A Pandemic Year, and Counting Blessings

I am feeling reflective as I write this. I was grateful to have been able to get my first shot for the COVID vaccine this past Thursday, one year to the day after the WHO declared COVID-19 a global pandemic. 

I posted this on Instagram afterward getting the vaccine, feeling grateful:

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by Dave Mulder (@d_mulder)

What a year it has been! And yet, God is faithful. Despite all of the hardships, frustration, angst, anxiety, and depression of this past year--for me personally, and perhaps for you as well--I have learned to more faithfully rely on God as my refuge and strength (in a Psalm 46 kind of way) on a day-to-day basis than ever before. When I hear people talk about "going back" to the way things were before the pandemic, I long for some parts of that too. But I also realize how this past year has changed me, in both unhealthy ways (like stress eating as a coping strategy, and a lot more time scrolling on social media) and healthy ways (like more intentionally creating quiet times with God, and growing in being okay with being "just okay.") While I certainly hope to reset some of the unhealthy ones...but I don't want to too quickly "go back" to the way things were before, if it means I might forget and lose hold of some of the good things that have been happening in my life too.

All of this has me thinking about this lovely song, from one of my favorite bands, Rend Collective. The song is "Counting Every Blessing," and it was released some time before the pandemic year (in 2018, I think?) I invite you to listen, and I hope it gives you a lift in the way it buoys my spirits every time I listen to it. It's not a panacea song of, "See, everything is great!" but more of a, "Even when things are hard, or unclear, I can still see that God is in control of all things. 

A Case of the Blahs (And Teaching Anyway)

By nature, I'm a pretty upbeat person. I can usually look on the bright-side, find something lovely to celebrate, and bring some joy to pretty much any situation. Positivity is one of my superpowers!

But today, I have a case of the blahs. Nothing is terrible, but I'm just feeling that sense of tired irritability where small things bug me, and nip at me, and consume more of my cognitive space than I might like to admit.

Image by Krithika Parthasarathay via Pixabay

I headed into class at noon today, and in those last couple of minutes just before we began, I decided to change up my lesson plan for today. The future teachers I serve are amazing people, and I'm so grateful for the opportunities I have on a daily basis to help them see the varied aspects of the work we do as educators. And today? Today that meant a little meta-lesson about the emotional labor that is assumed for teachers.

I started by just naming it: "I'm feeling uncharacteristically blah today, folks." A few seemed surprised, but most kind of nodded--I mean, I am a pretty bouncy presence most of the time, and I just wasn't at the beginning of class today. And I explained how this is part of the work we do as teachers: we often have to check our own feelings, suck it up, and just teach anyway. This probably wasn't earth-shattering news to anyone in the room, but I thought it could be illuminating for them to notice this, and see if they could tell a difference in the way class unfolded. In another course, I have a lesson I teach about the difference between "acting like a teacher" and "being a teacher." Today's class meeting was an example in practice of "acting like a teacher."

So, after this odd preamble, I headed into the lesson as planed. We spent some time in discussion about a chapter I asked them to read in preparation, and they had lots of thoughtful reflections and deliberate questions, as they normally do. Then a very brief lecture from me, followed by a series of activities and demonstrations. They participated well, interacted well, shared their thinking well.

And you know what? By the end of class, I realized I wasn't "acting like a teacher" anymore. Somehow, starting off with that "acting" morphed back into my more normal embodiment of my own teaching practice. And honestly, the playfulness of the activities I had planned to do with the students--and seeing their joy in discovery--has buoyed my spirits in a way I wasn't expecting.

Somewhere in one of his writings, master educator Parker J. Palmer says something along the lines of, "Technique is what you use until the teacher shows up." Maybe this is the lesson for me that I needed to be reminded of and practice today. And my hope is that, for the future teachers I serve, I got to model some sense of this today.

Learning Targets

 I've been thinking a lot about learning targets lately. In the two methods courses I'm teaching right now (Science Methods for Elementary and Middle School, and Methods of Teaching STEM K-12) we are getting started with developing unit plans, and we're thinking about goals and objectives. And a recent episode of the podcast my buddy Matt and I started was all about learning targets too. (You can listen to the episode here, if you're interested: Hallway Conversations with Matt and Dave: Goals)

The main idea I'm hoping to convey to my students about learning targets is just how valuable they are for keeping both the teacher and the students on track for what we're working towards. Imagine yourself as an archer--having a clear target makes taking aim so much more obvious. A clear target helps you measure (assess) learning: did students hit the bullseye? And, I would suggest, a clear target even helps you focus your teaching on ensuring students will be able to hit that target.

