The Mindset Empowering Great STEAM Education

00:00:00:02 – 00:00:12:15: Vicki Davis This is cool cat teacher talk where we talk about what matters in the classroom. Today is part one of a STEAM Super series. We’re talking about the STEAM mindset.

Announcer: Ever wondered how remarkable teaching happens? Find out right now at Cool Cat. Teacher talk with award winning teacher Vicki Davis. Get insights from top educators, tech tips and inspiration to elevate your teaching.

Vicki Davis: Welcome back, educator, to a special two part STEAM Super Series, sponsored by the Van Andel Institute for education and their new Educator Studio of Computer Science teacher Vicki Davis. And over the next two weeks, you’ll hear from more than 25 educators, scientists and artists. And they all said the same surprising thing. We’ll get to that in a moment.

Vicki Davis: This is part one, The STEAM Mindset. I sat down with more than a dozen educators for this series, and I hope as you listen to these interviews, you’re going to get excited because they said, stop starting with answers. Start with questions. Terra Tarango said it about science and Dan said it about math. Susan Riley said it about creativity.

Vicki Davis: And Tim Needles says it about art. Even the neuroscience backs it up. Dr. Michael Rousell found that when you surprise a student with a question instead of an answer, their brain literally rewires itself. The cure for boredom is curiosity. There is no cure for curiosity, says Dorothy Parker. But I’d like to add my own saying curious kids seeking answers don’t get bored.

Vicki Davis: Bored kids might really struggle to become scientists, engineering artists, or mathematicians. So this two part series is about what happens when teachers believe that every child is important enough to help spark their curiosity. So first we’re going to start with Terra Tarango, chief education officer at the Van Andel Institute for education. Tara went directly to scientists and engineers and asked them, what do you actually want from the students we’re sending you?

Vicki Davis: Let’s hear it.

Announcer: Kat teacher talk with award winning teacher Vicki Davis.

Vicki Davis: So when you look at.

Vicki Davis: Classrooms right now, what do you feel like is the most urgent to change about how we typically do science? And for those of you who can’t see me, I’m putting Du in quotes with my fingers.

Terra Tarango: So what do you think? Tara, it’s funny because I actually would go to something that doesn’t seem so quote sciency at first, and that is really to think about what we value in schools, what sort of the future generation of employers values. So we actually did this. We did a research study. We asked these scientists and engineers from different kinds of industries, what do they value most, whether it was things like critical thinking, curiosity, creative thinking or things like memorization, good grades, test scores.

Terra Tarango: As you can imagine, they’re going to value things like critical thinking. But then we turned around and asked, you know, teachers, what do you think schools value? And when you color code this, it’s almost inverse. You know, they value good grades, memorization, and the teachers feel like the schools don’t value as much. Things like critical thinking. So what I wish we could change and it’s not as easy as it sounds.

Terra Tarango: I realize that is just what we value in schools and realizing that yes, we have to teach our content, we have to teach science skills and history and all those things. But it’s really those skills, those perennial skills I think should rise to the forefront and be put in their place in the classroom.

Vicki Davis: I’ve just always.

Terra Tarango: Observed that the best science.

Vicki Davis: Teachers in my observation, the ones where the kids run to class because they’re so excited. Are typically hands on. Is that true? They’re doing experiments. They’re crafting ideas. They’re doing science fairs like they’re doing. Do you feel like doing is a big part of that equation?

Terra Tarango: I do think doing is a big part of the equation. I mean, we all know most kids have a lot of energy. They need to be active. They need to be engaged physically as well as cognitively. But I would say it’s more than just doing sometimes. It’s the order of that doing. I think a lot of times maybe we think we get to check off that box because we got them in the lab doing something.

Terra Tarango: But a lot of times that looks like, for example, we’re teaching circuits and we might say, let’s teach. Here’s what a circuit is, here’s how it works. Here’s all the serial circuits, all the different things. And then you go in the lab to prove it. It’s hands on. It’s doing. But that’s not really mimicking what scientists are doing.

Terra Tarango: They’re not going into their lab with an investigation plan to follow. They have a question to figure out. So if we flip it sometimes and do the doing first, let’s give them a battery and a bulb and some wires and see if you can light it. And then if you can, would you like to know why then here’s something to read to learn the content behind it.

