What's the Point of Content?

Last week I was talking with a humanities teacher, Josh, as we got coffee in the faculty room. He was lamenting the pace of class in May, as he tries to get through all of the content for his course. It reminded me of a conversation with a student we had years ago in our team-taught humanities class. We had just delivered a speed-lesson on the Middle Ages in Europe, covering in 80 minutes what historians have spent careers thinking and writing about. A student stopped us at the end of class, panicked, and said it was too fast, that there was no way she could remember it all. We told her that was okay, that the point wasn’t to remember it all.

“Then what’s the point?” She had asked.

I don’t remember how we answered at the time, but as Josh and I walked down the hall with our coffee, we laughed about the absurdity of thinking students will truly learn all that we cover. If we define learning as being able to not only remember content for the short term, but to build knowledge and be able to use that knowledge at some indeterminate time in the future, then I imagine we would all be surprised (and a little bit depressed) by the tiny fraction of our teaching that leads to actual learning.

Most students (and some teachers) believe that all of the content in a course is of equal importance. We have trained our students to think this--sometimes implicitly (through our assessment practices), and sometimes explicitly (by saying they have to know it all).

Picture a traditional content test in a course with conventional grading practices, a test that most of us have taken (or given) in the last half century. There may be multiple choice questions, all worth the same number of points, and maybe some short answer or fill in the blank questions, also all worth the same amount of points. When we get a grade on that test (let’s say an 80%), that’s because we got a certain number of questions wrong (doesn’t matter which questions). This assessment is implicitly telling our students that all of the content being tested is of the same importance--two students could get the exact same grade for knowing (remembering) completely different content.

But all content is not of equal importance, right? We all make choices and prioritize based on internal and/or external factors. Regardless of our discipline, we all have content that we think (or we’re told) is most important or that we are most passionate about. This is where many of the conflicts come from in our departments and communities. Who decides which content--out of the vast and ever-growing pool available--is essential? What biases exist in choosing which content we select (or are told to use) for our courses? Content for science classes in Vermont and Mississippi is not the same; what students are taught in Texas about history, may be different than what they are taught in Oregon; the required reading in 8th grade in DC is likely different than the required reading in the same grade in New Hampshire. And within each of these disparate classrooms, what we each choose to spend more or less time on (and what our students ultimately take away with them) is likely part biased and part arbitrary. We are kidding ourselves if we try to argue that all of our course content is of equal importance.

So what if we were honest with our students about this? What if we were completely transparent about our content and our expectations?

Super important sidebar: Our district is standards-based, and our learning targets are skills, not specific content. It’s easy to hear this and think that we don’t value content, or as some have even said, that we don’t teach content anymore. But the opposite is true. We value content so much that we decided to use what we know about the brain and learning to instruct and assess in a way that maximizes knowledge. Here’s an excerpt from chapter 2 of The Standards-Based Classroom: Make Learning the Goal (Corwin 2018) that discusses the difference between content and knowledge, an important distinction in this discussion: “It’s important to understand the difference between content and knowledge. Content is what’s available, the pool of rich, engaging, relevant information, texts, examples, and events we have to choose from when determining how to best help students demonstrate understanding and skill; knowledge is what students know at the end of the learning, the content that they have made their own and will be able to use. Knowledge takes time to build. It takes activating prior knowledge, determining relationships and relevance, practicing with ideas individually and collaboratively, and deep understanding.” Skills cannot be taught and practiced without content. Skills cannot be assessed without content. So the idea that it’s one or the other is ridiculous. Schools that choose to have skill-based learning targets are not doing so at the expense of content; they are doing so in order to improve the content acquisition that leads to knowledge and fluency.

