Dear colleague,
Cold days this month have got me thinking about fireplaces.
Mmmmm… Fireplaces.
I don't have one, but whenever I visit a home where there are real logs crackling, it's a real strong feeling of, “Okay. Let's stay here. Until spring.”
So in our classrooms, there's a thing that's kind of got that some soul-warming power: the Value belief. When most of the room is on the path to knowing in their hearts that math or science or social studies or writing are special, powerful, freeing, expanding, meaningful, I'm positive that, if we just had the right kind of glasses, we'd see the room aglow.
So how does a hard-working teacher like you or me stoke this kind of fire? After all, most students don't think of our subjects this way, especially once they get to secondary school.
This is the Value Puzzle.
In my new course (which your school could start using during PD time via the savings of a viewing license), I basically argue that there are three angles that a teacher can use to get the Value belief growing in their classrooms. Three areas of the fire to throw wood on or point the blower at.
What are they, you ask?
1. The Teacher Angle
Most of us don't talk to our students frequently or creatively or winsomely or confidently enough about why we think the work of learning in our class is worthwhile. And even when we do this, we focus way too often on utility and relevance. Here's what Physics teacher Helen Reynolds had to say about that recently on Twitter (or X): “Just love [the Rainbow of Why] because when you are teaching something like physics people think it's about the top but it's actually about the bottom.”
Quickest way to summarize what I'm talking about here? Mini-sermons from an apologist winsome and sure (Strategy #4 in The Will to Learn or see this strategy guide that I use during my in-person workshops).
2. The Student Angle
Another thing we don't do enough is genuinely ask and expect our students to explain how what they're learning is Valuable. To do this, I recommend picking from a set of Valued Within exercises. The ones I focus on are:
- The Utility-Value “Why This Could Matter?” T-Chart
- Why Conversations
- “Mathy Moments”
- End-of-Unit Pop-Up Debates
(For more on these, see Strategy #6 in your copy of WTL.)
3. The Class Angle
This one wasn't clear enough to me when I was writing WTL to connect it to the previous two, but making the Value Belief Mini-Course helped me see it. Through the work we give students to do, the lessons we teach, the opportunities to build knowledge we provide (see Strategy #5 “Feast of Knowledge” in WTL), we're doing a lot more Value heavy lifting than we may realize. Lots more to talk about there, but no time today.
Man, just talking about those three angles made me a bit more warm and cozy — how about you?
Teaching right beside ya, colleague,
DSJR
P.S. If your administrator or PD folks want a walkthrough of how the Value Belief Mini-Course viewing licenses work, just be in touch here and we can schedule a 15-minute meeting.
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