Terra Tarango: Or if you didn’t, would you like to know some information that would help you light it? Well, here’s some information. So you still have to do the reading to doing helps, but also the doing in a way that makes the reading purposeful. So this.

Vicki Davis: Whole inquiry based learning, what is it and how does it fit in. Because, you know, having that question that is part of what science is, how can we cure cancer? I mean, that’s the big question. Then you have little tiny questions that scientists are working on. So how can we move to inquiry based learning? What is it and how does it fit into science?

Terra Tarango: I think one thing is just understanding that how scientists do work, you know, they don’t come in with learning at first and then testing it. Right? So like you mentioned that flipping the order of things. So give the students a chance to be curious about something. Give them a chance to ask some open questions and to be able to figure out how would you go about answering that question, because that mimics what the scientists are doing.

Terra Tarango: They have to not only come up with a question, come up with a plan for how you would test that question, and then do the testing, which then leads to another question. So realizing that it is this iterative process, and I know we have so much content to get through. So I’m super big on being practical. So it’s not like we can just dedicate a whole month to let’s just explore some questions, you know, so it’s finding those small ways within something you’re already doing to say what questions do you have?

Terra Tarango: And just honoring the fact that you have questions and even talking about how would you go about answering that question even if you don’t have time to go through that, at least giving them practice thinking that way is really important. Okay.

Vicki Davis: So could you give me an example of a little 15 to 20 minute thing that you could insert into a lesson? Yeah.

Terra Tarango: A lot of times we’ll do things. One of my favorite places to weave this in is, is finding ways to build that skill focused culture. So when you have just small transition times or I love to look at holidays. So for example, Valentine’s Day, maybe we could just sort of make some cute hearts and and give them to one another, find some team building.

Terra Tarango: But different thing that we’re going to do with them next week is look at animal hearts. So we have just like a thing link, we call it where it’s just something they can explore and click on different animals and learn that, oh, the whales heart is 400 pounds or a jellyfish doesn’t have a heart, just a way to bring in something a little bit more.

Terra Tarango: I hate to use the word rigor, but a little bit more rigorous, a little bit more thinking going on and what otherwise might just be a 10 to 15 minutes left time, just building little things like that. So we’d like to do it around calendar events because it’s something that feels kind of obligatory. You have to do something to acknowledge, you know, Thanksgiving or whatever, so might as well put a little Stem focus on it or a little critical thinking, focus on it.

Terra Tarango: So those are some fun ways to weave it in.

Vicki Davis: Let’s just take a couple of calendar things okay. So you said Valentine’s. What do we have in the in the springtime and then getting towards summer. Do you have a couple of events that you really like to plan things around. So we.

Terra Tarango: Are really big on. March is coming up as March is reading month. So we have actually a calendar of little activities you can do there. All no prep. We’re really big on making sure this is not adding anything, but again, just giving teachers something that they can do a quick calendar of something you could do morning meetings 15 minutes or something like that.

Terra Tarango: Another one that’s fun is March Madness coming up. And you can make basically a bracket out of anything, you know, favorite books, you can make it out of there, something related to the content you’re going to teach. Maybe you’re teaching history and you’re teaching about wars or something. And you could kind of which war had the biggest impact on the future and you could do a bracket sort of situation.

Terra Tarango: So just taking things that are already happening in pop culture, then kind of weaving, how can I add my content into some of those same things is pretty fun.

Vicki Davis: Okay, so you have educator studios, so do you have all of these like theme ideas right there in the studio?

Terra Tarango: Yeah, in the studio. So we’re a nonprofit. So really all we’re about is trying to help educators job be a smidge easier. I’d like to say if I can be a teacher, fairy godmother, that’s what I want to be. Because the job, it’s too important to be as hard as it is. And so, yeah, we put everything that we have in there.

Terra Tarango: So whether it’s these timely topics, things like the Valentine’s Day, STEAM or the March Madness, all of those are in there for timely topics as well as just games and activities. Another fun one is Beat the Bot. If you ever did beat the calculator in school, this is like from now on, you know students are going to demonstrate how they can bring value that AI can’t.

