I'm Brian Myers. I'm Mike Ritalik. I'm Becky Hiddad. And this is Alpelance, a podcast featuring tips for ad teachers.
We are your agricultural education resource across the web, sharing research based tips and tackling the tough questions facing agriculture teachers every day. Welcome back Alpelance listeners. In this first episode of our How Learning Works miniseries, we're tackling prior knowledge, the single most important predictor of student success. So join us as we explore how students existing knowledge and experiences both good and bad can either be a supercharger or a roadblock for new learning.
We'll share practical ways to activate what your students already know and help them make stronger connections, making your teaching more effective and they're learning more lasting. Welcome to Principal Wine Identity Development. Doo doo doo doo. Sure.
What's new with that? I'm excited or that nervous to have this conversation Brian. A little bit of both, you know. It's just like identity development.
It's like, what does that mean? Are we trying to create my own identity or is my identity there? What are we supposed to be doing here with that teachers? Well, first thing it's important to know that there are definitely pieces of how learning works that are working here at Ford College students and there are parts of this chapter that really slide more into where is the college student at?
So we've tried to process this to a middle school high school level, but as you're thinking about it, even some of these things, we're going to say, oh man, they are really developing. I live with this greater now. So when it comes to the students developing intellectually, socially, emotionally and in their identity, we are living this. Well, you said you're living with a fifth grader.
You're probably living for a fifth grader. You know, I can say that now. We are beyond that. And I've said this on the podcast before that I've always believed that in middle schools, we should be allowed to take them off, host the middle school or off, you know, the bus that holds them down about middle school because they're feeling all tingly in places they don't know what to do with.
And they're trying to figure out what this is like to be a human in this middle school setting. And you know, you walk down the classrooms, you look at one person and you think that person must be like in the, in like second grade and you find out, no, they're, you know, they're in the fifth grade everywhere else. You think, well, that person must be a junior and high school. You know, she's a fifth grader too, just because they're just all over the place in there.
And so it's, it's really hard. You'll notice I didn't say that I was living with, or that a fifth grader was living with me. I said I was living with a fifth grader's house. We're all just living in it, which is really unfair.
Yeah. But I think this is a great place to start and probably something that we forget from time to time because we do get caught up in the content is, you know, where, where are our students at from an identity standpoint, middle school, high school and on. And so they go be a great conversation today about how identity plays a role in that and what we can do to give that some thought as we build out our curriculum and teach students. And I hope relevant because we, I think we talk a lot this season about middle school and elementary ag and how those things are growing across the country.
Even at a really base level, emotions can overwhelm intellect. And the younger our students are, the younger our learners are, the more that's going to happen. So even when we know we should be doing this thing or we know where we should be headed, there is a certain amount of brain development that is very much still happening, particularly for our middle schoolers that I think we really kind of forget the even thinking about some of the questions I've gotten recently from our student teachers working with seventh and eighth graders like, what is even happening? We forget the brain set to develop once.
You bring up a great point. You talk about one of our other episodes. We've got where we did talk about elementary agriculture education and we talked about the idea that when we developed middle school, a lot of ways all we did was think that they were shorter high school students and we did the same thing for high school to middle school. What we're seeing now and luckily the folks are leading us in this elementary either scene that we can't just make them to the shorter FFA members that we really look at this developmental stage.
And I think, you know, as a teacher, you talk about, I tend to want to focus on the intellectual development that knowledge gained the skill game because that's safe. I know that I feel comfortable there when we start talking about social or emotional development for our students. It's awful tricky. You're in this place.
It starts to feel like Quickstand. We can't put our fingers around it. So I think that's a good observation. And related to that, we've got to remember, and this is where it's both an art and a science when we're teachers in a classroom, but we can't control where the students are right.
And so Brian talked about different sizes and where our students look physically, emotionally, mentally. They're all at different stages. And so we can't change that. We can't grumble until they all grow up and act like young adults.
That's where they're at. And so appreciating where that's at. And I think as educators, wrapping our minds around, we got to hear me say this quite often, but we got to meet the students where they're at. And certainly when it comes to identity development and students we have to take a step back and say, well, mentally, cognitively, socially, emotionally, where are they at?
And that's where I got to start when it comes to bringing our students along as learners. That's a scary starting point. Brian alluded to this in an earlier episode in the miniseries about that takes away even more of my control. If I need to start where they are, I don't get to start where I want to start where I think they should be or, and that's also there's some work involved there for the teacher or when we're just get to come in and say, all right, this is where you should be.