Okay, back to content and transparency. What if we talked to students about how content is chosen in our classes? What if we talked to them about bias in content selection? And what if we told them that not all content in our courses is created equal? In thinking about our own teaching, we came up with three distinct purposes for our content instruction or delivery. These are rough at this point, but they show what we’re thinking:

• Content Exposure: the goal is not to learn the content, but to be exposed to it so that you get an overall sense of the content and have the opportunity to determine specific interests that you may decide to return to on your own.
• Contextual/Conceptual Understanding: the goal is to understand and remember the larger concepts of the content; you may need to look up the details later, but you will remember how this content fits into the larger picture or systems.
• Depth of Learning: the goal is deep and sustained learning--you will learn, remember, and be able to use both concepts and details about this content

Imagine being able to talk with students about your course using these levels. You could assign a reading that is meant to Expose the student to a variety of content--and ask them to select a few specifics that are of interest to them for further independent exploration. You could develop an activity that has students determine the major Concepts in a set of content, or ask them to place the content in Context of previous learning. Then you could dive deeply into the content that you, as the expert, determine is most important for Depth of Learning (or that you, the person, is most passionate about); or, you could ask the students to choose content that they want to learn deeply about based on earlier Exposure). By naming the purpose for the content we are using to practice and demonstrate our skills, we may be able to target our instruction and maximize learning. This would also, of course, force us to examine our assessments to ensure that we are asking students to demonstrate their learning in a way that matches our purpose.

We’re not proud of covering the European Age of Exploration in 80 minutes. But when we think about why we made that decision years ago, it was so that we could spend almost an entire quarter on the complexity of the Mongols and the historical, moral, and contemporary implications of their civilization. Because we made choices about where we would skim across the surface and where we would dive deep, we were able to slow down and fully explore one area--using vast amounts of rich, engaging content to learn and practice important transferable skills (see this link for our Mongol unit scales and benchmark sheets). If we can be more transparent with students (and ourselves) about the why and how of our content selection, coverage, and use, maybe we will have a better chance of ensuring that our teaching leads to learning.

So happy May everyone, and Josh, good luck with World War II in a Day!

Let’s talk about Juul...in Biology class.

by guest bloggers Jess Lemieux and Mike Abbott, science teachers at CVUHS.

“I used to Juul for about a year, nonstop. Sometimes I would feel super sick but I never had a problem with it until we started this unit. At first, I was really upset and kinda mad (because of the withdrawal symptoms). But I’ve been six weeks clean and I honestly have never felt better.” Student, 16

Type “vape” into your Google search bar and your screen will flood with recent headlines about the teen vaping epidemic. The first article that popped up today, “Teens don’t vape, they Juul, Making E-Cigarette Use Hard to Track,” highlights the fact that teens are speaking a different language (as they have since the beginning of time). If we are afraid to learn their language, we risk miscommunication. This is fine if we’re talking about fashion, but dangerous when talking about health.

In December of this school year, we decided to talk about Juuling in our Integrated Biology course, a tenth grade, heterogeneous class. We had noticed high levels of compliance in our classes, but wondered how to spark true engagement. While they clearly enjoyed class and respected us as teachers, we realized we were not allowing them to apply science to their lives. To tackle this we looked for a way to teach our required content (e.g. circulatory system, respiratory system, etc.) through a more relevant and engaging lens. Enter juuling. We quickly realized that as science educators we could facilitate an investigation of teen nicotine use from a scientific lens, free of judgment, but in order to do this effectively, students would need a safe place to talk.

Many approaches to teen issues employ scare tactics that extensively highlight the negative aspects associated with the topic in hopes that it will deter kids from making unhealthy choices. (Some of us are old enough to remember Reefer Madness). These scare tactics may work if teens are weighing their options in a safe place with adults they care about. Most teenagers are capable of the same mature, logical thought as adults when they are acting in a state of “cold cognition,” which means they are in the absence of peer interactions or pressure. Ask a kid if they want to Juul in these moments and they will likely say, “No, it’s so bad for you.” However, in the state of “hot cognition,” when the adolescent is in the middle of the social pressure, stress, and anxiety of high school, their answer may be very different. In these situations, the limbic system of the adolescent brain overrides the underdeveloped prefrontal cortex, which leads teens to make quick and irrational decisions. One student wrote, “In sophomore year, as school was getting more difficult I was just kind of fed up so the next time I was with a friend and they told me about how de-stressing Juul is, I tried it. I also simply do it to fit in.”