Image by mickrh via Pixabay

Is it possible to over-emphasize learning targets? Probably...like almost anything else in the world of Education today. But I have found targets so helpful in my own teaching practice, perhaps because I'm likely to go off the rails and get distracted pretty easily.

So what is a learning target? Here's my current thinking...

Learning targets are often framed as "I can..." statements, but the old school format for writing objectives that I learned in my own undergraduate teacher preparation works just as well: "Students will be able to..." Thinking this through, I think that "Students will be able to..." (SWBAT) is more framed for the teacher, while "I can..." is more framed for the student. 

And then, the key is following up this introduction with a solid action-oriented verb: what will students be able to do? Describe? Analyze? Illustrate? Explain? List? Develop? Construct? Argue? Contrast? Hypothesize? Write? Model? Debate? There are so many possibilities, but I like the idea of connecting them to different levels of thinking, such as what is described in Bloom's Taxonomy. Aiming for at least some learning targets that get at higher-order thinking skills seems like a really wise strategy to me. (If all we're asking students to do is remember and regurgitate information...that feels like a "thin" education to me!)

When I was talking this through with my students in STEM methods this week, we were debating the pros and cons of writing learning targets for students vs. framing them for teachers. One of my students expressed some concern about "I can..." statements, even as a university student: it puts a lot of pressure on the students to really be able to do these things! Another student responded with a wondering: why not use both SWBAT and I can? Here was his reasoning: even if you are sharing learning targets with students at the beginning of a unit or lesson, using "students will be able to..." as the frame puts this in a future-tense: "Maybe you can't do this now...but you will be able to do this later on." And then, using "I can" as a frame at the end of the unit or lesson gives students an opportunity to self-assess: "Can I now do this, after I've had the opportunity to learn it? Or do I need more practice?"

I LOVE this approach, honestly. And this makes me feel grateful for the opportunity to keep learning, right along with my students.

Are you using learning targets? How do you feel about them? Do you find them valuable for guiding your students learning, or for your own teaching?

Happy PodDay!

My buddy and co-conspirator, Matt, texted me first thing this morning: "Happy PodDay, brother!"

Today is the day...after weeks of dreaming, scheming, recording, and a whole lot of laughing have come together into this thing: we are launching our podcast today.

"Hallway Conversations with Matt and Dave" is what we decided to call it. The whole thing grew out of the way our relationship came together: we often wound up having conversations in the hallway outside of our offices. Matt is my newest colleague in our Education department, but we've known each other--or maybe known of each other?--for years. We have many mutual friends in education, so I felt like I knew Matt even before he moved to town. But it's been so, so good to get to know him in a more personal and personable way.

And after so many hallway conversations...one time one of us said, "We should really record these and turn them into a podcast."

And so we did.

Our basic plan is that each episode will be a 20-minute unscripted conversation around a theme. (20 minutes because teachers' time is precious, and we certainly don't want them to feel like they are wasting it with us!) While we have agreed on some topics ahead of time, each conversation will be driven by a question related to the theme of the episode that one of us will bring without telling the other ahead of time, and then we will think on our feet as we try to come to an answer to that question--just like we do in our "real" hallway conversations.

It's a little terrifying to step up to the microphone and record an episode this way, but it's also been a lot of fun, and some really good professional development for both of us, I think.

And, honestly, it's a little terrifying, launching this out into the world.

Will anyone listen? Will anyone care?

Early on in the recording process we joked that if the only people who listen are our wives (you know, to keep an eye on us...) we will be fine with that. The real intent for us was to further develop our own reflective practices, and build up our friendship at the same time.

But now, now that we're launching it out into the open...I'd be lying if I said that I don't care if people listen. I hope that people listen, and that the things we are talking about in our "hallway conversations" will spark some more hallway conversations among the Christian educators who might listen in, that they might start having these same kinds of professional discussions with thoughtful colleagues in their own school hallways.

Anyway, if you're up for giving us a listen, you can find our podcast on Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, and Spotify. Just search for "hallway conversations with Matt and Dave" and you'll find us. Or, you can access the show via the web right here: http://hallwayconvos.podbean.com/ We would love for you to listen in, and to share your thoughts in response.

(So...if I'm not writing as often here on the blog...it's probably because we're recording and editing some new episodes. That was definitely the case in January!)

Happy PodDay!

Welcome to 2021: Let's Go!

Welcome to 2021!