Let's go. I have to even back up in my like, my pre-planning before they even get there to say, how am I going to figure out where they're at? And not just where they're at with my content. Where are you at?
Interpreter your maturity and your behavior and your emotion that's going to even dictate how we move through this term. The only way to do it is Becky. I'm getting depressed. This is so fun.
It is fun, but it's a lot. It is a lot. It is a lot. I think what you're feeling, I think a lot of teachers feel, I know I felt it.
You come in for another social emotional intelligence training and you sit through the PD and you go back to your classroom. Cool. Like, yeah, that sounds like something I should be doing, but it's learning for us how to interact with those emotions instead of bringing up a really, really concerned school system still demand a particular pace, whether my students are ready for it or not. And what, like regardless of the content I'm teaching.
And so I think some of that is thinking about what are some things that we can probably think about in terms of our students development? Like, just what are some, what's the checklist? What are some things we can ask ourselves about our students own development as well as the kind of their identity and their social development? I brought up earlier that that social piece of learning and we get to that in this episode too.
So I think an important piece before we get into that. And this is also thinking about what growth looks like. One of the things that they bring up in the book before they really get into these developmental pieces is thinking about how are we challenging students. So we think about not just how am I challenging them with the content.
How am I going to challenge or like middle schoolers are just really on my brain with this right now. How am I going to challenge my middle schoolers to grow socially this year. How am I going to challenge them to grow emotionally this year personally is I think about, as I think about some of the seventh graders in front of seventh, like I have these seventh graders just like their pictures came up in my brain as we're having this conversation because they think in thinking about what can you really plug into. With how middle schoolers operate different from high schoolers and I think they're still excited.
If you're in a true junior high situation where your seventh graders are kind of the babies again. They haven't completely lost their log for learning. It hasn't gotten so uncool that it's just like I'm not going to do anything. And they've still I think one of the things that I forgot about when I first started teaching junior high, they are still used to having a lot of educational support.
I think especially when we think about our early middle school students, they were elementary students last year. So, like this will probably drop in September, October, the second episode of our mini series like, remember, we're these kids. Four months ago at the end of last school year. Well, I think you know, they can not only that and even kind of build in an exemplifying that is understanding we talked for about competition and you know competition we use a lot of school based ag ed to the FFA but also just in there.
And sometimes because of where they are developmentally and emotionally, you know, the students that might not be the way to get to connect with your students because of all those things that you just mentioned Becky. So we can see that that sometimes might dissuade actually something, you know, the growth in some of the students if you're using the kind of technique so you got to be really careful and it but if other ones they worked for it. I think I think to related to that Brian is just building awareness for us as teachers and so some of us really like a very structured concrete sequential kind of classroom and maybe a lot of expectations and a lot of discipline and all of a sudden taking a step back and saying, okay, why isn't this working and then realizing, okay, maybe I haven't given enough thought to where my students are developmentally and can I live with a little bit of the squishiness and this chaos and, you know, the what I what we will call grab ass and once in a while from middle school boys or freshmen boys and all that kind of stuff where they're just going crazy all the time. And so put that on your bingo card.
Also free space. I think it's something we forget about and we have in our minds, particularly as new teachers or early career teachers we have an expectation in our mind of what our classrooms going to look like. And sometimes it's frustrating and sometimes we think it's us and maybe it's just realizing that we got to do a reset based upon where our students are at. I haven't thought this all the way through because it just came to mind as Mike was talking but it feels a little bit to me like the difference between managing a greenhouse and managing like a cow barn.
Your high school students like you got a set rashing you'll tweak it a little bit here and there you know you'll kind of work through that but in greenhouse you've got how many different plants with how many different watering and heat and ventilation needs and the key to my skill. Like the I think it's just like I started picturing these seven three years again thinking about like all these different ways they're growing and how it just looks so weird and different between each of them. I think I hope a little bit gives some room to like to recognize with middle school is it's okay if they're not all growing like if it's not the same average daily game for every single one because that's not how we measure things in a greenhouse. I think an example in the metaphor, keeping it going is so often as teachers we go in and we have all these different plants that need different requirements different light different neutral to whatever but then what do we do we mix up one thing a fertilizer and fertilize them all the same way, water them all the same way, and then we wonder why some of the plants died, you got to find that hot spot in your greenhouse you got to find the cool spot you got to do you got to find the different to tweak it out to move the right plants in the right place to do those sort of things so.
