Here We Are

Dear Ross,

Here we are. Thirty-one years into this life. A teacher and a professional learner--or so I thought. What have you been reading all this time? Who have you been listening to? And how did you manage to get this far without knowing what the empirical truth was behind the importance of spaced retrieval. Sure, you practiced critical reflection or monitoring behavior implicitly, and you even spent a good part of your study time elaborating on concepts, as is often required in English classes. But you also crammed and regurgitated answers to questions long forgotten, and you did so quite often. No wonder school was a nightmare for you in your early years. You were basically stumbling through school with a greased up brain--information sliding right out! 

I have some information for you. And if you want to retain it, you are going to have to listen to me, you...us. 

Through specific steps in structuring how we study, we can begin to arrest the constant forgetting that plagues our mind. We just have to follow a few  One that does not demand you spend sleepless nights reading and rereading textbook chapters with the hopes of one day retaining enough information to feel comfortable sitting in front of a blank test. Now we can spend weeks interleaving and mixing practice, testing and retesting yourself, discussing ideas with friends, and then, like the first ski run down the mountain of the season, you have to just trust that you know what you are doing. The information is up there to carry you down. 

What you have to do is organize yourself enough, and to stick to a schedule long enough, for this new information to be useful. Create structure in your life that facilitates these processes around what you wish to learn, and remember that learning is effortful. It takes effort to find and retrieve information, and that effort translates into stronger mental connections and a more fruitful long-term learning experience.

Also, teach this stuff! 

Holy moly, let the people know. Teach your students what it means to elaborate on an idea, what the reasons for that elaboration are, like building a more complicated and nuanced understanding of a topic. Help students understand that is is not the information going in that matters, but what can be produced or retrieved. 

And finally, as is stated in Make it Stick, 'be transparent' as a teacher, and reinforce learning behavior that is proven to be useful--none of this learning styles and intelligences stuff (sorry Gardner). Build fun low-stakes testing into the curriculum at spaced intervals and let your students know why. Weave these ideas into your curriculum. Encourage and help students find the right spacing and search for meaning in ideas being discussed, to make connections to prior material and life experience.

Sincerely,

Ross