I know, I know...I'm a few days late. But here we are. It feels like everyone I know has taken a collective sigh of relief that the madness of 2020 is now in the rearview mirror. Really, though, how different has the new year been from the old? I'm not sure there is something magical in closing the old calendar and opening up a new one. And yet, I find myself feeling hopeful for the new year, perhaps more hopeful than I've felt in sometime.

This past year I continued my practice of capturing one second of video every day using the 1 Second Everyday app. I smashed all of those seconds together again into a six and a half minute video recap of my year. As I watched it, I'm struck by how clearly I can remember so many of these one-second slices of life, both the highs and the lows. You're welcome to watch it here, if you like:

That last second of my 2020 is my niece leaping off of a chair in our living room. Her shout got cut off just a bit to squeeze the whole leap into one second. It was actually a, "Let's go!" And I can't think of a more fitting way to think about leaping into the new year: "Let's go!"

This is often the time of year where I--like many people--reflect on setting goals for myself. There is something about the milestone of the new year beginning that makes this seem right. Last year, about this time, I wrote a post wondering about the value of "resolutions" and whether goals need to be measurable to be attainable. I'm still wondering about this, I guess. I'm not really making any resolutions this year, and I'm not sure I'll set any measurable goals either.

Oh, yes...I could stand to lose a bunch of the pounds I packed on through stress-eating my way through 2020. And, yes...I'm planning to be out pedaling as soon as the snow and ice are done for this winter...and I'll probably shoot for 2000 miles on my bike again, since that has been about what I've been pedaling for the past couple of years. And I do intend to keep up the blogging, at least a few times each month. And, gratefully, I'm getting more intentional about spending time in prayer and reading scripture again, with the support of a new devotional I got for Christmas. And professionally, I have broad ambitions of both starting a podcast with a colleague this year, and drafting a book, as well as teaching to the best of my ability in our ongoing pandemic world.

That looks like a lot of goal-setting, doesn't it?

But I think my actual "goal" for 2021 is to be fully present in the things I'm doing. I want to take a cue from my niece's joy in jumping in with both feet, with a "Let's Go!" attitude.

Welcome to 2021, friends. Let's do this!

"Let's Go!"

Teaching is Not for the Faint of Heart...and HyFlex Teaching in Particular

I saw this tweet this morning, and boy did this resonate... 

I don't think non-teachers understand what teaching remote and in-person simultaneously really entails.

How would you describe it, teacher friends? pic.twitter.com/yFRSAUTJxg

— Julie Jee 🇰🇷🇺🇲 (@mrsjjee) December 30, 2020

I've said to a few people that this past fall semester was the most demanding for me since my first year of teaching. Most of the challenge was that I have such high expectations for myself and my teaching practice...and I fell short of those expectations. 

A lot.

Here's the thing: the HyFlex model of teaching sounds great in theory. But it's really, really hard to do it well in practice. HyFlex is "hybrid flexible," and the basic idea is that students should be able to fully participate in class whether they attend in person or via distance learning. Early in my doctoral studies, we considered HyFlex as a pedagogical approach in a case study in one of my courses. One of the biggest problems we identified is the huge cognitive demand for instructors using this approach. You have to be able to teach students in the room and students joining via videoconference simultaneously, and either of these modes of teaching is already plenty demanding...let alone simultaneously! 

To do HyFlex teaching well, you basically have two demanding tasks--teaching face-to-face, and teaching via live videoconference. These require similar skillsets...but not identical skillsets. And the difficulty is that you have to do them both at the same time. It's a problem! And, I think that's why I felt like I was failing almost all of the time this fall: I couldn't focus on my normal face-to-face pedagogy, because I was constantly distracted by trying to keep my Zooming students involved in what was happening in class. But the Zoomers were always the minority (just my students who were in quarantine, most of the time) and if I focused on good distance pedagogy, everything felt lifeless in the room, where the majority of my students were. And here was the most-likely-to-fail point for me: I couldn't do either of these things well (or at least, not well enough to meet my own high expectations for my teaching), so I felt a constant sense of frustration that I wasn't doing enough to support at least one group of students' learning. But what made it most difficult for me was that I was also recording each lesson, because some students were not able to join the live class meeting via videoconference, particularly if they were sick. And while teaching is always a public endeavor (you're always doing it in front of someone, right?) having a video record of my work makes me much more self-conscious!

So, to answer the question prompted by the tweet I shared above, here's my best analogy... 

I can yo-yo pretty well. I was a pretty big nerd in middle school, and I yo-yoed a lot. I can do some fun tricks: walk the dog, loop the loop, around the world, and rock the cradle. Not the most impressive repertoire, but a variety of entertaining tools in my yo-yoing toolbox. 