Terra Tarango: We put a bunch of prompts into in just different content areas so you can pick content areas, math, Ela, science. And then there’s questions and we ask the students which of these questions do you think you could answer better than AI. And then we show them AI’s response and they have a chance to say, what did I do?

Terra Tarango: Well, what did it? So not hide from it, you know, let’s let them look at it and see how can I bring my humanness to this? Because that’s what I’m going to need to bring to show my value going forward. So yeah, all of those kinds of activities are in there.

Vicki Davis: So you have a lot more than science in there. You have other subjects.

Terra Tarango: Yeah, a lot of it’s cross curricular. Because if you think about especially K-5, we’re teaching all of the content areas. So sometimes it’s just a matter of how do you sneak the broccoli into the broccoli cheese casserole kind of thing. How do you get some science in there? So that’s why I say, especially if you feel like you don’t have time for science.

Terra Tarango: Like, I get that we’re a science place. Of course I want that. But remember, that’s what the scientist said was most important was critical thinking, creative thinking, perseverance. So if you’re doing those skills, you are actually helping teach science. I’m not saying we shouldn’t try to find time to put in that content as well. And we do offer science lessons, but we offer project based learning units, things that you can get all the different content areas in around one authentic purpose.

Terra Tarango: So I think sometimes it’s a matter of there’s just not enough time of the day. So if we can sneak in those skills, sneak in a little bit of science content here and there, let’s call that a win.

Vicki Davis: Okay. So you’ve given us lots of examples. Let’s take like one typical class period 30 45 minutes depending on the age. Take us through a single inquiry rich lesson that you just love. Maybe you’ve seen it recently, or maybe you’re like, hey, this is always a winner. Well, I’ll tell you.

Terra Tarango: I’ll have to go one step further and do one that. It’s a five lesson series, but it’s a way to make project based learning, which can sometimes feel so overwhelming and so just like, burdensome. And we kind of created these ones that are just five lessons. And each lesson focuses on a different content area. So it’s a way to have one authentic context but still get across that cross curricular feel.

Terra Tarango: So this one’s on. It’s a kindergarten lesson and it’s saving the bees. And so the first lesson is all about science. So you’re learning about bees and pollination and why that’s important for the earth. And then the second lesson is they get into math. They get to actually pretend to be, you know, pollinators and go around and count how many flowers they could get and things like that.

Terra Tarango: And then they end up learning some social emotional learning as they get to. Then we go into they actually build their houses, they’re going to build some mason bee houses. So we do a day of that. And then the social emotional learning piece comes in and giving feedback. We often treat that like a content area. So the fourth lesson is all right.

Terra Tarango: Let’s give each other feedback on our houses a little protocol for that. So we learn how to communicate with one another. And then Ela is the last day, the fifth lesson where they get to share these masonry houses with their community, with their family as they come in. So it’s a way to have one project that they can focus on.

Terra Tarango: We like to say, let’s do something where we make the world a better place, and they’re invested in that. But you were able to teach math, science, social studies and Ela all and social emotional learning along the way.

Vicki Davis: In that interview, Tara described what scientists and engineers are looking for.

Vicki Davis: And it isn’t memorized facts. It’s thinkers. They in. Finkle, mathematician and founder of math for love, has spent his career.

Vicki Davis: Proving that when math starts with play instead of procedures, those thinkers emerge.

Announcer: Cool Cat Teacher Talk with award winning teacher Vicki Davis.

Vicki Davis: So, Dan, we want to talk about math and making it exciting. What gets you going about this topic?

Dan Finkel: Math is a topic I personally was just drawn to it as a young kid, but but I had a kind of awakening around it thanks to a math camp when I was in high school, where I started to see it as a really different type of subject, just something that was much more deep and beautiful and profound than I had ever realized before.

Vicki Davis: You talk about Mathis play, you really believe that? Like, how can we bring that to every classroom because so many people don’t see Mathis play or fun or exciting?