No pressure. There is a special but as you mentioned earlier before I brought it down I mean it is exciting because I think that's one of the things about being a 19 sure it does it is engaging and exciting to be doing this because you get to really understand and work on a student to get them in the right place to be successful rather than just being a robot up there. This would be one thing where the ais robots will overlords will not take away our jobs we must be able to do this to understand middle schoolers. And we'll not compute for a lot.
So I think something that might be helpful as we think about kind of this identity development piece and navigating some of these so these challenges a lot of the things that that this book talks about in terms of student development are really thinking about things at. So, I think that's a very important thing to do is to make sure that we have a college level so things like managing the emotion and developing autonomy and establishing it and those things are certainly forming when we're talking about our middle school students, but when we come to things that might be a little bit more tangible for us in the middle school and high school classrooms, so this is just recognizing intellectually where our students are at and how that's different from you as the teacher. Right and wrong to hey there are lots of opinions out there to wait a second there opinion doesn't make any sense. My opinion might not make any sense.
And so this like I'm committing to this like this opinion makes the most sense to me and this is what I'm going with our middle school students in particular are still very in this black and white right and wrong. How do you like they're very much that's how they figure out the world what works what it's doesn't work doesn't work is it right is wrong. And I think that's important piece of recognize in terms of how they're different. And I think I think a big piece of that is just recognizing those tensions too and so and turning those tensions into learning opportunities because one of the things that again meaning the students were where they're at but knowing that students are at different levels and they're they're biting with the black versus white or what do you mean there's multiple answers to a question and so helping them realize and talking through that and giving space for students to kind of work through those things I think isn't important part when we talk about the tension that students feel as we as this world gets bigger and more complex for a girl and a maturing.
I mean, comfortable acknowledging those tensions right not just not to say this is happening but like this is happening and this is horrible. This is this is just part of the process it's okay if you're saying wait a second. You're gonna come up against things that you'll say well wait a second this doesn't make sense this isn't what I what I've seen what I know before. So really I think just calling it even calling attention to it and saying yeah it doesn't make sense right now or that's that might you might have to stop and wrestle with that a little bit.
Most important skills those life skills are going to be developing over time to be able to understand that you know two different opinions could be equally valid and how you know what do you mean how they're going to be two answers to that every question has one answer that is how this works is either right where I'm wrong. I think it's really important for folks for our students to be on game. I think we move into some of those strategies like already alluded to that addressing tensions early one really practical way to do that is catch yourself and resist right answers. Give your students room to kind of wrestle with an idea a little bit and say hey wait a second maybe it doesn't work that way on my farm or I have no idea why that works that way in this situation or this works at school why doesn't this work here.
Give them some room to kind of play with with those ideas and that that takes them straight on our part as teachers because this goes back to a Brian said the last step is like. Right answers give me a lot of comfort and control and I can have the right answer. Yes great that must be a more effective teacher. So it's also breaking that for us to say wait pause.
We'll play with this a little bit. Yeah that that is so true I think having this conversation and thinking through this area is just really reinforces me that need to be able to help students understand and struggle with multiple answers or there's an unclear answer and. You know this idea that you know you you may have to make a decision without all of the information like I may want 100% of the information before I make it but very rarely in life or you want to get 100% information when am I comfortable making a decision when I have 70% of the information or 50% of the information. And again to get into that phase that's probably not something you're going to do with middle schoolers I don't know or a lot of it with there but you're going to guide them to that piece it's so important everyday life.
Anything I can certainly give us an opportunity to help them incorporate evidence into what we're asking them to do in the classroom so you have that opinion or you found that answer. Where did that come from how did you get there not just we don't just need to show our working math. Absolutely. So those strategies in mind resisting right answers incorporating evidence into performance and addressing those tensions early and that wraps up our first deep dive into how learning works.
And so for your students don't just show up completely void in the brain. Even if it looks like that sometimes they really do come with this whole array of experiences and prior knowledge and so our job then is teachers is really to help them pull those threads. We need them back into the new concepts that you're teaching to make sense of them and we'll really dig into that more in our next episode as we get into the way students organize knowledge and how that influences how they learn and apply what they know will explore why student might know a concept but still struggle to use it. So we'll see you then on future episodes of Alpellot's tips for teachers podcast.
We hope you've enjoyed this episode of Alpellot's. Check out our website for more information on this topic and to learn more about our guests. Follow us on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram to stay connected and be sure to subscribe to our podcast so you'll never miss an episode. For Mike and Becky this is Brian here by the Alpellot's saying thank you and we look forward to seeing you again on another episode of Alpellot's Tips for Ag Teachers.