Burstiness & Flow in Middle School

Lately, if the last 7 years can be lately, I have been thinking about the social component of learning in middle school. I return to it, or it returns to me.

When I read for pleasure, I read nonfiction and mark places where people have learned through social experiences. More often, these social experiences are neither scripted nor lorded over by an expert. The learner makes the decisions--no matter how far off the path. It is their energy to foster and receive through others.

When the learner makes the decisions, energy is encouraged to mushroom. And I notice that these decision are often socially infused whether it incorporates a walk with another person, a small group ping-ponging of ideas around the room, or an individual reaching out--going out of their way--to observe or pick the brain of someone who can do something the learner wants to do.

In each case, learning is enjoyable.

In Worklife with Adam Grant, Grant uses the word burstiness to encapsulate the unharnessed creative processes of The Daily Show. In short, ideas blossom when people are allowed to be social while working. Writers gather in small teams without someone else's agenda driving their writing. They break off, talk together; break off, write alone; come back, talk together...and so on. In between, there is energy and laughter, challenge and control.

Joy circulates within the individual; joy radiates from the group--within the context of the work to be done.

Psychologist Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi researches a similar state called flow. At the risk of over simplifying and butchering psychology, people experience flow when a task offers intrigue and control. People are sparked by the specific challenge because it fits something they are curious about and people believe they can handle the challenge because it fits something they are good at, getting better at, or what to get better at: I will enjoy trying.

I see and hear similar things happening in classrooms when I step back and hand over control. Of course, it takes time to hand over control...to hand over where the joy is supposed to come from. Many educators have written and shared strategies to get themselves and/or their students to this place: Nanci Atwell, Kara Pranikoff, Anne Haas Dyson, Penny Kittle, Kelly Gallagher, Tom Romano, and my favorite educator to read to date--Katherine Bomer. Many others engage with this work and share what has worked for them and the unique needs of the students in their classrooms.

Yet, no matter where we teach or who we teach, we might scaffold to varying degrees (out of necessity) until we hand over control, but I am learning that too much scaffolding and risk only building cages.

Learning may be noisier and learning may take longer as adolescents take many pit spots to laugh and enjoy the experience when we hand over control--socially infused learning (or burstiness or flow) isn't linear--but the learning that happens just may be deeper.

Maybe the ping-ponging of ideas, the ping-ponging of irrelevant comments, the ping-ponging of adolescent humor, the ping-ponging of mistakes, and the ping-ponging of energy is ok.

My needle has moved that to a point that is ok that they laugh while they work...that it is ok to have the classroom where adolescents actually enjoy the work in adolescent contexts for adolescent reasons.

I dabble with my doodles

Teachers take notes. Lots and lots of notes.

Groups of teachers tend to use an individual to record what was discussed and maybe even decided. Teachers save pages and pages of notes--which is just nomenclature for ideas. Pages and pages of ideas pile up and pages and pages of ideas vanish under the weight of the next idea, and the next idea, and the next idea....

Ideas arise everywhere from every corner of every school on every day and we are forced to decide which ideas do we capture? Which ideas are worthy of our time to return to them and/or share with others?

For me, the ideas that come out of my students take precedence over all other ideas, yet it is challenging to maintain a work flow that allows me to remain in the stream of my students ideas...as ideas from outside of the classroom so often drain time and drain energy.

I experimented with note taking systems encountered through my own learning experiences and from my professional relationships. I tried jotting in shorthand. Scraps of paper and charts filled with words and, for me, my eyes seemed to only ever revert back for reconsideration and reflection when an important something (meeting, assessment) was on the horizon and I need to refresh my memory.

In terms of just my stuff, sketching helps me. I'll sketch as a reader when I can take my time and reread something. I'm not very good at rapidly sketch noting a variety of symbols in the midst of listening to a speaker or while reading. When I sketch students "in the moment" my sketches resemble smudges of circles and slashes that somehow come together to resemble a familiar adolescent.

When I return to sketch my memory of a student conference or of an observation of a small group I experience the most professional exercising of what I do, how I do it, and why I am making the decisions I make.

Sketching conferring after the fact resembles my sketching after reading. Sketching has becomes a way for me to not only reflect but to capture what I am more likely to look at again and carry forward. I can't explain why, but because it is visual, I apply what I learned in that moment of conferring to future situations. I don't read my written notes in the same way. Likewise, I don't revise and edit my written notes. Yet, I dabble with my doodles all the time.

I read my written notes as if words belong only to that student in that situation. I don't read like that on purpose. I know I should be carrying that thinking forward (and I likely do someplace deep inside), but my thinking isn't as present as it is when I am sketching in the moment or returning to look at old sketches of my listening.

One element encouraging growth in this profession is the act of reconsidering what we have read, listened to, and experienced.

A stream of social engagement

I observed an honors-level geometry class several times this year in my middle school. I kept returning to this particular classroom on Thursdays because that is usually the day when the teacher steps aside. One geometry inspired problem is presented to the class and students are encouraged to grapple with it anyway they'd like, with anyone they'd like.

By choice, students stand, walk, move, congregate, and sit alone for the bulk of an entire period. And they talk about math while they grapple with math.

Some ping pong whys and what ifs and buts to one another out loud and some sit quietly and stare, and some sit quietly and scratch a pencil against a sheet of paper. Students work it out on laptops and students work it out on white boards. Some seems to work it out in their head. Some don't know how they worked it out, but they did. Almost all of the students used some combination of collaborative energy, social talk, walking (scurrying), debating, laughing, interrupting, pointing, blurting, listening, begging the teacher for a lifeline, et al. It was noisy at times. It was visually a whirlwind at other times. Yet, in the midst of this math party, pools of stillness and silence could be seen--some just sat and contemplated with an apparent deep focus as if nothing else was happening around them.

One thing I remember that my sketching captured in this group that my written words could not was the energy and joy for math. My inner child shudders because I can't remember having many positive math experiences when I was an adolescent or teenager. In my journal I scribbled, "So much physicality and a stream of social engagement" and that might be my happiest and most compelling revelation for me from this observation. And it makes me wish this is how I was taught math...immersed in the social energy of peers.