In 1750, for example, it took 4-6 weeks to sail by ship from New York to London. By 1850, with the advent of the steam engine, the trans-Atlantic journey was reduced to around 1 week. Today, we can fly from New York to London in just 8 hours.

This acceleration in travel illustrates a new value that has emerged for us in the modern world: speed. “Time is money,” we are told and the finance report does not lie. The litmus test for the quality and success of an endeavor is how fast we can complete it. For the sooner we can cross a task off our list, the more quickly we can move on to the next task. Then the next task. Then the next task. Only here’s the catch in a knowledge economy: the list is infinite. 

In education, this obsession for speed materializes in daily schedules, pacing charts, and lesson plans. We move from subject to subject, concept to concept, and assignment to assignment at the speed of light. But is this approach best for students? Is it cultivating virtue? Are they actually developing mastery over what they are learning? Or are these moments of quick exposure creating the illusion of learning instead? 

Festina Lente: Make Haste Slowly

In The Good Teacher (Classical Academic Press, 2025), Christopher Perrin and Carrie Eben argue that it is not. Of the ten principles for great teaching they present in their book, the first is “Festina Lente, Make Haste Slowly.” They propose that instead of engaging in the rush to cover content, it is better to master each step in a lesson, setting a pace that is fitting for the time available. 

Perrin and Eben go on to provide two examples of this principle in our world today. The first is drawn from Aesop’s beloved fable, “The Tortoise and the Hare.” In this well-known tale, two creatures, a quick-footed hare and a contemplative tortoise, engage in a foot race. While the hare is expected to win with its focus on speed, it is actually the tortoise who wins the race. The upshot is that while the hare was certainly faster, its pace was not sustainable. The tortoise, on the other hand, moves at a slower yet sustainable pace, making haste slowly, and ultimately becomes the victor. 

The other example is Jim Collins’ “Twenty Mile March” concept in Great by Choice (Random House, 2011). Imagine two hikers setting out on a three-thousand mile walk from San Diego, California, to the tip of Maine. One hiker commits to twenty miles a day, no exceptions. Whether the conditions are fair or poor, the itinerary is the same. The other hiker adjusts his daily regimen to the circumstances before him. Depending on weather, terrain, and energy levels, some days he may walk 40 miles, other days he may not walk at all. Like the tortoise in Aesop’s fable, the winner of the race is the hiker committed to the wise, disciplined journey, choosing sustainability over speed. 

Now, it must be pointed out that every analogy has its limits. Not every speedster struggles with the overconfidence exhibited in the hare or the weak will of the second hiker. It is possible to be both fast and virtuous.The key insight is not that we need to choose between the two, but in our present culture’s emphasis on speed, we would do well to slow down, resist the lure of speedy completion, and focus on a process that will instill virtues of diligence and perseverance.

Connecting the twenty-mile hike example to teaching, Perrin and Eben write,

Classical education can be compared to the long journey in this story. Each segment should be intentional, planned, and exercised wisely, with ample allotted time. Students, like the winning hiker, should use time well, as they are guided and modeled along each segment of their academic journey. (p. 24)

Working at a Natural Pace 

Interestingly, Cal Newport, the author of Deep Work, Digital Minimalism, and A World Without Email, is on to a similar idea in his latest book, Slow Productivity (Penguin Random House, 2024). 

Newport observes that we as a culture have succumbed to what he calls pseudo-productivity, “the use of visible activity as the primary means of approximating actual productive effort (22). So we work longer hours, send more emails, and complete more projects, all in the name of productivity. The only problem is that we burn ourselves out, ultimately accomplishing less and at a lower quality. 

Newport’s solution is to adopt a different philosophy of work, one in which we accomplish tasks in a sustainable and meaningful manner. His three principles for this approach are:

1. Do fewer things.
2. Work at a natural pace.
3. Obsess over quality.

My colleague at Educational Renaissance, Jason Barney, has written extensively on these principles for the classical educator in this blog series. I encourage you to check out all four articles as he interacts with the likes of Aristotle, Quintilian, Charlotte Mason, Mihaly Csikszentmihalyiy, and others.

Regarding our present focus on how to manage time in the classroom for the sake of virtue formation, Jason writes, “There must be a purposeful movement in a meaningful direction at the same time as a willingness to delay over the details to ensure quality and a student’s developing mastery. Great teachers can discern when to slow down and when to hasten on.”

Rather than sending students off to work on a frenzy of assignments at once, moving from one worksheet to the next, it is better to slow down and hone in on one worthy assignment that will lead students toward a greater depth of understanding.

True Mastery: Getting the Practice Right 

Here we come to a key distinction that must be made. Thus far, I have been encouraging teachers to focus on virtue over speed, process over outcome, and mastery over pseudo-productivity. But what does true mastery look like? And how is it achieved?

I suggest that mastery is achieved when a student can repeatedly demonstrate a particular skill or lucidly explain a concept on demand. In The Good Teacher, Perrin and Eben are adamant that until this happens, teachers should not move on to the next objective, whether it is moving on from addition to multiplication or 3rd to 4th grade (21-22). They are also careful to identify a distortion of festina lente, namely, using the principle as an excuse to focus too long on one concept at the expense of others (27). 

The key clarification I want to make as we seek to implement a mastery-focused approach is regarding the type of practice we ought to implement to meet this end. It would be natural to assume that if the focus is mastery, teachers should engage in what is called massed practice: practice over and over a specific skill until it is mastered, and only then move on to the next skill. Make haste slowly, right?

In Make it Stick: The Science of Successful Learning (Belknap Press, 2014), the authors draw upon cognitive science to argue that this sort of practice can only take you so far. They seek to dispel of the myth that the focused, repetitive practice of one thing at a time is the way to mastery. 

They write:

If learning can be defined as picking up new knowledge or skills and being able to apply them later, then how quickly you pick something up is only part of the story. Is it still there when you need to use it out in the everyday world?…The rapid gains produced by massed practice are often evident, but the rapid forgetting that follows is not. (p. 47)

Interestingly, the authors of Make it Stick are putting their finger on the same concern as Perrin and Eben: prioritizing speed over mastery. Instead of practicing one skill over and over again until students can demonstrate mastery, they suggest mixing up the practice. 

In a past article, I write more about this topic, unpacking three key ways from Make it Stick to practice toward mastery:

Spaced Practice: Instead of intensively focusing on one skill for a single, extended session, space out the practice into multiple sessions. Work on it for a while and then return to it the next day or week. The space allotted between each session allows for the knowledge of the skill to soak into one’s long-term memory and connect to prior knowledge. Revisiting the skill each session certainly takes more effort, but that’s the point.

Interleaved Practice: While we experience the quickest gains by focusing on one specific skill or subset of knowledge over a period of time (momentary strength), interleaving, or mixing up the skill or concept you are focusing on in a practice session, leads to stronger understanding and retention (underlying habit strength). It feels sluggish and frustrating at times, for both teachers and students mind you, because it involves moving from skill to skill before full mastery is attained, but it leads to both a depth and durability of knowledge that massed practice does not (50).

Varied Practice: Varying practice entails constantly changing up the situation or conditions in which the skill or concept is being applied. It therefore strengthens the ability to transfer learning from one situation and apply it to another, requiring the student to constantly be assessing context and bridging concepts. Because this jump from concept to concept triggers different parts of the brain, it is more cognitively challenging, and therefore encodes the learning “…in a more flexible representation that can be applied more broadly” (52).

To be clear, these forms of mixed practice will be more difficult for students and the practice sessions will take longer. But that is the point. To “make haste slowly” when it comes to practice, you want to support your students in meaningful practice that will lead them toward long-term, not temporary, mastery. 

Conclusion

As classical schools, we are playing the long game as we seek to instill wisdom and virtue in our students. In our fast-paced world, this commitment will surely be misunderstood. We are told that a school’s effectiveness ought to be measured by the number of students enrolled, the number of accolades of its graduates, and the impressiveness of test scores.

But if our goal is true mastery for a life of virtue, instilled with the principle of festina lente, then we need to think more like the tortoise than the hare. We need to be intentional with practice, focus on depth over breadth, and mix it up in order to strengthen the durability of the knowledge gained. This is no doubt the harder road, but with our own perseverance at work, we trust that over time it will bear much fruit.

The post Mastery over Speed: The Lost Art of Cultivating Virtue appeared first on .

“In a typical lesson you decide, often quickly. Then you decide, decide, and decide again. You are a batter facing a hundred pitches in a row…What do you need to decide quickly, reliably, and well, while thinking about other things under a bit of pressure in the form, of, say, twenty-nine restless students, twenty-five minutes’ worth of work left to get done, and a ticking clock to remind you that you have fifteen minutes left in the class period?” (3). 

His solution is a mental model, that is, a framework to understand complex environments. In this case, teachers can filter the plethora of time-sensitive decisions before them through a grid of principles for a successful lesson. While teaching is a craft that takes extended time to master, Lemov believes that growth in the craft can occur much more rapidly through adopting a mental model composed of core principles. 

While Doug Lemov was developing his mental model for a successful lesson, classical education expert Christopher Perrin has been refining his own set of principles for sound classroom pedagogy. His course Principles of Classical Pedagogy through ClassicalU offers ten principles, or pedagogies, of great teaching. 

In this article, I will briefly review Lemov’s and Perrin’s lists of principles before going on to suggest three points of similarity, followed by three areas of difference. In doing so, I will demonstrate the value of insights gained through cognitive psychology and learning science, while arguing for the importance of situating any great teaching practice within a broader philosophy of education that takes seriously the full-orbed reality of what it means to teach and form human beings.

The Mental Model for an Effective Lesson

Through offering a mental model, Lemov seeks to help a teacher, first, grow in understanding of how learning works and, second, perceive accurately what their students need most to thrive in their classrooms. It is one thing, Lemov thinks, to have a set of teaching principles, such as “check for understanding” or “ratio,” two common phrases in the TLaC series. It is another thing to have an additional set of learning principles that “…can help explain why certain methods work as well as how and when to use them” (5).  In this way, Lemov’s five principles that comprise his mental model seek to offer guidance for both teaching and learning simultaneously. 

Let us review them now:

Principle 1: Understanding human cognitive structure means building long-term memory and managing working memory.

Lemov’s first principle focuses on the distinction between long-term and working memory in order to implement teaching practices that build long-term memory. The general idea is that while working memory is immediately accessible, it is extremely limited in capacity. Humans can only hold so much new information in their mind’s eye. Immediately following the exposure to new information, the forgetting process begins. The way to build long-term memory and strengthen the durability of knowledge is to implement retrieval practice techniques in which students are called upon to remember, or retrieve, what they were taught in the past. 

Principle 2: Habits accelerate learning.

Similar to the first principle, this second one offers guidance on how to use one’s cognition as efficiently as possible. The reality is that each day we are bombarded with common, everyday activities that require our attention. But what if we could put the mental effort of these mental tasks on autopilot in order to focus on more important work? This is the concept, described in cognitive terms, of a habit. The more we can help students put menial scholastic work on autopilot, from reading fluency to math fact automaticity to getting out a notebook to begin writing, the more they can focus their minds and wills on understanding deeper, more complex concepts. If you haven’t already, be sure to download Patrick Egan’s free Ebook and watch the webinar on how to help students build great habits.

Principle 3: What students attend to is what they will learn about.

