Kyra’s Story
This post is part of a series about how to apply principles of cognitive science to teaching and learning. The other posts in this series can be found at Learning Hack #1: Learning is NOT data entry; it’s more like knot-tying, Learning Hack #2: Learning is an active process–not a passive one, and Learning Hack #3: Humans are terrible judges of their learning. (This means you).
I’d been teaching for seven years when Kyra enrolled in my sophomore biology class. I was not a natural-born teacher, and seven years was plenty of time to make a lot of teaching mistakes (Sometimes I think I’d made all of them.) but I was finally beginning to feel that I’d learned a thing or two. I’d gotten organized.
My classes where mostly focused and respectful places. Students knew what to do, and usually did it. My lesson plans were clear and, sometimes, creative. More and more, students told me that they were learning a lot and enjoying my classes. I was starting to feel confident—confident that I could help someone like Kyra.
Kyra was always the first one to arrive in class. She’d wish me a cheery good morning, sit right in the middle of the front row, and immediately copy the homework into her planner. She always met me with a smile, always asked how my day was, and before she left class, she would always say, “Thank you.”
Kyra was easy to like, and she seemed like a student who would be easy to help, so three weeks into the semester, when Kyra bombed a quiz, I suggested, “Why don’t you stop by after school, and we’ll go over that again together?”
“I Just Don’t Get Science”
That afternoon, Kyra showed up, pencils sharpened. And I was ready for her. I re-explained the key ideas of cellular respiration. I broke it down into steps. Kyra nodded and took everything down into her spiral notebook. I told her to re-read Section 6.1 in her text. When we were done, she had a big smile on her face. I was feeling good. We high-fived. The next day in class, she finished her quiz in under four minutes.
And she failed again. 50%. All of that work, and she only had one more question correct than the last time.
It must have been a fluke, so I asked Kyra if she’d be willing to try again, and she agreed with a hopeful smile. Kyra was so good-natured, so optimistic, so willing to trust that I could help her turn this around. With that kind of trust on the line, I prepared for our work after school like I’d prepare a lesson for a class. I typed everything up. I made plans to better assess her thinking.
About ten minutes into our reteach, I asked Kyra to explain where ATP came from.
“Oxygen?”
So I started over, making it even simpler than before. But Kyra’s usual smile was gone. She started to fidget. She started looking more at her paper than at me. “Why don’t we work on something else for a bit?” I suggested. “Why don’t we get out your notes on mitosis?” Kyra’s notebook was meticulous, so the notes were easy to find.
“How’re you doing on this stuff?” I asked pointing at the diagrams. “What kind of sense does this make to you?” Kyra’s eyes swelled with moisture. She looked away and gave a little self-deprecating laugh. “I don’t know,” she said, “I just don’t get science.”
Failing
Kyra and I continued to meet for the rest of the semester, but Kyra just barely passed. She didn’t really learned biology. Not the way she wanted. Not the way I wanted her to.
I am so grateful to Kyra—for her patience with me, for her resilience, her ability to remain cheerful in the midst of such frustrating difficulty, for the fact that even when I’d so clearly failed to help her that she said, “Thank you,” after every single class.
I am most grateful for what she taught me. I wasn’t a newbie teacher anymore, but I was still missing something fundamental. There would be other Kyras, other students showing up with drive and ambition who were still not succeeding and telling themselves that they “just don’t get it.” Unless I figured out what I was missing, I would be doomed to watch them fail too.
Summer Reading
That summer, I resolved to find out what it was. Naturally, I went to the library. Great books had helped me overcome my shortcomings as a new teacher. Great books would help me now.
I wanted to know what really happened in our minds when we learn. Maybe then, I could find out what wasn’t happening in Kyra’s mind. I checked out a lot of books that claimed to be “brain-based.” But “brain-based” seemed to be more about educational salesmanship than it was about MRIs or EEGs. Most of these books fit a pattern; someone found one or two studies that seemed to support their favorite educational trend. Then, they used it to justify a new spin on an old idea. Half of them didn’t even have bibliographies. None of them answered my question.
Maybe nobody knew.
Cognitive Science
But I kept reading. I owed it to Kyra and the students like her. Then I stumbled across an unassuming little book called Why Don’t Students Like School. The cover said that its author, Daniel Willingham, wasn’t a neuroscientist or a brain scientist but a cognitive scientist. I’d never heard of cognitive science before, but as I read, I began to feel a spark of hope. Cognitive science was what I’d been looking for, a branch of psychology where people wrestled with questions like, “Why are some things easier to learn than others?” and “Why can’t I remember that word even though I studied it?” These were my people! Over the next year, I read everything on cognitive science that I could get my hands on.
What I read was exciting and humbling. Exciting because I was finally learning how things might have gone better for Kyra and me. Exciting because this was actual science and not just psychobabble. Exciting because I saw practical implications—concrete things I could do to make learning better. Humbling because so much of what I’d tried to do to help Kyra was so wrong.
It also made me angry. I was a hardworking, passionate teacher who knew his subject and his kids. But why didn’t I know this? Why wasn’t this the first required course for any student of education?
My Biggest Teaching Mistakes
I don’t want to oversell this. There haven’t been any miracles. No one is going to make a Lifetime movie about my classes. I still struggle to help students who come from traumatic backgrounds or who suffer from a lack of curiosity or motivation. I still have a lot to learn, but it is no understatement to say that cognitive science totally changed my teaching. My classes are so much better for the Kyras who come through my door.
Learning wasn’t what I thought, but my mistakes were common ones. My intuitive ideas about how learning happens came from advice I’d gotten as a student. Then I passed on that same counterproductive advice. Cognitive science corrected three fundamental flaws in my intuition. They are my three biggest teaching mistakes.
- Learning is NOT data entry; it is more like knot-tying.
- Learning must be a challenge. Making things too easy to understand undermines learning.
- We can’t trust ourselves. We are terrible judges of our own learning.
Each of these links will bring you to a post where I break down, as best I can, what my mistakes were and how I’ve tried to overcome them. I hope you find them useful.