Dan Finkel: Yeah, I think it’s well understood. The young children learn through playing, you know, pre-K kids, definitely. There’s no disputes about that. I think everyone understands that. But then you also have some of my mathematical heroes, John Conway or Martin Gardner, or people who connect mathematics and games and playing. And it just seems like it’s a strange thing that we basically say there’s all these really fun, playful, amazing experiences in math, but you have to do like 13 years of drudge work before you’re allowed to see them.

Dan Finkel: And we’ve rooted out so many people who I think would respond to that. So my experience is that when you can let mathematics be, when you can essentially invite students into playing with the mathematics, they have a qualitatively different kind of experience, and they learn more deeply, they learn more powerfully, and they’re more likely to just like math, like being there.

Dan Finkel: Like what? People who I take this approach and use our lesson plans and what we hear is the kids wanted to stay in a recess to finish doing whatever we were doing in Massachusetts. Do you know what I mean? Like, and it’s not okay, now you’re done with this so you can go play. It’s like you are playing and you don’t want to let the play go.

Vicki Davis: You say this great thing, you talk about that most math classes start with answers and that we’re starting the wrong way. How should we be starting math?

Dan Finkel: You should start with a question because or a prompt that elicits a question from students, because what you really want is to help students get curious, you know, to the binary number point. Right? I think there’s a lot of fun ideas of like, you know, we use a base ten system because we have ten fingers, but what what would the alien do that only has one finger on each hand?

Dan Finkel: What is their number system look like? That’s just a question. It’s a playful question. It’s almost a goofy question. And the idea that you can take something like that and say, oh, that’s really interesting. Give a little bit of space to actually pose the question, as opposed to just saying, I’m going to teach you about binary numbers here.

Dan Finkel: So it works. There’s a little bit of question like what? Why? Why are we even thinking about this in the first place? Like you start with questions. It just contextualizes what you’re doing the way of doing math that humans have always done math, which is they get curious about something and they figure it out. And it brings up the curiosity of the students, which is somehow the fuel for learning in the first place.

Dan Finkel: And it’s very hard to drive the classroom forward when when you don’t have that fuel in the tank, which is kids being interested, being curious about how things work and what’s going on. An example that I like is the Pythagorean theorem, which is often given as an answer to no question. For some reason there’s this relationship a squared plus b squared equals squared.

Dan Finkel: There’s a bunch of people walking around with a squared plus b squared equals c squared. And there’s a head. And they don’t even know what it’s connected to originally. That’s a statement about triangles but it’s really about the relationship between squares. I found that you can have a beautiful experience with students that leads them to the Pythagorean theorem.

Dan Finkel: If you just start by saying, let’s try to find how big the squares are that we can draw on a grid, and some of the squares are just right side up, and it’s one four, which is two by two square, nine, which is a three by three square. But if you start tilting them, it becomes very interesting to say, well, how could we figure out how big those squares are?

Dan Finkel: And maybe you cut them into pieces and it gets a little laborious and a little technical to try to figure out what it is. But you start to find patterns in a structure underneath, and you can actually very naturally go to a proof of the Pythagorean theorem from that. The people who experience it that way don’t have this disconnected fact of, oh, for some reason a squared plus b squared equals c squared.

Dan Finkel: They actually have a connection of ideas and arguments leading them to understand what’s really happening there. A professor of mine once said memorize arguments, not facts. Anyway, that’s what we want to do, is this isn’t just some disconnected thing. This is a body of knowledge where each new idea is motivated by the question.

Vicki Davis: So far in.

Vicki Davis: Today’s show on the STEAM mindset, we’re talking about how to spark a love for science, technology, engineering, arts, and math. And we’ve learned about starting class with questions and how to build a thinking culture. But this isn’t just for high school and middle school. Our littles need it too. We’re now going to an interview with one of my favorite kindergarten teachers I’ve ever known, Mrs. Sharon Howard.

Vicki Davis: She spent 44 years teaching kindergarten, and one thing that amazed me about her classroom was the high standards, she said. While understanding that every kindergartner is different and this is part of the STEAM mindset to right.

Mrs. Sharon Howard: From the very first day of school, I set high standards for my children, and I think a lot of it has to do with the way that I talk to them and come across meaning business, that this is big school now, this is not daycare. I give them a sense of confidence, excitement for what we’re going to do, what we’re going to learn, the idea of expecting high standards and high ideals for my children, it’s a transition from AK4 class to a K-5 class.