This may go without saying, but focused concentration is the key to efficient and effective learning. And yet, we are all aware that there is a growing deficit of ability to attend to something for an extended amount of time in our world today. This principle seeks to equip students “…to lose themselves in a task and work at it steadily for a significant period of time, which means a setting where concentration can reliably be maintained and tasks and activities where the ability to focus is carefully cultivated” (20). Jason Barney’s The Joy of Learning offers a great path forward to implement this idea, known as “flow,” in the classical classroom. His webinar on the topic is also excellent.

Principle 4: Motivation is social.

It can be tempting to focus on the learning of each individual student, but this principle reminds us that humans thrive when they work together. In this way, the learning process, including the motivation to learn, occurs at both the individual and social level. Successful lessons occur within classroom cultures in which the norms and values of the classroom encourage individual hard work and intentional team work.

Principle 5: Teaching well is relationship building. 

The final principle Lemov identifies for an effective mental model of teaching and learning focuses on the power of relationships. Specifically, he emphasizes that the teacher-student relationship is one in which the student feels safe, successful, and known. Safety includes physical safety, yes, but also the intellectual safety to take risks. Success refers to the fact that a key objective of any lesson should be to help a student learn or do something. Finally, a student feeling known fulfills a core desire wired into all human beings for them to develop a sense of belonging. 

Overall, I find Lemov’s mental model, understood through these five principles, to be a helpful framework. The task of learning and mastering 63 “techniques” for a new and developing teacher is daunting. But equipping them with five big ideas, or principles, through which to filter their classroom decision-making and priorities, can simplify the teaching craft and clarify where to focus.

Perrin’s Principles of Classical Pedagogy

Now let us turn to classical education expert Christopher Perrin’s ten principles of classical pedagogy. According to an article written this past summer, Perrin is currently working on a book with fellow classical education consultant Carrie Eben that will seek to unpack these principles in order to equip great teaching. As a side note, we interviewed Eben on our podcast, which you can listen to here.

While Perrin does not use language of a mental model, it seems that his principles function in a similar way. By call them principles, rather than practices, he is directing us to think about the broader convictions teachers can adopt to govern specific practices. In other words, these principles exist less as a checklist and more as a filter. Teachers can measure a lesson against these principles in order to gain insight about how to strengthen the teaching and learning that goes on in their classrooms.

Given that Perrin’s article linked above provides brief descriptions for each principle, I will simply refer you to that article and list them out here. They are as follows:

1. Make haste slowly: take time to master each step.
2. Do fewer things, but do them well: it is better to master a few things well than to cover cursory content.
3. Repetition is the mother of memory: revisiting and reviewing past lessons deepens both affection and understanding.
4. The one who loves can sing and remember: the importance of songs, jingles, and chants.
5. Wonder commences learning that will last.
6. Order time and space for deep thought: cultivate leisure (schole) and contemplation. 
7. Embodied rhythms, liturgies, and routines shape the soul.
8. Students learn by teaching: knowledge taught is twice-learned.
9. The best teacher is a good book: the teacher becomes the tutor and a three-way conversation begins.
10. Learn in community through conversation: this creates a friendship of the soul that gives birth to deep and mutual learning.

What a fascinating list! Immediately, we can see the contrast between Lemov and Perrin in light of the language they deploy. Lemov’s focus is primarily material, in nature: cognition, socialization, and relationships all exist within an immanent frame of being in the world. In contrast, Perrin clearly values the spiritual and transcendent dimension on the same plane as the immanent. His desire for students to grow in love, virtue, reverence, and contemplation–beyond mere cognitive achievement–stands out.

What the Principles Have in Common 

There are three key ways I see Lemov and Perrin displaying similarity in the principles they prescribe. 

First, both approaches respect deep work and the building of durable knowledge. Lemov captures this value through his distinction between working and long-term memory as well as his emphasis on habits and attention. Perrin encourages teachers to proceed slowly and deeply through a lesson in order to build a strong foundation.

Second, both approaches appreciate the power of habit and attention. Obviously, habits and attention are the explicit focus for Lemov. He underscores the value of cultivating the right processes for learning to occur. It is not merely what or how much a student learns; it is how. Similarly, Perrin encourages the mastery of each step and using strategies like liturgies and chants to strengthen the learning experience.

Third, both approaches underscore the centrality of relationship in the learning process. Lemov grounds relationships in the power of motivation and social-emotional learning. Perrin looks to classical ideas about friendship and the formation of the soul to demonstrate the centrality of community in the classroom. 

How the Principles Diverge 

Nevertheless, there are core differences in which the prescribed principles diverge.

First, it is clear that while Perrin conceives of education as the full formation of a student (mind, heart, body, and soul), Lemov prioritizes the cognitive and emotional. While I do not think it is fair to say that Lemov values product over persons, I do think his view of humanity is limited by his secular vantage point. This anthropology lacks a moral dimension as well. If students are basically a bundle of cells directed by a nervous system, then the most that teachers can do is strengthen cognition and build “productive” social environments. But if students are eternal and embodied souls made in God’s image, then we need a different list, such as Perrin’s, to shape these souls accordingly. 

Second, and related, Perrin offers a compelling vision for learning, whereas Lemov only offers pragmatic motivation. From the very beginning, Perrin is clear that the goal of all education is wisdom and virtue. He writes, “By employing the following principles, teachers will naturally cultivate virtues of love, humility, fortitude,  diligence, constancy and temperance in the lives of their students.” In contrast, Lemov’s focus continues to be college and career readiness. While his preface does indicate a vision for cultivating an equitable and just society, within the D.E.I. stream of thinking, you can tell he is wrestling with the merits of this ideology, and ultimately fails to move beyond a myopic focus on the pragmatic benefits of education.

Finally, Perrin honors the situatedness of students in time and not merely space. He does so by recognizing the value of carrying on the rich tradition of goodness, truth, and beauty from the past into the future. His emphasis on great books, contemplation, poetry, and liturgy remind us that education possesses a broader cultural and civilizational significance, and therefore, responsibility. While both Lemov and Perrin rightly emphasize the paradox that humans both exist as individuals and members in communities, Lemov fails to address that we exist in communities of both space and time. A central goal of education includes honoring one’s intellectual, cultural, and religious heritage, and passing on the torch of this heritage to future generations.

Conclusion

In sum, there are benefits to both the mental model that Lemov proposes and Perrin’s list of pedagogical principles. Where Lemov falls short is where modern education usually does: failing to grasp the full-orbed nature of a human being and the implications this places on educators. Insights from cognitive psychology and the latest learning science will continue to improve the learning that goes on in our classrooms, and classical educators do well to implement these strategies in the classroom.

But we must not lose sight of the deeper and fuller reality of what it means to be human: that our students are made in God’s image, that they are embodied souls, that there is a moral universe to navigate as well as a physical one, and ultimately, that there is a God who intentionally designed and commissioned the human race to cultivate His goodness, truth, and beauty in the world. Through the incarnation of the Son of God, we are reminded that humanity is indeed special and unique in God’s sight, that our embodiedness is indeed good, and that through Christ, our fallenness can be redeemed for His purposes, including in the classroom.

Did you enjoy this article?

Sign up for our weekly newsletter today. You can also take advantage of these great resources to learn more:

The post The Search for Great Teaching: A Comparison of <i>Teach Like a Champion 3.0</i> and Christopher Perrin’s Pedogogical Principles appeared first on .

Most educators agree that pursuing knowledge is a primary goal of education. But views diverge soon after, specifically when questions about the purpose of knowledge emerge as well as what fields of knowledge to pursue. 

As I have begun working on my first book about the craft of teaching, this question has become of unique interest to me. In particular, as I have been reading Doug Lemov’s Teach Like a Champion 3.0, I have been struck by Lemov’s contagious passion for teaching, learning, and gaining knowledge. This got me thinking, “What drives Lemov? Does the same motivation drive me as a classical educator?”

In this blog, I will present three views on the purpose of knowledge and conclude with the beginnings of a synthesis. Thomas Aquinas, the thinker I have selected to represent the medieval-classical tradition, views knowledge accessed by the liberal arts as the pathway to knowing God, humanity’s greatest happiness. Charlotte Mason emphasizes the moral and psychological impact of knowledge, specifically as it equips the mind to encounter relations between all that we can learn. And Doug Lemov, author of the Teach Like a Champion series focuses on knowledge as the pathway to raising independent students for future opportunities in college and career.

Let us now take a look at each one of these thinkers more closely. 

Thomas Aquinas: Knowledge for Happiness in God 

As a theologian, Thomas conceives of reality through a God-centered lens. Therefore, according to “the angelic doctor,” the pursuit of knowledge is nothing less than the perfection of humanity, which is happiness found in God. 

Thomas writes,

Now, the ultimate end of man, and of every intellectual substance, is called felicity or happiness, because this is what every intellectual substance desires as an ultimate end, and for its own sake alone. Therefore, the ultimate happiness and felicity of every intellectual substance is to know God.

Summa contra Gentiles, Book III, c. 25

Here we see Thomas integrating Aristotelelian metaphysics with his theology to argue that knowledge finds its ultimate purpose in and through knowing God.

How is this knowledge created and justified? From a classical perspective, the answer is the same way all things are made– the arts. Whether one is a carpenter, architect, or painter, she is using a particular art, or skill, to make a new creation. The same is the case for knowledge. Knowledge is fashioned through the arts, namely, the liberal arts.

These liberal arts offer “a particular canon of seven studies that provided the essential tools for all subsequent learning” (Kevin Clark and Ravi Jain, The Liberal Arts Tradition, 2nd ed., 2019, p. 6). The Trivium arts pertain to knowledge about language and the Quadrivium arts pertain to knowledge about number. Together, these arts constitute the seeds and tools of learning.

In summary, knowledge finds its ultimate purpose in knowing God and it is created through the liberal arts, the well-worn paths of learning. By following these paths, students can independently create a vast array of knowledge. 

Practically speaking, students learn the arts of language when they are taught reading, hermeneutics, debate, persuasive speech and writing. And they learn the arts of math when they are taught counting, calculation, measuring, empirical discovery, and theoretical proof (Clark and Jain, 7). These arts are, simply put, the skills students need to make sense of the world and cultivate understanding. As the arts are mastered and knowledge is gained, wisdom is the result.

The importance of this final point cannot be missed. Clark and Jain write,

The goal of education is not simply knowledge for knowledge’s sake, however; the goal of true education is for our knowledge of God, man, and creation to come to full flower in wisdom and for this wisdom to help us better love and serve our neighbor.

Kevin Clark and Ravi Jain, The Liberal Arts Tradition, 2nd ed., 2019, p. 7

While Clark and Jain do not explicitly state happiness in God to be the purpose of knowledge as we saw in Thomas, we can observe a similar vision. We pursue knowledge because we believe this knowledge will lead us to God himself, our source of happiness. The result will be the formation of a wise, servant-hearted human person.

Charlotte Mason: Knowledge for the Flourishing Life 

Next we turn to Charlotte Mason, a British educator dedicated to educational reform at the turn of the 20th century. While Mason is a devoted Christian, her emphasis regarding the purpose of knowledge is less theological and more moral-psychological. Referencing contemporary neuroscience, she argues that knowledge is food for the mind and the key to a flourishing life.

In her sixth and final volume on education, she writes,

A great future lies before the nation which shall perceive that knowledge is the sole concern of education proper, as distinguished from training, and that knowledge is the necessary daily food of the mind.