I can also juggle fairly well--with three beanbags, if I have both hands available, or two beanbags, if I have just one hand available. I was still a pretty big nerd in high school, and taught myself to juggle one afternoon, just because I decided I wanted to learn how.

I also can balance a meter stick vertically on my foot for quite a long time. I was able to balance a meter stick on my hand for years and years...and early in my middle school teaching career, I realized I could also balance it on my foot, much to the delight of my students. (Middle school teachers, am I right?) :-)

Now, here's the thing: I think HyFlex teaching is sort of like yo-yoing with my right hand, while juggling two beanbags with my left hand, and balancing a meter stick on my right foot, all at the same time. It's keeping the face-to-face teaching going, while also getting the online teaching going, and then an awareness of the camera, and how this all looks to the students who are watching it after the fact. I might get the yo-yo going (in class students), and keep the beanbags flipping and flopping (Zooming students), but then I'm suddenly derailed by the meter stick dipping--maybe a tech problem with the camera--which has me dropping beanbags, or tangling my yo-yo string.

Ugh. It was an exhausting semester. 

But there were bright spots for me. My students were GREAT throughout--they were very encouraging, despite my feeling that I was failing. My colleagues were amazingly supportive in a "we're all in this together" sort of way. My fully online courses (the ones that were planned to be offered online) went really, really well, which was a buoy for sure.

I think the biggest lesson for me was that I have to be okay with letting "good enough" be "good enough" sometimes when it comes to my teaching practice. (This is HARD for me...) I will do what I can to support and encourage my students' learning, obviously, but I have to check my own expectations for teaching during a pandemic, I think. Sometimes I'm going to drop a beanbag, or get a knot in my yo-yo string, or trip over the meter stick I'm balancing. Who wouldn't flop sometimes, with all of that going on? 

Maybe it's more amazing how often it all worked than the 10% of the time that things went sideways? I guess the real take-away for me is what I always tell my students, future teachers that they are: if you ever stop learning, perhaps it's time to stop teaching?

Image by Gerd Altmann via Pixabay

Merry Christmas (And All That Stuff)

2020 has been weird, weird year. If you've spent any time at all on social media, I'm sure you've seen all the posts and tweets and reels and memes about how this year has been the absolute worst. And, yeah, I feel that too. It's been an emotionally taxing year for me in almost every way. And yet, there has been good, and beauty, and surprises.

In the month of December I've started several posts for the blog, and ended up discarding a couple of them, and saving a few as pieces of string I might unspool in a future post. But I didn't want to end the year on a down note...and most of the posts I had been writing were cynical or downright grumpy.

But, against all odds, I found some Christmas cheer this year.

My church has had rough times this year, but our traditional Christmas Eve service was exactly what I needed. Singing carols, celebrating communion, and a hope-filled message helped me reframe and remember just how much I love these people I worship with each Sunday.

Several of my family members have moved to the same small town where I live this year, which meant spending time with loved ones I don't typically get to see at Christmas. This was a joy!

I've made deliberate time to rest, to do unproductive things. This has been an exercise in intentionality, as I typically strive to be as productive as possible to feed my inner achiever. (Ah, the joys of being an Enneagram 3...) But over the past week or so, I've taken a lot more time to read for pleasure, to play games, to spend time with my wife and kids...and none of this is wasted.

Silly as it might sound, the hyped-up "Christmas Star" conjunction of Jupiter and Saturn was a lovely reminder that the world is a wonderful place. The science teacher in me marveled at this celestial moment, and the child in me was reminded of just how much I love astronomy. (Seeing Halley's Comet in 1986 left an impression!)

I am seriously thinking about starting a podcast with a colleague in the coming year, and I've found joy in brainstorming about what this could look like. Working with colleagues who continually inspire me to sharpen up and keep learning has been--and continues to be--a tremendous blessing.

Even the blizzard we experienced in Northwest Iowa this past week was a surprise blessing. I have realized I feel disappointed now if we don't have snow at Christmas (which is a little weird for this former Californian!) and it was looking like it was going to be a brown Christmas for us this year...until we got six inches of snow chased by a ferocious wind two days before!

I'm generally a pretty positive person, but the stresses of this year have gotten me down. I suspect I'm not alone in this. 

But I hope that you, dear reader, were able to find joy in the midst of a hard year. I wish you a Merry Christmas; I hope you are able to experience a sense of hope, and peace, and joy, and love as we close out 2020.

From our mudroom letter board to you...