to do some putty or something in your house, I guess you’re using a butter knife. As I got older and actually deeper in my career, I started buying more tools. And the great thing is I have precise tools for precise problems, and that’s what, whether it’s technology, whether it’s pen and paper, these are all just tools.

[00:40:59] And so as a teacher, I want to come in, and I’m looking at my task, I’m looking at my learning objective for the student and saying, “What is the best mechanism for this?” It might be analog. It might be digital. And you know what? To be honest, I’m sure every teacher can relate to this listening to this, it’s not either/or just for your school.

[00:41:16] Ana Torres: Correct.

[00:41:16] Eric Cross: It’s not even either/or just for the subject you teach. It can be by class or by student. I’ve had classes where I’ve done the same lesson with analog tools, and then the next period, digital tools because the needs and the demands and the focus in how my students, where they’re at in their development, one tool was better for that group, and I had to pivot for the next group ’cause that’s the closest that I can get to personalizing with a group of 34.

[00:41:41] Ana Torres: And I like what you said, whatever tool is best. What was always, for me, impactful is having opportunities for students to engage in both. But like you mentioned, you’ve got to be real intentional about that. What does that lesson look like? What do I want the students to learn? What are the best tools to use?

[00:42:00] Anything else you want to add as it relates to looking at pedagogy and then choosing the technology?

[00:42:05] Eric Cross: Ana, we could talk about this forever.

[00:42:07] Ana Torres: This could be a whole podcast episode …

[00:42:09] Eric Cross: I’m sure this could be a whole podcast episode. I’ll keep it to those three for now ’cause I’m sure we’re going to to come back to this eventually.

[00:42:15] Ana Torres: Eric, it’s always good chatting with you, and we’ll do it again.

[00:42:20] Eric Cross: Sounds great. Thanks, Ana.

[00:42:24] Ana Torres: Thanks for listening to Beyond My Years from Amplify. Again, we know educators never stop learning, and that’s why we’re here to help you extend your reach. Check out the show notes for more resources and episodes to help you level up your math instruction.

[00:42:40] Next time on Beyond My Years, I’m going to be joined by my comadre, my colleague Alestra Flores Menéndez, for an episode all about developing foundational skills with multilingual and English learners beyond second grade.

[00:42:57] Alestra Flores Menéndez: When we honor a child’s dignity, what we’re doing is we’re recognizing you’re here and you have some skills, and we’re going to take those skills and we’re going to build from those skills.

[00:43:08] Ana Torres: That’s next time. I’m your host, Ana Torres. Our Classroom Insider is Eric Cross. Our music is by Andrew Smolin. Until next time, please remember to reach out and say thank you to a seasoned educator who has shaped your life.