Towards a Philosophy of Education, pg. 2

Here Mason emphasizes the distinction between vocational training and a liberal (arts) education, going on to argue that the more educators focus on human formation, “the better will he fulfill his own life and serve society” (3).

While Charlotte Mason completed the volume above in 1922, she had been developing her educational philosophy for decades. In 1904, she published School Education in which she offers a curricular program for children up to age 12. In this volume, she makes the connection we have already encountered between education and wisdom, writing “…for wisdom is the science of relations, and the thing we have to do for a young human being is to put him in touch, so far as we can, with all the relations proper to him” (School Education, 75). 

Here is a helpful clue to Mason’s view of knowledge and its purpose. It is primarily a relational endeavor in which children make contact physically, affectively, and intellectually with the world around them. She writes,

When we consider that the setting up of relations, moral and intellectual, is our chief concern in life, and that the function of education is to put the child in the way of relations proper to him, and to offer the inspiring idea which commonly initiates a relation, we perceive that a little incident like the above may be of more importance than the passing of an examination.

School Education, 78

To help understand Mason’s point about relations, imagine two children. One has been educated in the way she describes. He has encountered a rich array of knowledge since a young child. He knows about birds and plants, geography and history. He navigates life with a sense of vivaciousness, intrigue, and curiosity. The world is bright, colorful, and of utter fascination to him. Each day is a fresh opportunity to learn, explore, and make new connections.

Now compare this child with one whose education or upbringing has been stultified. The birds around him are unknown to him, both intellectually and relationally. He was never trained to take notice of the plants outside his house or to observe how they bud each spring. He has not been read the great stories found history and literature. As a result, the child’s ignorance breeds only more ignorance, and, ultimately, disinterest about the world around him.

The contrast between these caricatures is startling. What is the difference? Knowledge. Knowledge fuels the mind and animates the soul. Its purpose is to inspire a student to live a flourishing life. Knowledge and knowledge alone is the intrinsic motivation that will inject a person with meaning and purpose, according to Charlotte Mason. She writes, “The matter is important, because, of all the joyous motives of school life, the love of knowledge is the only abiding one; the only which determines the scale so to speak, upon which the person will hereafter live” (245-246).

Doug Lemov: Knowledge for Future Opportunity 

Lastly, we look at Doug Lemov, an educational leader in the public charter school movement. His experience has been primarily focused on inner-city schools that are under-resourced and statistically less successful in terms of graduation rates and college readiness than their suburban peers.

In his introduction to Teach Like a Champion 3.0, Doug Lemov writes,

…there are teachers who everyday without much fanfare take the students who others say “can’t”–can’t read great literature, can’t do algebra or calculus, can’t and don’t want to learn—and help, inspire, motivate, and even cajole them to become scholars who do.

Teach Like a Champion 3.0, xxxvi

Here we see a small window into Lemov’s drive for knowledge. It is oriented towards helping students overcome social and individual obstacles getting in the way of their learning in order to help them become scholars with future opportunities. His book is full of techniques to enable students to do the work of learning and, thereby, become independent knowledge seekers.

In the third edition of Teach Like a Champion, Chapter 1 provides five principles, or mental models, through which the subsequent teaching techniques can be contextualized. Each of these principles, often backed by research in learning science, are geared toward helping students become independent learners and preparing them to be successful throughout school, in college, and beyond.

For example, the first principle focuses on the distinction between building long-term memory and managing working memory. He writes,

A well-developed long-term memory is the solution to the limitations of working memory. If a skill, a concept, a piece of knowledge, or a body of knowledge is encoded in long-term memory, your brain can use it without degrading other functions that also rely on working memory.

Teach Like a Champion 3.0, p. 8

Lemov’s point here is not to pooh-pooh working memory, but to help readers understand that both are essential to the learning process. By keeping working memory free, teachers equip students to more fully connect to the world around them and integrate the knowledge they are learning.

I have mentioned one principle on which Lemov’s techniques hang for increasing student knowledge. The others are equally valuable and worth exploring at a later time. For now, I simply list them for the reader’s benefit:

1. Understanding human cognitive structure means building long-term memory and managing working memory.
2. Habits accelerate learning.
3. What students attend to is what they will learn about.
4. Motivation is social.
5. Teaching well is relationship building. 

Conclusion

Each of these figures offers an important aspect of the purpose of knowledge. Knowledge enables us to know God, our greatest happiness. Knowledge propels us to thrive in the world God created. And knowledge enables us to more fully connect with the world around us, becoming more engaged scholars for whatever opportunities God puts before us.

Each of these purposes can serve as drivers to learn in their own right. To conclude, I want the emphasize a common thread I observed in all three views: the importance of fully-integrated, inter-relational knowledge development. Whether it is the classical tradition’s emphasis on holistic wisdom, Charlotte Mason’s idea of the science of relations, or Doug Lemov’s emphasis on the power of long-term memory, it is clear that a unified knowledge base is key.

At a recent staff meeting, our colleague read aloud from Ephesians 4, “…one Lord, one faith, one baptism, one God and Father of all.” At the risk of sounding heretical, perhaps in our schools, we can add one more to the liturgy: one knowledge, granted from above, worth of our pursuit, and the source of our true in happiness when it is ends in Christ.

Want to go deeper with Educational Renaissance?

We have compiled a variety of resources for as you as you take the next step in your teaching journey. Read great books. Listen to our podcast. Download webinars. Join us to keep the renaissance spreading!

The post The Drive to Learn: Three Views on the Desire for Knowledge appeared first on .

Here we observe the seedlings of the classical Christian renewal movement: the distinction between training students how to think versus what to think. Sayers’ diagnosis is that schools in her day had prioritized learning subjects over skills. Her solution: train students to be independent learners through a return to the classical liberal arts, especially the language arts of grammar, dialectic, and rhetoric.

In this article, I want to suggest that Sayers’ prescription for liberal arts education, and more broadly, the classical notion of self-education, is precisely what society is in need of today. Many modern schools have shifted their focus to spoon-feeding students information, teaching to the test, and creating “safe spaces” for students to be protected from opposing ideas. A return to the liberal arts–training students to get into the driver’s seat of their learning–will prepare them to meet today’s challenges with resilience and approach questions with both confidence and charity.

Persons as Self-Educating

Charlotte Mason, a British educator living at the turn of the 20th century, became a major proponent of this notion of self-education. As Karen Glass has helpfully unpacked in her book In Vital Harmony, Mason’s philosophy can be summarized in two key ideas: 1) Children are born persons and 2) Education is the science of relations.

When Mason says children are born persons, she means that they are born with the capacities to grow in knowledge, skill, strength, and character from the very beginning. We should not wait until a person reaches adulthood to begin taking her thoughts seriously. Rather, from a young age, we can begin to help children build a flourishing life. They are not robots to be programmed, sponges to be soaked, blank slates to be written on, or cattle to be herded through the education industry. Children are capable and, therefore, responsible. Our job as parents and teachers is to help children steward their moral choices, helping them gain mastery over their wills, form productive habits, and pursue knowledge from a place of intrinsic motivation, not behaviorist manipulation. As Mason put it, “a child is not built up from without, but from within” (Towards a Philosophy of Education, 25).

The second idea integral to Charlotte Mason’s philosophy is that education is the science of relations. Learning is about seeing how all the different bodies of knowledge in God’s creation connect and then going on to form a personal relationship with this knowledge. For Mason, there is no such thing as emotionless, rote learning or information processing. If a child is really learning, then he is connecting with knowledge at the heart level. In addition, these relations are to be discovered, not created, by the child. We are born into a world designed by God with order and connection. Lifelong learning is about discovering more and more about how these relationships work and forming a synthetic integrated conception of the world.

For these philosophical reasons, Charlotte Mason was insistent that children must do the work of education for themselves. We cannot force-feed knowledge for true learning to occur. She writes, “One thing at any rate we know with certainty, that no teaching, no information becomes knowledge to any of us until the individual mind has acted upon it, translated it, transformed, absorbed it, to reappear, like our bodily food, in forms of vitality. Therefore, teaching, talk and tale, however lucid or fascinating, effect nothing until self-activity be set up; that is, self-education is the only possible education; the rest is mere veneer laid on the surface of a child’s nature” (Towards a Philosophy of Education, 240). This emphasis on the active role students play in their education is key to preparing students to become strong, independent learners.

Tools, not Jigs 

So we want to set up children to be able to educate themselves, but how do we do this? Returning to Dorothy Sayers, the British medieval scholar uses the analogy of tools to help us understand what the classical liberal arts are all about.

In short, the liberal arts empower students to take on any intellectual challenge they face. She writes,

For the tools of learning are the same, in any and every subject; and the person who knows how to use them will, at any age, get the mastery of a new subject in half the time and with a quarter of the effort expended by the person who has not the tools at his command.

This tools metaphor can helpful to hone in on, specifically Sayers’ distinction between a tool and a jig. A tool, such as a hammer, can be used for a variety of projects while a jig has one specific task. For example, I once purchased a very particular cabinet jig to drill new holes in my kitchen cabinets in a uniform manner. Given its specialized use, I have not had need of it sense. Meanwhile, tools like my hammer and drill, with their wide utility across a variety of projects, I use frequently.

Sayers underscores the point:

We have lost the tools of learning—the axe and the wedge, the hammer and the saw, the chisel and the plane—that were so adaptable to all tasks. Instead of them, we have merely a set of complicated jigs, each of which will do but one task and no more, and in using which eye and hand receive no training, so that no man ever sees the work as a whole or looks to the end of the work.

To equip students for self-education is to give them tools, not jigs, the liberal arts, not disparate bodies of knowledge, “…for the sole true end of education is simply this: to teach men how to learn for themselves; and whatever instruction fails to do this is effort spent in vain.”

Self-Education in a Coddling Culture 

With this idea of self-education in mind, I want to close with a brief connection to an epidemic in American culture today: the rise of fragile students who are easily perturbed, anxious, and intimidated. Jonathan Haidt, a sociologist at New York University whom I have written on before here, has identified specific falsehoods we have taught children that have contributed to the problem.

In order to raise up resilient students, we can employ the notion of self-education in the following ways:

1. Permit students to experience real moments of struggle. Don’t solve the problem right away, but rather give space for students to wrestle through the challenge.
2. Train students to think logically, using evidence and reasons to support their beliefs. To be sure, emotions are a gift from God to be celebrated and enjoyed. But when one’s feelings become the driver in argumentation and analysis, students struggle to approach challenges with fortitude.
3. Lead by example in seeking to understand the viewpoints of those with whom you disagree. Someone who holds an opposing view should not to be cast as the sworn enemy. Just because you hold a different view from someone else does not mean they are the sworn enemy. We need to be okay living in the tension of disagreement.

If teachers can implement these three ideas in their classrooms, they will help prepare their students for long-term success. In contrast, when students are shielded from struggle, trained to trust their feelings, and embrace the “us vs. them” mentality on complex issues, they will find it hard to adapt and persevere. Haidt writes, “When children are raised in a culture of safetyism, which teaches them to stay ‘emotionally safe’ while protecting them from every imaginable danger, it may set up a feedback loop: kids become more fragile and less resilient, which signals to adults that they need more protection, which then makes them even more fragile and less resilient” (The Coddling of the American Mind, 30).

May we as educators raise up a generation of resilient students who seek the truth with independence and resolve, preparing them to be lifelong learners who can tackle life’s problems and educate themselves with joyful fortitude.