Failing to recognize, understand and talk about the reasons that lead teenagers to use nicotine is a general trend across the country, and knowing this is eventually what led us to our “Science of Teenage Vaping” unit. When we began to design, we decided to go big right out of the gate and host a 200-student kick-off. The sole purpose was for students to answer two questions: How do you talk about it, and why do you do it? We asked students to break into small groups and come up with a list of words/phrases that they use to talk about vaping. The world cloud below is the product generated via that work. Look very closely, right between the words “vape” and “Juul” and you will see the word “addiction” in very small print. For the adults in the room, this was eye-opening. Not only did we recognize that there is an entire language surrounding teen nicotine use that we are completely unaware of (e.g. nick, stick, rip, juice), but teens are oblivious to the consequences of their actions.

The next question students answered was, why do you do it? After some time consolidating their thoughts they came up with the following reasons: peer pressure, marketing, family modeling, coping strategy, and addiction. These reasons and the science behind them became the foundational knowledge of our unit curriculum, along with the skills of Making Scientific Claims, Using Evidence and Scientific Reasoning.

We spent the next six weeks guiding students through investigations and analyses of the factors that lead to nicotine use through the lens of the teenage brain. We designed target-based practice activities and assessments that focused on immediate and long term physiological effects of nicotine use (at the molecular, cellular and system level), the factors that contribute to addiction and its development (tolerance, withdrawal, conditioning) and the specific marketing of Juul to teens. In doing this, students used rigorous, engaging, student-driven content to develop transferable skills.

Demonstrating Learning

At the end of the unit, students wrote an essay (using Claim, Evidence, and Reasoning) to respond to one of the following prompts:

• Are the risks of Juuling worth the rewards?
• Is adolescent nicotine use really something we should be concerned about?
• Do personal freedoms trump public health?

Students had already developed the skill of Making Scientific Claims independently throughout the first part of the year so we felt we had solid data regarding each student’s level of mastery. Because of this we encouraged them to work together to write claims. The video shows two groups engaging in this process.

We also had a handful of students choose to rewrite our school Juuling policy as an alternative. Regardless of the format, the skill assessment was the same. Students needed to choose a claim, support all parts of their claim with reliable and specific evidence from a provided resource document, and use their content knowledge to provide scientific reasoning. The results were fantastic! Students who had previously struggled with engagement found themselves “in the zone,” writing multiple pages and reaching the target or going beyond on the class scales. However, it was the student reflections that confirmed our choice to take this risk in curriculum redesign for our students.

“I think it is extremely important for me to understand how the teenage brain makes decisions because now I can have a different view on my peers who choose to Juul. Obviously, I never thought they were “bad people” but I know that the environment they are in (inside and outside of school) impacts their decisions. I will know to be thoughtful of the issues people may be facing in their daily lives that will make them want to Juul.”

“I realize why people act differently when they are surrounded by different types of people, which is cool!” 

“Thanks for breaking the walls and the stigma regarding this hard issue!” 

“One aspect that made learning about the negative impacts of Juuling especially hard was knowing that many people I am close with have this addiction. By learning about negative impacts I am learning about bad things that are happening to them.

“Learning about Juuling has made me more nervous for my younger siblings and the choices the will have to make. Have I prepared/equipped them with enough information? According to this unit, no. I need to talk to them more.”

“This information was important to me to understand because both of my parents smoked and my grandma smoked up until she died. Her death was an effect of smoking almost her entire life.”

“My older sister said “I just don’t understand why people would inhale nicotine. It’s so bad for you.” I had a thing or two to say in response to that. I told her all of these complex scientific processes that lead to nicotine addiction and in the brain that I didn’t even realize I knew! She was impressed!”

“I think it was better than learning about the systems and what the do, which would be pretty boring, even though I don’t Juul.”

So, where do we go from here? One thing is certain, we will definitely be teaching this unit again next year, but we hope to broaden the scope to focus on other addictions. As one student wrote, “I think we should do more with weed and booze because that will help a lot of kids with choices in the future.” I guess some language hasn’t changed!