Joy in Learning

Hello everyone,

 

I hope you are having a wonderful summer.  It truly does feel like summer outside, and I’m excited to enjoy the outdoors as much as I can!

 

Speaking of enjoying things, I have been thinking a lot about the word joy.  It’s such a simple, lovely word that conveys positivity and warmth, and it’s a word I come back to over and over again in my work at Dawson.  When I think about why I do what I do, the word pops into my mind immediately.  Working with your children truly brings me joy.  There is something about their energy, their directness, and their lack of inhibitions that makes me smile and can turn my day around in a heartbeat.

 

And it is my mission to help every student find joy in what they do every day.  Yes, I also want students to develop the skills they will need as they head off to college and beyond.  But I don’t believe that means that we should forego learning that students actually find enjoyable.  In fact, the opposite is true.  When students are engaged in their learning, whether that means making connections to their personal lives, hashing issues out in spirited debate, or creating projects based on their passions and interests, they will get so much more out of their education.  These are the lessons they will remember.

 

I recently read an interesting article in the Chronicle of Higher Education, written by Dan Berrett.  He tells the story of Eric Mazur, a young physics professor at Harvard who has rejected the traditional lecture format that has pervaded most university settings for decades, or even centuries.  Early in his teaching, he pat himself on the back for delivering content in a dynamic and clear way.  But he soon realized that when tested on concepts he had just covered, students displayed a disconcerting lack of understanding.  So even though everyone walked away from the lectures saying, “Wow, that was great,” they weren’t actually able to explain what they had “learned.”

 

And so he turned the format on its ear, instead introducing ideas in class and then asking students to turn to their partners to discuss.  Right away, he saw an energy in the room that had previously been missing.  When students felt invested in figuring out the problems, when they had to defend what they thought to another classmate, they cared more about really figuring it out. 

 

Since this realization, Mazur has thrown out his lectures and instead engages students constantly through these conversations.  He also checks for student understanding repeatedly, using clicker apps that allow students to participate actively in making meaning of the material.  Not surprisingly, the results have confirmed his belief that this teaching method was superlative: in four years, his students’ scores on assessments have tripled.  When students felt invested and engaged, they enjoyed working through the material and therefore developed a better understanding of the concepts.

 

And so I come back to joy.  We should make education joyful not at the expense of learning but in order to make real learning happen.  Each year, during the seventh grade trip in May, we issue a “Marshmallow Challenge” to students.  In groups, they have to build a tower using only spaghetti, tape, and string, and the marshmallow has to be at the top of the tower.  The challenge is a true exercise in group dynamics, and it is also fun!  After the activity when we process what happened, I tell students a bit of research on the challenge.  It turns out that this activity has been given to people of all ages, from kindergartners to business school students.  Guess who typically does the best, building the highest tower in the given time?  The kindergartners.  The worst: business school students.  Guess why?  The younger students aren’t afraid to try and fail over and over again.  They easily find the joy in the activity, and this allows them to engage fully and take risks readily.  Those who are more focused on results end up spending too much time on theory rather than practice and therefore find themselves with a pretty paltry tower by the end.  They take the joy out of the exercise and thus are stymied.  (By the way, if your child hasn’t done this yet, please let it be a surprise!)

 

Last fall, the K-8 teachers came together to develop a mission statement that was specific to students in kindergarten through eighth grade.  We had many conversations about what we wanted students to look like and be able to do when they headed to upper school and also about what we want our classrooms to look like each day.  We ultimately came up with the following: “Dawson’s K-8 community is innovative and inclusive, empowering each student to take risks, think deeply, embrace diversity, develop an emerging sense of self, and find joy in learning.”  I love this statement because it really tells the story of what we value at Dawson, and it is no coincidence that the phrase “joy in learning” caps off the statement.  We want our students to be empowered, to be deep thinkers, to embrace diversity, and to discover who they are.  All of these things can happen when they are in an environment where learning is joyful.

 

If you would like to read another interesting article about the relationship between joy and learning, I am including the link here:

 

http://www.theatlantic.com/education/archive/2015/01/joy-the-subject-schools-lack/384800/    

 

In this article in The Atlantic, Sue Engel talks about the importance of helping our students find joy in their learning.

 

On that note, I hope you find multiple ways to be joyful this summer!  I can’t wait to hear about everyone’s adventures when we return in August.

 

Take care,

Heather