The post The Classical Notion of Self-Education for Today appeared first on .

For example, a teacher responsible for teaching The Great Gatsby must consider how the book will be taught, what she will focus on, and how she intends for students to develop and grow through the study. Each day, she walks into a room full of students in need of direction for approaching the text. This requires leadership.

In modern educational circles, we often speak, not of leadership, but of “classroom management.” Unfortunately, this phrase is embedded with faulty assumptions about who students are, what the purpose of learning is, and how we are to manage them toward some desirable end. As a result, classroom management techniques are problematic in two key ways.

First, classroom management techniques are often behavioristic. In other words, they seek to address the behavior of students through systems of external rewards and consequences, rather than aiming to form the whole person of the child, especially the heart. Strategies are deployed to artificially motivate behaviors of respect, obedience, service, and even kindness in a way disconnected from the child’s internal moral development. Is this child growing in a love and understanding of the idea of respect for authority? How is the child becoming more servant-hearted in her disposition? These questions are not usually asked in typical classroom management conversations.

Second, classroom management techniques are often task-oriented rather than people-oriented. This makes sense since the phrase emerged during the post-industrial revolution in which the effective and efficient completion of tasks was prized above all else. Now, at its best, modern business management theory is people-oriented, but most managers too easily slip into the mindset of “How do I get this employee to perform this task?” rather than “How do I lead this employee on a path toward growth and increasing expertise?” The latter focuses on the development of the talent and skill of people, not simply whether they are hitting the deadlines. 

To equip teachers to grow as true leaders of their students, in this article I will recommend three recently published leadership books that contain relevant ideas for classroom leadership. These resources will help teachers see their true leadership role and therefore embrace the responsibility for them to invest deeply in the lives of their students. While teachers will need to push through some of the business-focused examples of these resources, the underlying ideas are both relevant and applicable for classroom leadership today.

Multipliers by Liz Wiseman 

The first book I want to recommend is Multipliers (HarperCollins, 2017) by researcher Liz Wiseman. In this book, Wiseman sets out to show how leaders can make people under their supervision smarter, rather than targeting mere compliance. Early on, she differentiates between two managers, the Genius Maker and the Genius (9). The genius maker grows people’s intelligence by “extracting the smarts and maximum effort from each member on the team.” This type of leader talks only about 10% of the time, thereby making space for others to grow through active participation in coming up with solutions to a problem. 

In contrast, the genius is self-oriented. He is smart and successful, and everyone in the room knows who has the best ideas. He may facilitate “conversations” but soon these turn into opportunities for him to share his correct views with others. After all, he is the genius. Why not just listen to him? The result is that people do not have the permission to think for themselves or the legitimate responsibility to make decisions. It all goes back to what the genius thinks is right. 

For Wiseman, the genius maker is a multiplier of of intelligence while the genius is actually a diminisher. At heart, multipliers “invoke each person’s unique intelligence and create an atmosphere of genius–innovation, productive effort, and collective intelligence” (10). The upshot is that these leaders not only access people’s current capability, they stretch it. People actually report getting smarter under the supervision of multipliers. The fundamental assumption of a multiplier is “People are smart and will figure this out” whereas the assumption of the diminisher is “They will never figure this out without me” (20). 

Teachers can become multipliers of intelligence in their classrooms by resisting the urge to be the residential genius. Although they are older, smarter, and more experienced, these assets can be leveraged to empower their students toward growing their own abilities, rather than making it all about the teacher.

Diagnostic Questions for Teachers:

• Do you empower students in your classroom to make major contributions to class culture, discussions, learning, and skill demonstration? 
• Is there room in your classroom for students to make mistakes as you stretch them to attempt difficult assignments?
• Do you ask your students to explain complex concepts to their peers rather than yourself?
• Does your approach to grading grow student intellectual confidence or does it foster dependence on your own intelligence?

Boundaries for Leaders by Dr. Henry Cloud

Boundaries for Leaders (HarperCollins, 2013) is written by clinical psychologist Dr. Henry Cloud, an author recognized for his work on cultivating healthy relationships. In Chapter 1, he writes, “This book is about what leaders need to do in order for people to accomplish a vision” (2). The key word here for Cloud is people. He will go on to argue that people perform their best work in healthy work cultures that take into consideration the psychological well-being of both employer and employee. By setting good boundaries in place and leading in a way that people’s brains can follow, Cloud contends, good results will come. 

Cloud writes that boundaries are made up of two things: what you create and what you allow (15). A boundary is a property line, marking out who is responsible and for what. When someone is given real ownership of something, anything that happens under their supervision only happens because they created it or allowed it. 

In top-performing classrooms, teachers teach in a way that makes it possible for their students’ brains to function as they were designed (25). This happens through setting good boundaries. Cloud writes, “Show me a person, team, or a company that gets results, and I will show you the leadership boundaries that make it possible” (26).

As a psychologist, the author is aware of how the human brain works and what leaders can do to maximize brain health and productivity. In turn, teachers can use these insights as they seek to pass on knowledge, skills, and virtues to their students.

For example, it is helpful for a teacher to understand that the brain relies on three essential properties to achieve a particular task, be it the following of a classroom procedure or the completion of an assignment:

1. Attention: the ability to focus on relevant stimuli, and block out what is not relevant (“Do this”)
2. Inhibition: the ability to “not do” certain actions that could be distracting, irrelevant, or eve destructive (“Don’t do this”)
3. Working Memory: the ability to retain and access relevant information for reasoning, decision-making, and taking future actions (“Remember and build on this relevant information”)

As teachers design their lessons and think through what they want their students to accomplish for the day, it is beneficial to think through these three neurological elements for the completion of a task. When we ignore one or more of these elements, we risk short-circuiting our students optimal use of the way God designed their brains.

Diagnostic Questions for Teachers:

• What student behaviors in your classroom have you created or allowed?
• How do your lessons promote student attention on what is most important for the curricular objective?
• What procedures and expectations have you established and maintained to ensure that what is not important or destructive is not allowed in?
• How are you building your students’ working memory of key information to help them complete assignments with greater success? 

The Motive by Patrick Lencioni 

The Motive (Wiley, 2020), written especially for CEOs, explores the underlying motivation of a good leader. Author Patrick Lencioni, well-known for his book Five Dysfunctions of a Team, illustrates through a leadership parable that one’s motivation for leading will dictate what one prioritizes and how he or she spends her time.

In the parable, two types of leadership motivation are at play (135). Reward-centered leadership rests on the fundamental assumption that the leader, having been selected for the role, has arrived and therefore possesses the freedom to design her job around what she most enjoys. It is the belief that the leader’s work should be pleasant and enjoyable because the leadership position is the reward. She therefore has the freedom to avoid mundane, unpleasant, or uncomfortable work if she so pleases, which she does.

In contrast, responsibility-centered leadership assumes that leadership is all about responsibility and service. It is the belief that being a leader is responsible; therefore, the experience of leading should be difficult and challenging (though certainly not without elements of gratification). 

To be clear, Lencioni writes that no leader perfectly embodies one form of motivation or the other. But one of these motives will be predominant and leaders need to be self-aware of what drives them. Reward-centered leaders often resist and avoid doing the difficult things that only they can do for the team they are leading. As a result, the whole organization suffers.

When it comes to leading a classroom, there are all sorts of things that a teacher would prefer not to do: address difficult student behavior, call a parent with bad news to share, have “family talks” with the whole class about negative classroom culture issues, or give a low grade on an assignment. But to be the best leaders they can, teachers need to lean into these responsibilities and thereby discharge their role teacher well.

Diagnostic Questions for Teachers

• What is your motivation for becoming a teacher?
• What are the 3-5 things you can do for your class that no one else can do? 
• How are you caring for your class culture, especially rooting out dysfunctional behavior and forming healthy interpersonal dynamics?
• What kind of feedback do you give your students on their behavior and work? 
• When was the last time you had a difficult conversation with a student in which you addressed unhealthy behavior?
• When was the last time you complained about a student’s or parent’s behavior? What steps do you need to take to address it?
• How often are you reminding your students of the big picture of their education, your particular curriculum, and the core values of your classroom?

Conclusion

Teachers are the leaders of their classrooms, responsible for casting vision for their students, supporting them in their work, and cultivating healthy classroom cultures. Rather than deploying classroom management techniques which can be overly behavioristic and task-oriented, teachers should embrace their role as leaders and focus on developing their people. By helping teachers become better leaders, we will see dynamic classrooms, better learning results, and, most importantly, thriving students.

The post 3 Leadership Books for Teachers appeared first on .

A few years later, Collins wrote a short sequel, this time targeting a nonprofit audience, entitled Good to Great and the Social Sectors (2005). In this monograph, Collins thinks through how the seven characteristics apply to nonprofits like churches, hospitals, charities, and schools. He is careful to note that the goal for nonprofits is not to pretend they are businesses, but rather, to become “great.” He writes, “We must reject the idea–well-intentioned, but dead wrong–that the primary path to greatness in the social sector is to become ‘more like a business” (1). The solution, he believes, is to leave modes of mediocrity behind and replace them with habits of greatness. 

In this article, I will explore what Collins has to say about making the jump from good to great in schools. In particular, I will explore the first of five issues Collins suggests educational leaders might encounter as they seek to apply the seven characteristics of great companies in their schools. This is the issue of defining “great” and calibrating success without traditional business metrics.

Seven Characteristics of “Great” Companies

To begin, let me briefly define the seven characteristics of companies that made the jump to greatness in Collins’ research. Collins and his team studied twenty-eight companies, eleven of them qualifying as “great” companies in contrast to the other seventeen. To distill the characteristics, his team of researchers carefully studied what the eleven great companies all had in common that distinguished them from the comparison companies (7). 

The results of the research are the following characteristics:

1. Level Five Leadership: Leaders with a paradoxical blend of personal humility and professional will
2. First Who, Then What: Getting the right people on the bus before finalizing the business model
3. Confront the Brutal Facts: Unwavering faith in the future of the business coupled with the relentless pursuit of current reality
4. Hedgehog Concept: Getting clear on the core business through reaching the center of three concentric circles (see below)
5. Culture of Discipline: A work culture blend of integrity, humility, ambition, and entrepreneurship
6. Technology Accelerators: The careful selection of technology to advance the company
7. The Flywheel: Trusting the slow process of doing the right things to build momentum over time

It is interesting to think that the secret to greatness could be boiled down to seven relatively simple characteristics. And yet, this is exactly what Collins and his team discovered. Of course, applying these principles is easier said than done. There is a reason why the companies he studied were true outliers. But the silver lining is that any organization, including schools, can increase effectiveness and get on the path to greatness through the careful study and implementation of these organizational characteristics.

Five Issues for Social Sectors 

With the business framework of Good to Great in view, let us begin to think through how the seven characteristics might apply in social sectors, like schools. When engaged in this task, Collins observes five issues that tended to come up in light of the difference between for-profits and not-for-profits (3). Here they are:

1. Defining “Great”: Calibrating success without business metrics
2. Level 5 Leadership: Getting things done within a diffuse power structure
3. First Who: Getting the right people on the bus within social sector constraints
4. The Hedgehog Concept: Rethinking the economic engine without a profit motive
5. Turning the Flywheel: Building momentum by building the brand

In the remainder of this blog, I will focus on the first issue: defining “great” and calibrating success without traditional business metrics.