Mrs. Sharon Howard: There’s a big difference in that child. They’re coming out of that playtime. They’re coming in to what I call real schools, because not many students in K-5 learn to read, to write, learned their numbers. So we were a structured educational school, and that was part of setting high standards for the children. Getting them to make that transition was a big life change, not only for them, but also for their parents.

Vicki Davis: 44 years of kindergarten and Mrs. Howard never lost the wonder. I love seeing her buy new books for her book collection and her collection of birds. She modeled wonder every day in her classroom. And we can do that too. I can say she was one of the most excited teachers about new technology, even up until the moment she retired.

Vicki Davis: This mindset of wonder is such an important part of the STEAM mindset. But we also have to remember the impact of creativity as we inspire the science, technology, engineering, arts and math mindset that we’re talking about on today’s show.

Vicki Davis: Susan M Riley. She is a former.

Vicki Davis: Music teacher and the founder of the Institute for Arts Integration and STEAM, where she has spent more than two decades helping schools move beyond rigid.

Vicki Davis: Content silos and into innovative, student centered classrooms. She is the host of artworks for teachers podcast and author of the new book Creativity Edge. So in this book, she gives educators practical ways to use creativity as a hidden advantage in an AI driven world. Her work is featured by The Education Week and asked, and she now reaches millions of teachers looking for fresh, doable ideas they can use tomorrow.

Vicki Davis: So Susan Innocent is for two. How would you explain to a tired classroom teacher? While creativity is not just one more thing, but it’s actually our greatest advantage in the age of AI when.

Susan Riley: AI can do everything for us, what else is left? Everything that matters. The things that matter most are creativity. The things that we need to teach our students to be able to think and do and be curious and create are the things that I can’t do. And so in a future that is unknown, I am a true believer that creativity is the thing that’s going to set us apart.

Vicki Davis: You know, my students are very often nervous about where are we going to borrow, when will I have a job? And I say, okay, if you learn how to think, if you learn how to be creative, if you learn to get along with other people. Those are things no machine will ever be able to do, and they would come even more important in the classroom.

Vicki Davis: But you’re not just talking the art classroom, you’re talking math and science and all these other subjects. So what are some of the ideas you give all these different subjects for integrating creativity into their lessons, like math. Math teachers are going to go, really, Susan.

Susan Riley: I know, but you know what? Math is where some of the best creative ideas come from there, especially for students who struggle in math. Those students like me, I’m one of those people that believes that letters should not be with numbers. That’s just not right. So algebra is never my thing. But when you encourage creative problem solving, that is creativity being worked through in a math class.

Susan Riley: And so when we’re looking at creativity, it’s not just skills of creativity. There’s lots of different ways that people can be creative. In fact, I call it the four branches of creativity. We have skills sure that we can work on in the art classroom, but then there’s also application. And so looking at how do we pair maybe math and music together to learn fractions, it makes a beautiful pairing, but we have to be intentional about it.

Susan Riley: That’s application of creativity. Then we’ve got creative thinking. And then the last branch is creative expression. So how do we interpret what we’re feeling, what we’re seeing, who we are in a creative way? Creativity doesn’t just live in isolation, it lives all around us. And so it’s learning how to leverage that with the classroom or the the content that we’re teaching.

Vicki Davis: You connect creativity with neuroscience. So what is a brain based insight about creative work that should change how we structure our class time in projects? Is it that we need to introduce thinking routines or what would you add there?

Susan Riley: Thinking routines is a great immediate step. It’s a bridge between. Think about when your kids are walking into the classroom, to the time they sit in the seat, to the time they have to learn. It needs to be a bridge between that section, right? Because they’re not going to be immediately ready to learn, and you want them to open up their capacity for creative thought.

Susan Riley: What’s happening in your brain when creativity emerges, when you’re engaging with creativity in any capacity, it could be watercolor. It could be a creative thinking routine. It does not matter. What’s happening is that your brain starts to light up in various areas. We have the area that’s responsible for analytical thought, and then we have the area that’s responsible for all of the functions that’s going on in our body at any given time.