Defining “Great”: Inputs and Outputs

In business, the outputs for evaluating effectiveness are fairly straightforward: financial returns and achievement of corporate purpose. A business at the end of the day is evaluated by its financial margins. In the social sector, however, it is significantly more complex. You cannot measure the success of a nonprofit by the size of the budget, efficiency of expense ratios, or breadth of donor circles. To be sure, these can serve as helpful metrics for governance purposes, but they do not get at the heart at gauging whether the mission is being achieved successfully.

To evaluate “greatness” in nonprofits, Collins advises to make this crucial distinction between inputs and outputs. In the corporate world, money serves as both an input and output of greatness. Companies are evaluated both by how much money enters the company (the input variable), and, more importantly, how much money is produced (the output variable).

For example, if I were to start a snow cone company, I would certainly need an input of cash. The more capital I possessed up front, the more ice, syrup, and freezer storage I could acquire for production. The goal, of course, is the output of cash–how much revenue I can generate from sales. Therefore both monetary input and output play a key role in measuring the greatness of my snow cone aspirations, but especially monetary output.

Like my hypothetical snow cone company, an independent school requires an input of cash to cover expenses–items like payroll, facilities, and curricular materials. There will also be an an output of cash–the revenue generated from tuition primarily. But the difference between selling snow cones and educating students is that, for the latter, the tuition dollars themselves do not serve as the measuring stick for how well the school is achieving its mission.

Delivering on the Mission

So if money is not an appropriate output for measuring the greatness of a school, then what is? Surely there are ways to measure greatness. As Collins writes, “To throw our hands up and say, ‘But we cannot measure performance in the social sectors the way you can in business’ is simply a lack of discipline (7). So how do we do it?

For Collins, it is the effectiveness by which the nonprofit delivers on the mission and makes a distinctive impact. For schools, therefore, it is how effective the school achieves its mission of preparing its students for whatever kind of impact they hope to have in the world.

Still, measuring mission delivery can be difficult. To repeat, we cannot simply reduce mission effectiveness to a dollar amount. Collins advises nonprofits to use both quantitative and qualitative means, acknowledging that all measurement indicators are flawed to some degree. So quantitative metrics like test scores, faculty evaluations, parent surveys, annual giving, financial margins, and re-enrollment metrics can and should be used, but we must acknowledge their limitations in telling the full story. The key, writes Collins, is not to find the single perfect indicator, but to land on a consistent and intelligent method of assessing your output results and then tracking your trajectory with rigor (8).

Boards and leadership teams, therefore, need to get clear on what is meant by great performance for their particular school. What is the baseline for delivering on the mission? What are the big-picture goals and how do you know if you are making progress? These are the questions school leaders need to be asking.

Three Outputs of Greatness

Collins suggests three ways for nonprofits to measure outputs of greatness relative to their mission. “Superior Performance” measures the results and efficiency of the organization. “Distinctive Impact” gauges the unique contribution the organization is making to the communities it touches. And “Lasting Endurance” tracks exceptional results over a long period of time.

Applying this framework to schools, here is one way to put meat on the skeleton:

Superior Performance: Results and efficiency on the school’s mission

• Enrollment Over Time
• Student Retention
• Faculty Retention
• Annual Fund YTD Progress 
• Stories of Student Growth
• Stories of Alumni Impact
• Alumni Survey 
• Parent Promoter Score
• Inquiries Per Week
• Observations Per Week

Distinctive Impact: Unique contribution to the communities the school touches

• Like-minded schools visiting for inspiration and guidance
• Contagious families spreading the word about the school
• Alumni increasingly sought for leadership roles and perspectives at work, church, and in the public square
• Partnership with the local community

Lasting Endurance: Exceptional results over a long period of time

• Multigenerational families: Alumni enrolling their children
• Excellence sustained across generations of teachers
• Supporters donate time and money, investing in long-term success of the school
• Strong organization before, during, and after the Head’s tenure 

In sum, to recalibrate the measurement of school success, educational leaders must think through the key ways they can measure mission effectiveness, distinct impact, and lasting endurance. How do these relate to the seven characteristics of “greatness”? Collins writes, “You can think of the entire good-to-great framework as a generic set of variables that correlate strongly with creating the outputs of greatness…Any journey from good to great requires relentlessly adhering to these input variables, rigorously tracking your trajectory on the output variables, and then driving yourself to even higher levels of performance and impact” (8-9).

Conclusion 

Educational leaders must understand that endowment, revenues, cost structure, and income statements are input variables, not output variables, of school greatness. For schools to make the leap, boards and executive teams should think seriously about what variables they want to use to measure the degree of effectiveness in fulfilling the mission of their institution. It is difficult work to be sure, but the effort is worth it. There are generations of children awaiting to be equipped, and it is exciting to think that our schools can play a significant role in this transformative process for the glory of God.

The post Good to Great: Measuring the “Greatness” of a School appeared first on .

Moreover, some Christians fear, utilizing brain science to boost cognitive performance through strengthening the brain sounds like a mad scientist’s version of humanistic self-help. In our secular age, God-talk has been pushed to the margins and human innovation has taken center stage. The good news, we are told, is that with the right life plan in place, we can grow strong enough to turn our lives around on our own.

How, as Christians, can we maintain our convictions about the reality of a spiritual realm and our desperate need for God’s grace while simultaneously availing ourselves to the best of current neuroscience? What insights might scientifically-observable processes like neurogenesis and neuroplasticity yield in our calling to conform ourselves to the image of Christ?

In this blog, I will draw connections between recent findings in neuroscience with the aims of a liberal arts education. Along the way, I will consider the relationship between the body and soul, including the brain and the mind, within the context of growing spiritually and morally. Ultimately, I aim to demonstrate that a working knowledge in how to care for one’s brain is one way we can steward our human bodies well and to lead lives of virtue and wisdom in service to Jesus Christ.

Growing New Brain Cells Through a Love for Learning

One of the most stunning insights from current neuroscience is that we can grow new brain cells. As humans age, we lose brain cells over time, which is partially what leads to neurodegenerative diseases like Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s. Aging, of course, is unpreventable and irreversible, but the research is clear that caring for our brains can slow the aging process. By adjusting the way we eat, sleep, and exercise, we can create new brain cells that actually grow one’s brain and increase one’s cognitive capacity.

In Biohack Your Brain (HarperCollins, 2020), Dr. Kristen Willeumier (PhD, UCLA) offers practical tips for increasing neurogenesis, that is, growing new brain cells. Some of these tips include eating blueberries, learning new words, and writing with your nondominant hand (22). Interestingly, Dr. Willeumier writes, cultivating curiosity is another way for spurring neurogenesis. When humans learn for the sake of pure joy and a love for knowledge, new brain cells are created and neural connections are strengthened (184).

One of the key aims of a liberal arts education, of course, is precisely this: to cultivate a love for learning. As Kevin Clark and Ravi Jain have demonstrated in The Liberal Arts Tradition, a fantastic summary of Christian, classical education, tuning the heart is a critical stage that precedes training in the liberal arts. This stage they call “musical education” and it serves as the soil for knowledge of God, humanity, and creation to later flower (7).

It is thus important to point out that the goal of cultivating a love for learning in the earliest years of education has both affective and neurological benefits. As we put specimens of goodness, truth, and beauty before our students for them to love and pursue, their hearts (metaphorically-speaking) and brains grow.

Cultivating Intelligence and Intellectual Virtue Through the Trivium

Not only can we grow new brain cells with certain practices, but there is growing research that we can actually increase intelligence. Dr. Willeumier writes, “In terms of intelligence, research shows we can change our brain to boost intellect in a number of ways. Primary among them, perhaps unsurprisingly, is by learning new information and skills, which helps to strengthen neuronal communication and rewires parts of the brain responsible for cognitive thinking” (42). Additionally, research shows we can increase intelligence by how we eat, sleep, exercise, and handle stress.

There are many ways to think about intelligence, but we all have three main types. First, we have what is called crystallized intelligence: the knowledge, facts, and skills we have accumulated over time. Second, we have fluid Intelligence: the ability to problem solve. Finally, we have emotional intelligence: the ability to interact and connect socially with others.

Interestingly, it turns out that reading long-form narratives is the best way to boost all three.¹ Reading for extended amounts of time, at least thirty minutes, improves overall neuronal connectivity and the integrity of white matter in the brain (188). Along with reading, several other modes of language acquisition strengthen cognitive capacity. Learning new vocabulary, studying a new language, and writing all contribute to strengthening memory, growing new brain cells, and staving off neurodegenerative diseases.

In the liberal arts tradition, the language arts are known as the Trivium. These are tools for fashioning, or producing, knowledge, as opposed to subject areas, or sciences, to be studied in theory only. In other words, they are the skills for learning and using language. However, the purpose of the Trivium is not merely to increase one’s intelligence. It is growing in wisdom and intellectual virtue, ultimately to service God and neighbor (47).

As Christian, classical educators, we want to promote the pursuit of objective truth, beliefs that correspond to reality. It is encouraging, and not surprising, to see that language acquisition has been shown neurologically to increase one’s intelligence. But let us not lose sight of the fact that intelligence is not the end goal for Christians. We are to use our minds to honor and serve the Lord, especially the way we use language. While all humans will use language whether they receive a classical education or not, the Trivium prepares students to use language wisely and in service to others.

The Brain and Gymnastic Education

For time immemorial, philosophers have argued about the relationship between the mind and body. How do these two parts of a person relate? Are they ultimately one thing or two? More recently, this debate has taken a scientific edge. Are mental states reducible to firing neurons?

In an article for Biola University’s Center for Christian Thought, “Neuroplasticity and Spiritual Formation”, Dr. Jeffrey Schwartz, a research psychiatrist at UCLA, offers an interesting take on the relationship between the mind and the brain. The brain, he believes, serves as the passive recipient of experience, taking in the sensory data of the natural world. The mind, on the other hand, serves the active role of making decisions and choices about how to focus one’s attention.

Applying this approach to a current issue, Dr. Schwartz writes, “Many people are concerned about the effects of the internet on our distractibility. If ever there was an era in which the brain could be readily recognized as constantly putting out a call, ours is it. Because of this, more than ever, we now have to bring in the mind to decide what to listen to. A lot of what the brain is putting out calls about is not particularly good to listen to—certainly not to focus on.”

In this quotation, Dr. Schwartz suggests that while the brain serves as the central station for receiving sensory data, the mind’s job is to determine which data to focus on. In this way, Dr. Schwartz seems to conceive of the mind as the seat of the will, conscience, and affections. However, what Dr. Schwartz does not emphasize, at least in this article, is that the brain, neurologically-speaking, is very much active in these moments as well.

What I want to suggest is that perhaps we should think of training the brain as a form of gymnastic education, the broader training of the body. Clark and Jain write, “Education is not merely an intellectual affair, no matter how intellect-centered it must be, because human beings are not merely minds. As creatures made in God’s image, we are composite beings–unions of soul and body. A full curriculum must cultivate the good of the whole person, soul, and body” (29).

If Clark and Jain are right about the importance of promoting a fully-orbed Christian anthropology, and I believe they are, then it seems that caring for and training the brain is to be included. Fortunately, given the close connection between the mind and the brain, our lessons already lend themselves to this sort of training. As I have already shown above, training in the language arts grows new brain cells and strengthens neural networks. But it is worth stating and remembering that God has given us brains, which are physical organs, and we should care for them as we do other parts of our physical bodies.

Physicality and Christian Formation

There is one final point I would like to make about the relationship between the brain and liberal arts education. It is the idea that Christian formation, which is ultimately a spiritual process, often occurs through physical means.

In “The Physical Nature of Christian Life: Formation and Flourishing”, Dr. Brad Strawn and Dr. Warren Brown, psychology professors from Fuller Theological Seminary, write, “Humans cannot be reduced to disembodied souls or immaterial minds. We are embodied and embedded creatures. Our physicality matters, including our brains. Humans are formed and transformed through embodied and embedded experiences. Personhood is not the immaterial reality, but an embodied one.”

There is much to unpack in this quotation, and I do not agree with all of their philosophical conclusions, but I do think they point out something important. Sometimes when thinking about how to help students grow spiritually, we think of their relationship with God in individualistic and gnostic terms. In other words, we summarize Christian formation as a private encounter between God and their individual souls. But what these psychologists helpfully remind us is that often our relationships with God grow in communal settings. Whether it be the weekly church gathering, summer Bible camp, or small group Bible studies, we grow as Christians through embodied and communally-embedded moments.

Thinking about how adults grow in these settings as much as children, the psychologists write, “Many of the same formative social processes are at work in adults as in children: imitation, attachments, and life-forming narratives. What is at stake in ongoing adult development is the degree to which wisdom and virtue come to characterize persons.”

As we seek to cultivate wisdom and virtue in our students, as well as ourselves, we should remember that this endeavor, though moral and spiritual in nature, has a connection to our physicality. We should think through how we can harness physical experience to form our students in wisdom and virtue.

Conclusion

There is a lot more that could be said here. As we educate the hearts, minds, and souls of our students, how should we understand what is happening to the brain? In this blog, I have reflected on the relationship between neuroscience and the liberal arts. As educators, I believe we can use the insights of modern brain science to not only take better care of our physical bodies. We can use these insights to strengthen the liberal arts education we offer our students to help them grow in wisdom and virtue, and ultimately, in service to Jesus Christ.

Endnotes

1. Kidd DC, Castano E. Reading Literary Fiction Improves Theory of Mind in Science (6156): 377-380)

The post The Human Brain and the Liberal Arts appeared first on .

What did Sayers share that day that elicited such a response decades later? 

In her own British way, the writer and poet articulated a forceful critique of modern education and then provided a compelling solution. At the 30,000 foot level, her critique was that modern educational methods were failing to equip students to learn for themselves. Her solution? Recover the lost tools of learning, also known as the liberal arts, in order to equip students to do the work of learning and be prepared for the complexities of life ahead.

In this article, I aim to demonstrate congruity between the classical principle of self-education and Doug Lemov’s concept of “Ratio” in Teach Like a Champion 2.0. This is a continuation of my ongoing series on “Teach Like a Champion in Classical Perspective.” Lemov is a leader in the charter school movement who is passionate about distilling the best techniques for the craft of teaching. Using data from state achievement tests as a starting point, Lemov and his team observed hundreds of top teachers across the nation to identify proven techniques for student success. Today I will specifically examine how Lemov’s concept of “Ratio” works well to support what Sayers believed to be the purpose of formal education: to train students to learn for themselves.

A Problem to be Solved

First, let’s get clear on the problem of modern education, as Sayers sees it. She opens her essay by criticizing modern educational methods for failing to prepare students to navigate the complexities of the modern world. In an age of mass-marketing and propaganda, schools were doing little to equip students to discern right from wrong in difficult situations where the truth is not immediately evident.

Sayers writes:

Has it ever struck you as odd, or unfortunate, that to-day, when the proportion of literacy throughout Western Europe is higher than it has ever been, people should have become susceptible to the influence of advertisement and mass-propaganda to an extent hitherto unheard-of and unimagined? Do you put this down to the mere mechanical fact that the press and the radio and so on have made propaganda much easier to distribute over a wide area? Or do you sometimes have an uneasy suspicion that the product of modern educational methods is less good than he or she might be at disentangling fact from opinion and the proven from the plausible?

It is incredible how firmly this punch, which was thrown over seventy years ago, lands today. The fact that Sayers wrote the preceding paragraph before the rise of the internet, social media, and the recent phenomenon of “fake news,” is fascinating. If the “press” and the “radio” were propagating mistruths and fallacious thinking back in the 1940’s, how much worse is the problem today? Who is preparing students to navigate such deceptive terrain? According to our lecturer, not schools.

And yet, Sayers isn’t quite finished; she continues her attack on modern education with a barrage of questions:

Do you ever find that young people, when they have left school, not only forget most of what they have learnt (that is only to be expected) but forget also, or betray that they have never really known, how to tackle a new subject for themselves? Are you often bothered by coming across grown-up men and women who seem unable to distinguish between a book that is sound, scholarly and properly documented, and one that is to any trained eye, very conspicuously none of these things? Or who cannot handle a library catalogue? Or who, when faced with a book of reference, betray a curious inability to extract from it the passages relevant to the particular question which interests them?

Here Sayers identifies an even deeper problem ingrained within modern educational methods. According to Sayers, not only were schools in her day releasing students into the world ripe for the picking by propagandists and media producers, they were failing to prepare students to learn for themselves. Schools, instead of preparing a generation of students capable of thinking independently and equipped with the wisdom to navigate complex situations, were graduating men and women who remain dependent upon the thinking of others. Sayers concludes:

They [teachers] are doing for their pupils the work which the pupils themselves ought to do. For the sole true end of education is simply this: to teach men how to learn for themselves; and whatever instruction fails to do this is effort spent in vain.

What Sayers is referring to here is the classical principle of self-education. This is the idea that, as the saying goes, it is better to teach a man to fish rather than to merely give him one. Students need to learn how to learn if they are going to navigate this world wisely and virtuously.

Elevating the Ratio

Keeping what Sayers has said about the need for students to learn for themselves, let’s now examine what Doug Lemov writes about “Ratio.” For Lemov, the whole point of ratio is to get students to do as much of the cognitive work as possible. The more work students are required to do, the greater the ratio, and the more effective the teaching. Of course, Lemov isn’t interested in students engaging in any sort of learning activity, but the kind of work that is truly cognitively demanding. He frames three different approaches for making this happen: questioning, writing, and discussing. 

First, though, he clarifies that student participation itself is not equivalent to ratio. It is possible to have a high rate of class participation and yet low ratio with regards to rigorous cognitive work. Likewise, it is possible to have high “Think Ratio”–work that is truly rigorous–but low class participation. As the graph indicates below, the key is to seek both. Lemov writes, “When you seek ratio, you ultimately seek to be high on both axes” (240). 

Teachers, then, should always be engaged in self-diagnosing ratio in their classrooms, asking the questions “How rigorous is the work?” and “How many are participating?”. 

The Content Prerequisite 

Next, Lemov turns to what he calls “The Content Prerequisite” in order to reach the highest levels of ratio. This is the idea that in order for students to engage in rigorous thinking, they need actual mental content, or knowledge, to think about. Lemov acknowledges that in the current educational landscape, the memorization of “mere” factual knowledge is not highly regarded. But he goes on to argue that exercises where students try to “think deeply” without knowing much turns out to be vacuous. “Facts and rigor,” Lemov insists, “are not opposites as some educators continue to suggest, but synergistic partners” (19).

Interestingly, Lemov is not alone on this view. The importance of knowledge acquisition in the learning process is confirmed by the research in Make it Stick: The Science of Successful Learning. In this book, the authors argue that retrieval practice–recalling facts or concepts or events from memory–is crucial for gauging effective learning. In an early chapter of the book, entitled “Learning is Misunderstood,” they point out that creative thinking, a popular phrase in today’s educational world, and increasing knowledge, go hand in hand. Using a building metaphor, the authors write:

Memorizing facts is like stocking a construction site with the supplies to put up the house. Building the house not only requires knowledge of countless different fittings and materials but conceptual knowledge, too…Mastery requires both the possession of ready knowledge and the conceptual understanding of how to use it (18).

In other words, one can’t effectively engage in problem solving, creative thinking, or rigorous analysis without knowing from memory the facts relevant to the topic. It is all too common today to brush off teaching factual knowledge with the quip “I’ll just Google it,” or “That’s what Wikipedia is for.” While it is true that we live in an age in which more information is at our grasp than ever before, it still falls to each individual human learner to sort the information into comprehensible categories. And ironically, to sort information, you need to know information.

(Side note: If you are looking for a great strategy to increase the amount of memory recall in your classroom we recommend checking out Jason’s eBook on the practice of narration.)

The Importance of Knowledge

In her own way, Sayers confirms the importance of the knowledge prerequisite in her lecture. She creatively ascribes the Trivium, the three classical language arts, to three coinciding stages of childhood development. Admitting herself that her views on child psychology are neither “orthodox or enlightened” she defines the work of the grammar (elementary school) stage as memorizing, reciting, chanting, and observing. In short, it is about collecting mental material, or knowledge, that the mind will go to work on in later developmental stages. Sayers writes:

What that material actually is, is only of secondary importance; but it is as well that anything and everything which can usefully be committed to memory should be memorized at this period, whether it is immediately intelligible or not…At this stage, it does not matter nearly so much that these things should be fully understood as that they should be known and remembered. Remember, it is material that we are collecting.

While most classical educators today will disagree with Sayers’ explanation of the Trivium, from a historical standpoint, and critique her understanding of childhood development, let’s not miss her key insight here. It is the same idea that Doug Lemov and the authors of Make it Stick are touching on: knowledge matters. A rigorous education, one in which students are doing the cognitive lifting in a manner that prepares them to learn for themselves, requires the acquisition of knowledge. Where precisely this fits within the liberal arts paradigm is debatable, but the necessity of knowledge, or the content prerequisite, as Lemov calls it, is not.

Building Ratio in the Classroom

Now that we have discussed these preliminary matters, let’s turn to Lemov’s three ways for building ratio and empowering students to do the work of learning: questioning, writing and discussing.

First, teachers build ratio through questioning. When students are asked good questions and expected to give thoughtful answers, they are doing the bulk of the cognitive lifting. They are being asked to explain the concept or make a connection between two ideas. Rather than the teacher lecturing from “on high,” students are engaged in the demanding task of working out knowledge for themselves. Some of the most useful techniques I have found for increasing ratio through questioning are as follows:

• Wait Time: Allow students time to think before answering. If they aren’t productive with that time, narrate them toward being more productive.
• Cold Call: Call on students regardless of whether they’ve raised their hands.
• Break it Down: When a student makes an error, provide just enough help to allow her to solve as much of the original problem as she can.

A second way to build ratio is through writing. As Jordan Peterson shared in a classroom lecture, the best way to teach students to be critical thinkers is to teach them to write. Both the amount and quality of writing students do on a regular basis are key determinants for their ability to think and learn for themselves. Perhaps one of the greatest advantages of writing assignments is that 100% of students are doing the cognitive work, as opposed to one or two when a question is answered orally by one or two students. I have to say, as someone who has been teaching writing for several years now, I actually get a small adrenaline rush when I’ve crafted a well-worded writing prompt and watch every single one of my students go off to the races in fulfilling it. Some key techniques that I’ve found helpful for building ratio through writing include:

• Everybody Writes: Prepare your students to engage rigorously by giving them the chance to reflect in writing before you ask them to discuss.
• Art of the Sentence: Ask students to synthesize a complex idea in a single, well-crafted sentence. The discipline of having to make one sentence do all the work pushes students to use new syntactical forms.
• Build Stamina: Gradually increase writing time to develop in your students the habit of writing productively, and the ability to do it for sustained periods of time.

Building Ratio Through Discussion

A final way Lemov offers teachers to increase ratio in their classrooms is through discussion. He saves this way for last because in some sense it is the most predictable. When students are sitting in a circle and engaged in discussion, there is an (almost) inevitably high degree of ratio going on. In most classical schools, discussion is constantly used pedagogically as a tool for training in the liberal art of dialectic. So the benefits of discussion are well-known and celebrated.

Nevertheless, teachers would do well to remember that not all discussions are created equal. Students simply sitting in a group and restating their opinions at each other, as Lemov notes, does not qualify as a discussion (314). These are merely disconnected verbal interactions. Instead Lemov defines a discussion as “a mutual endeavor by a group of people to develop, refine, or contextualize an idea or set of ideas” (315).

I agree with Lemov’s definition here with one philosophical caveat. It should be clarified that the ideas Lemov is speaking of are not to be understood as mere personal accounts of what people think about the world, whether or not these ideas actually correspond to reality. Rather, a worthy discussion should lead to the discern of objective truth, of the way the world actually is. Thus discussion always has a morally formative and humanizing goal: to expose students to the truth, that they might abide in it, and go on to express it prophetically to others.

Some helpful techniques for building ratio through discussion are as follows:

• Habits of Discussion: Make your discussions more productive and enjoyable by normalizing a set of ground rules or “habits” that allow discussion to be more efficiently cohesive and connected.
• Batch Process: Give more ownership and autonomy to students–particularly when your goal is discussion–by allowing for student discussion without teacher mediation, for short periods of time or for longer, more formal sequences.

Conclusion

In this article, I’ve attempted to demonstrate agreement between the classical principle of self-education and Doug Lemov’s idea of building ratio. When students are expected to do the cognitive lifting in the classroom, they are being prepared to learn for themselves, not just at school, but throughout all of life. Certainly Lemov’s techniques are insufficient for achieving the broader vision of human flourishing from a classical perspective, which entails growth in wisdom and virtue, but nevertheless, his insights for ways teachers can empower their students to learn for themselves are noteworthy. I heartily commend them to you in your broader aim to recover the lost tools of learning in the education of your students. As Sayers implies at the end of her lecture, it would seem that nothing less than the future of western civilization depends on it.

Other articles in this series:

Work, Toil, and the Quest for Academic Rigor

“Teach Like a Champion” for the Classical Classroom, Part 3: Check for Understanding

“Teach Like a Champion” for the Classical Classroom, Part 2: Teacher-Driven Professional Development

“Teach Like a Champion” for the Classical Classroom, Part 1: An Introduction

The post Building Ratio: Training Students to Think and Learn for Themselves appeared first on .

A few hours later, you’re in your prep period and you can’t wait to see what your students learned through the exit slip exercise. You’re especially excited to read the answer of the boy who kept nodding and smiling throughout the lesson. You read the first slip and it doesn’t quite hit the target. An outlier probably. You read the second slip, written in clear, elegant cursive. Wrong again. Not even close. You decide to read one more…enthusiastic boy’s. Surely his exuberance was indicative of some understanding. But alas, one sentence in, and your heart sinks. The great lesson you engineered turned out to be dud. 

John Wooden, legendary basketball coach of the UCLA Bruins, put it best: the most crucial task of teaching is differentiating between “I taught it” and “they learned it.” A teacher can plan a tailored lesson and wax eloquent with the rhetoric of Cicero, and yet, if his students can’t demonstrate the knowledge for themselves, real understanding hasn’t been achieved.

In order to avoid the futile lesson, the one in which students can’t actually demonstrate evidence of learning, teachers need to check for understanding, not simply at the end, but throughout the lesson. The notion of “understanding” is what I’ll be exploring in today’s article as I contribute to my ongoing series on Teach Like a Champion for the classical classroom. Teach Like a Champion, or TLaC, is a handbook on optimized teaching techniques procured through countless hours of observation of master teachers. Let’s dive in and first consider humanity’s innate drive for understanding in the first place.

The Desire for Understanding

The desire for understanding isn’t anything new. King Solomon asked specifically for this gift when the Lord visited him in his early days as king. God appeared to Solomon in a dream and offered to grant him a desire, presumably, anything he wanted. Reflecting upon his status as the king of Israel and the son of David, Solomon made an intriguing, and perhaps even shocking, request: “Give your servant therefore an understanding mind to govern your people, that I may discern between good and evil, for who is able to govern this your great people?” (1 Kings 3:9). 

An understanding mind. Of all the things he could have asked for of his sovereign creator, Solomon asked for understanding. Although he was new to the throne, Solomon seemed to grasp the significance of his role and the complexity that lay before him. He grew up watching his father David navigate the troubles of kingship in the ancient Near East (although to him, the geo-temporal region in which he lived wouldn’t have struck him as ancient, near, or eastern). He understood that the road before him would be very difficult.

As we know from the story, God not only granted Solomon his desire for understanding; He blessed the young ruler with riches and fame as well. And yet it was Solomon’s wisdom and understanding that truly set him apart among all the kings and queens in the region. As the author of 1 Kings recounts:

“And God gave Solomon wisdom and understanding beyond measure, and breadth of mind like the sand of the seashore, so that Solomon’s wisdom surpassed the wisdom of all the people of the east and all the wisdom of Egypt. For he was wiser than all other men…and his fame was in all the surrounding nations. He also spoke 3,000 proverbs, and his songs were 1,005. He spoke of trees, from the cedar that is in Lebanon to the hyssop that grows out of the wall. He spoke also of beasts, and of birds, and of reptiles, and of fish. And people of all nations came to hear the wisdom of Solomon, and from all the kings of the earth, who had heard of his wisdom.” 

I Kings 4:29-34

While we don’t fully know how Solomon gained his understanding, in terms of pedagogy, what the author does emphasize in this passage is the sheer breadth of it. Solomon wasn’t simply wise on matters of daily living or ruling; he was learned in both the human and natural sciences. This is a rare combination indeed. In our modern world, it would be difficult to find someone proficient in both poetry and ornithology. King Solomon was a renaissance man living in an Iron Age. 

The Association of Ideas

Understanding begins with desire and comes from God, but now we will see that it flourishes through relation. John Locke, the great British philosopher, political theorist, and medical researcher, helps us understand why. He famously wrote An Essay Concerning Human Understanding which laid the groundwork for empiricism, the theory that all knowledge ultimately comes from experience. Locke’s goal in the essay was to explore the limits of human understanding and provide criteria for distinguishing between truth and falsehood. While empiricism itself is a contested theory, his insight that ideas are associated, or interconnected, is profound.

For Locke, ideas are the things that furnish the mind and they initially enter through experience. Until a human begins to sense the world, her mind is a tabula rasa (a blank slate). According to Locke’s theory, all ideas are the result of either sensation (experience) or reflection. For example, until a child experiences the color blue, she has no idea of it. But then the mind begins to reflect on these simple ideas, gained through sensation, in order to generate more ideas. So a child may reflect on the idea of blue and the idea of a spherical object in order to grasp the idea of a blue ball. In this way, ideas are associated, and understanding is the network of these associations.

Knowledge as a Unified Whole

Interestingly, Charlotte Mason hones in on a similar idea to association in her definition of education as “the science of relations.” Here she has in mind the notion that as children experience the world and gain knowledge of it, each facet of knowledge is interconnected. Mason writes, “Our nature craves after unity. The travail of thought, which is going on to-day and has gone on as long as we have any record of men’s thoughts, has been with a view to establishing some principle for the unification of life. Here we have the scheme of a magnificent unity” (School Education, 154). For Mason, education is the result of seeing knowledge as this “magnificent unity.”

In an excellent blog article, author Karen Glass expounds upon Mason’s philosophy, writing:

“Charlotte Mason saw that this vital, unified understanding, which she did not hesitate to call “wisdom,” has the potential to produce great ideas, great works, and great understanding. One critical point, from an educational perspective, is that there is no need to divide our ideas of knowledge into “sacred” and “secular.” When we recognize that the Holy Spirit is the source of all knowledge, and interests himself even in the truths of arithmetic, geometry, and grammar, our focus shifts. Knowledge is not an unpalatable medicine to be forced down by any educational gimmick we can contrive. Knowledge is a gift of God, and the question becomes therefore, what methods can we use which will invite His cooperation in the education of our pupils?”

Here Glass makes clear that all domains of knowledge are unified because they share a common source: the Holy Spirit. As teachers teach for understanding, they need to retain this theological truth. Knowledge is not some commodity that should be bought and sold on the market for the most expedient price; it is a gift from God graciously given for the good of humankind. Just as God gave Solomon knowledge of humanity and nature, so will He give generously to students as we invite His presence into our classrooms and teach in a way that is befitting to His children.

Check for Understanding

With these philosophical and theological considerations of understanding in view, we can now begin to reflect as teachers on how to cultivate and check it. Admittedly, in TLaC, author Doug Lemov isn’t concerned in developing his epistemology, or philosophy of knowledge. For his purposes, a pragmatic approach will do: understanding is simply the desired commodity for college acceptance. But now that we, as classical educators, have explored a deeper understanding of understanding (no pun intended), we can glean from Lemov’s field research in a way that better aligns with our core values.

In the first edition of TLaC, “Check for Understanding” was presented as a single technique, but over time Lemov came to see how comprehensive this task really is for effective teaching. So in the second edition, Lemov provides ten different techniques for teachers to implement in order to check for understanding. These techniques coalesce for Lemov around three broad tasks: data gathering, culture of error, and acting on the data (25). 

Gather and Act on Data

Data-gathering, the first task, needs to occur frequently and efficiently. All too often, teachers proceed through their lesson without regularly checking in to see if students are actually tracking with what is being taught. When teachers finally do check in, say, through an exit slip, it’s often too little, too late. At this point, they aren’t able to course correct.

This leads to the second general task teachers can employ to check for understanding: acting on the data. Writing thorough lesson plans is important, don’t get me wrong, but one of the best parts about teaching is that the lessons themselves have a degree of unpredictability. We are working with humans after all. Teachers therefore need to regularly be checking in with their students to gauge their present understanding and determine if a course correction is necessary. This could manifest itself as re-teaching a particular concept or providing an additional opportunity for a student to practice a skill.

One of the best ways we have found for gathering and acting on data is through the practice of narration. When students are regularly called upon to “tell back” what has been taught or read, the teacher learns in real time what the student knows and doesn’t know. The teacher can then determine how to tailor the follow-up discussion for optimal learning to occur.

Build a Culture of Error

The third task to implement in order to check for understanding is building a culture of error. This sounds unintuitive perhaps, but the reality is that students are going to make mistakes. The question is, how will teachers respond when they do? There are really only two options.

The first is to respond negatively to the incorrect answer as a means to discourage future incorrect answers. But this approach is wrongheaded. If a culture of “right answers only” emerges, then the teacher will never be able to gather reliable data. She will have created a culture in which faux answers are given, not what students are actually thinking, errors and all.

The solution is to cultivate a culture of error, which, as Lemov puts it, is to “…make it safe to be wrong” (25). In fact, he recommends as part of the “Plan for Error” technique to expect errors. This way teachers aren’t caught off guard by an incorrect answer and instead can remain consistently flexible throughout the lesson.

Another practice Lemov recommends is to praise risk-taking (71). This strategy leverages the idea of a growth mindset, one that views intelligence as a developing, rather than fixed, trait. This step is crucial for encouraging students to ask their questions and risk being wrong. Rather than leading students to believe that their intelligence is fixed to their classroom performance, teachers should cultivate a growth mindset in which students believe their intelligence can grow through hard work and perseverance.

Conclusion

Doug Lemov may not be operating from a classical framework, but his techniques related to checking for understanding are right on. His focus is on cultivating the understanding of the student, which I’ve shown is crucial for not only academic success, but flourishing as a human being.

Here are some example statements teachers might make to regularly check for understanding in the classroom:

• “Take out your whiteboards and write in a complete sentence the reason you think the events of last chapter affected the present situation.”
• “I’m really glad that you made that mistake. It’s going to help me to help you.”
• “I love the fact that this is a hard question and that I see so many brave hands in the air. Thank you for taking a risk.”
• “This is a tough question. If you’re struggling with it, that’s a good sign. Now, who will be bold and start us off?”

You can read about all ten of the techniques for checking for understanding in the second edition of Teach Like a Champion. My personal favorites are “Reject Self-Report,” “Show Me,” and “Excavate Error,” but I recommend giving all of them a try.

I’d love to hear what techniques others have found helpful or what questions you might have. Reply in the comment section below!

Other articles in this series:

“Teach Like a Champion” for the Classical Classroom, Part 1: An Introduction

“Teach Like a Champion” for the Classical Classroom, Part 2: Teacher-Driven Professional Development

The post “Teach Like a Champion” for the Classical Classroom, Part 3: Check for Understanding appeared first on .

The notable weakness of the supervisor-driven approach is that it is…supervisor-driven. Growing as a professional entails two crucial components: increasing in one’s knowledge of the particular field and increasing in self-awareness of one’s performance in that field. As long as the principal is setting the goals, observing teachers in their classrooms, and giving feedback, the teacher remains a largely passive rather than active participant in her professional development. 

In this blog series, I am exploring insights from Doug Lemov’s Teach Like a Champion 2.0 for the classical classroom. Lemov is a field expert in the charter school movement and has worked tirelessly over the years to bridge the achievement gap in inner-city schools. While he may not be operating with a classical education framework in mind, at EdRen we have found many of his techniques to be beneficial for the classical classroom all the same. In this blog, I will examine Lemov’s insights on professional development, especially the importance of a teacher and data-driven approach that allows teachers to own their own development.

The Desire to Grow

In Part 1: An Introduction of this blog series, I began by clarifying some key concepts. I explained that classical education is intent on making better humans; it is, therefore, a humanizing education, one that views students as persons and not merely economic producers. Humans have minds, hearts, souls, and bodies, and each of these components need educating. As important as job training is, it does not sufficiently prepare someone to live a deep and meaningful life. Students need significant servings of truth, goodness, and beauty to feed their hungry minds, nourish their souls, and guide their decision-making. Kevin Clark, a thought leader in the movement, goes so far as to say that he views his chief job as “to lead souls with words.”

If classical schools are going to strive for such a laudable aim, then professional development is crucial. The heartbeat of any school is its faculty and, in particular, the ability of the faculty to teach. By “teach,” of course, I don’t mean merely the dissemination of information. I mean the conscious act of leading students to pursue wisdom through cultivating virtue and engaging in disciplined mental and physical training. This is no easy task; it requires a unique combination of tact, resolve, confidence, empathy, and, perhaps most importantly, a desire to grow personally. 

You see, a teacher won’t get very far in leading his students to pursue wisdom if he himself hasn’t set off on the journey. Like Frodo Baggins in The Fellowship of the Ring, students need a mentor to imitate. Someone older and wiser. For Frodo, of course, it was his Uncle Bilbo. When Frodo was twelve-years old, he went to live in Bag End with his uncle, following an unexpected family tragedy. During those formative years, Bilbo taught Frodo the Elvish language and much of the lore of the Middle-Earth. But most importantly, Bilbo and Frodo lived together, giving Frodo the rare opportunity, especially for a hobbit, of doing life with someone who had been on an adventure. When the time came for Frodo to set out on an adventure of his own, Frodo already had an image in his mind of the way forward. Although neither Bilbo nor Frodo realized it at the time, their many years together forged the very path on which Frodo would one day tread. 

Like Frodo, students need to experience life with older and wiser men and women who are on the pathway of virtue. These mentors, called teachers in school parlance, embody the growth mindset and desire to grow personally even as they help their pupils grow.

Field Experts and Master Craftsmen

But in order for teachers to embody this growth mindset and truly desire to grow personally, they need to be supported to drive their own development. The supervisor-approach is insufficient for this aim. I am not suggesting, of course, that teachers should operate autonomously. They need mentors themselves to lend support, provide feedback, and formally evaluate progress gained. But the administrator-teacher dynamic should always be oriented toward empowering the teacher to drive her own development.

When it comes to developing classroom instruction in particular, Doug Lemov demonstrates in Teach Like a Champion 2.0 that the data-driven approach, culled by the teacher, is superior. He argues that this approach, “…considers teachers not just as recipients and implementers of the field knowledge, but as creators of it–problem-solvers, entrepreneurs, generators of the professional insight. It makes teachers intellectuals” (8). Imagine with Lemov if teachers viewed themselves as field experts in the craft of teaching. This self-understanding would lead to all sorts of exciting possibilities for driving one’s personal growth.

Another analogy that is helpful here is that of craftsmanship. In Cal Newport’s book So Good They Can’t Ignore You, Newport argues that in a knowledge economy, a successful professional must adopt the mindset of a craftsman. Rather than subscribing to the modern myth of “follow your passion,” knowledge workers should focus their time and attention on cultivating rare and valuable skills. They should obsess over how they can add value in a particular industry. Imagine again if teachers took on this mindset. They wouldn’t feel comfortable passively waiting for the next classroom observation. They would constantly be on the hunt, looking for the next best resource or technique that will enhance their effectiveness as teachers.

Ideology-Driven Guidance

As I mentioned in my first article, Lemov suggests that there are generally three drivers of advice that administrators give to teachers. The first form is ideology-driven. This advice tends to focus on some predetermined vision of what a classroom should look like and is often manifested by a checklist for teachers to follow. While this approach to coaching teachers can be helpful, ultimately, we must acknowledge that it is supervisor-driven. Too quickly, the teacher can become overly focused on teaching to please an administrator, rather than teaching for the growth of her students.

In the classical school movement, we can too easily settle for this kind of advice. We articulate our vision for a classical education, distill it into a checklist, and visit different classrooms to cross the items off. “Teaches Latin for forty minutes. Check. Leads a discussion on C.S. Lewis. Check. Asks questions rather than dominates through lecture. Check.”

The problem with this approach to teacher guidance, Lemov points out, is twofold. First, it puts the supervisor in the driver seat. The checklist is a thought product created and implemented by administration with no meaningful contribution offered by the teacher. Second, it unnecessarily privileges ideology over outcomes. To be clear, both our necessary, and ideology-driven guidance unduly neglects the latter.

Research-Driven Guidance

The second driver of advice tends to be research. Lemov ranks this approach higher than ideology-driven, but acknowledges that it, too, is not without its problems. He provides a litany of concerns about blindly following research:

“If research supports a particular action, does that mean you should always perform that action, to the exclusion of everything else, or should you combine it with other things? How often, in what settings, and with what other actions? And how do you meld them?…There’s a lot of research out there of varying quality, and even useful parts are interpreted with a mix of good sense, cautious fidelity, outright distortion, and blind orthodoxy. This can result in ‘research’ justifying poor teaching as easily as good.” (7)

Research is helpful, but only when it is analyzed and adapted by professionals to achieve a specific goal. All too often we hear “Research states…” and we are expected to blindly assent, especially in light of the scientistic world we live in. The reality is that research is conducted in a particular time and place, and therefore any principles gleaned must be implemented and studied in its future applied context. Like ideology, research can be disconnected from outcomes, and lead to ineffective results.

Data-Driven Guidance

The third driver of advice for teachers and the one Lemov ultimately endorses is data-driven guidance. This approach is based “…not on what should happen but on what did happen when success was achieved” (7). For Lemov, success is determined by state test scores controlled for poverty (14). After identifying the schools who performed exceptionally well on these exams, Lemov and his team visited these schools to study how those teachers approached teaching, relationships, lesson-planning, and so on.

Now, as classical educators, we are right to bristle at this notion of success. We understand that success isn’t reducible to a state test score. To a certain extent, even Lemov agrees with this, which is partially why I find his writing so refreshing. Lemov’s point isn’t state test scores. It is data. Lemov writes,

“Even if you disagree with my conclusions, whether you are a teacher or a leader in charge of a school, a school district, a state, or a nation, you can use a data-driven approach to take your best shot at measuring the outcome you think is most valuable, finding its best practitioners, and inferring guidance from their work” (8). 

As classical educators, we need to hone in on the outcomes we think are most valuable and then follow Lemov’s advice to identify and study the master craftsmen in achieving those outcomes. We did this a few years ago at the school I work at. We noticed that year after year one particular teacher helped her class perform excellent poetry and scripture recitations, regardless of the perceived strength or weakness of a particular class. We studied her technique and asked her to catalogue what she believed contributed most towards the excellent result.

The final product was a training document full of techniques that we now use year after year. And as a side benefit, the process of analyzing and discussing what made for a strong recitation coaching lesson led to a unique spirit of camaraderie amongst the faculty. Lemov himself confirms this benefit, writing, “Teaching, as it turns out, is a team sport, where teachers make each other better fastest by building robust cultures where they study and share insights about their work” (14).

Conclusion

In my next installment in this series, I’ll begin to examine the various techniques revealed through Lemov’s data-driven approach. Interestingly, one of the fascinating observations about many of the techniques is how simple they are to implement. To this point, Lemov offers this caution:

“Many of the techniques you will read about in this book may at first seem mundane, unremarkable, and even disappointing. They are not always especially innovative. They are not always intellectually startling. They sometimes fail to march in step with educational theory. But they work. As a result, they yield an outcome that more than compensates for their occasionally humble appearance.” (10)

By “educational theory,” of course, he means modern educational theory. He has in mind the sorts of theories dependent on the premise that education practices must be hip, innovative, quantifiable, or techy for them to be effective. But as Lemov himself pointed out, that’s not the direction the data points. Instead, often the data pointed toward practices of simplicity, ones that simply call on students to do the work of learning. These practices include forms of retrieval practice, akin to narration, as well as instilling finely tuned classroom routines, akin to elements of habit training.

At the end of the day, as teachers set out on the path of owning their own growth, may they be driven, not by test scores, hip techniques, or even simplicity, but Lady Wisdom herself.

Questions for Classical Educators 

Doug Lemov has given us a lot to think about. I would love to hear responses from readers and even invite you to brainstorm with me some answers to the following questions:

• How should classical educators measure success and successful teaching?
• What practices are consistently present in successful teaching?
• How do we equip teachers to be field experts, the generators of knowledge and professional insight on successful teaching?

Thanks for reading! Please respond in the comment section below! 

The post “Teach Like a Champion” for the Classical Classroom, Part 2: Teacher-Driven Professional Development appeared first on .