Susan Riley: And typically one is active and then the other is quiet. But what happens when we’re engaging in the arts in any capacity is that they both start to work simultaneously, and they work like a jazz improvization it’s not like Bach. Like if you’re thinking of a typical classical symphony, and it’s more like this side is going to play with a little bit, and then this side is going to respond a little bit.

Susan Riley: And you have these two systems that are working in tandem. And when that happens, this kind of creative cocktail emerges in the space in our brains, dopamine that starts to hit. We have endorphins that start to to emerge. And then all of a sudden we get into this practice of flow where time disappears, right? And you get engaged in something, you’re like, yes, that’s when we talk about student engagement.

Susan Riley: What we’re really talking about is we want them in flow. We want them so immersed in what they’re doing that it’s almost like time doesn’t exist for them, and they are learning at a rapid rate. This all can happen in the matter of seconds. It doesn’t have to be the whole classroom. Think about your best creative ideas. There’s a reason that they come when you’re in the shower, or you’re out for a run, or you’ve had space and time, right?

Susan Riley: Developing thinking routines that offer that bridge to give the brain time to go from whatever it was going through out in the hallway five seconds ago to what you’re preparing it to learn. It means that bridge. So those thinking routines offer that it starts to spark those areas in the brain, and then your students are much more capable of thinking convergent and divergent when you’re trying to get them to think through problem solving or a new idea that you want them to grapple with.

Vicki Davis: Susan Riley just showed us the science of why creativity matters. My friend Tim Needles and I sat down at Fitzy and he just lives. The stay mindset we’re talking about today.

Vicki Davis: Tim is an artist, a NASA solar system ambassador, an improv performer, and an art teacher. And he believes creativity isn’t just a gift, but that creativity is a skill that you can build.

Announcer: Cool Cat Teacher Talk with award winning teacher Vicki Davis.

Vicki Davis: You.

Vicki Davis: Talked about how one lesson can change a life in your Ted style. Talk at NYSCATE. So looking back, what was that single classroom moment that changed the trajectory of how you teach.

Vicki Davis: Creativity and technology?

Tim Needles: I was.

Tim Needles: Go to school in the 80s when you just didn’t have that much tech. So sort of having one of those moments where teacher, your typical of the time, really gave us some say in what we’re doing in a science project. I’m an art person, so it allowed me to kind of merge some of what I was doing in art and bring it to the science, and like that was really exciting.

Tim Needles: It was nice to have the teacher give us that opportunity. You know, the technology we’re using at the time was very, very minimal, like early computers. But I do remember the excitement and, you know, you put so much more effort into the project when you have a sense of freedom as a student. And I remember that, and I try to bring that to my students and make sure that they always have agency in terms of helping to to plan projects, you know, to really have a say in terms of the curriculum, you know, is it a teacher?

Tim Needles: Like, I really try to base everything on the students I’m working with. So, you know, I don’t come in with a fixed idea of exactly what we’re going to do. You know, you’d have to hit a couple points of curriculum, but there’s lots of ways to do that.

Vicki Davis: So one thing you talk about are these amazing long projects extended. So what are some of your favorite projects that you’re like, okay, this is what I think it’s about.

Tim Needles: One of the ones is we started doing an idea for like students for designing a graphic. I’m on Long Island, so we were talking about the water because that’s just a big when you live on an island, the water is like a big factor. So what we’re talking about keeping the water clean. And then I started collaborating with science teachers in the building, and we made the individual project into a mural project that was collaborative.

Tim Needles: And then we said, like, let’s continue to scale this. And we brought it out into the community. It took quite a bit with the students were part of every single step where we presented to the mayor of the town, we presented to the ecology board, worked with a paint company that was making the paint for the roads. We got permission.

Tim Needles: It took a year and a half to actually create murals for the local storm drains that actually tell the community about why it’s important to keep it clean, but it also beautifying the neighborhood. When you do a project that starts in the classroom, kind of like bridges into the community, I think it’s really powerful. We do one a year now.

Tim Needles: You know, we started doing it at all the different schools and make sure that the students that were at those schools were part of it. But it became a legacy project. Not only does it teach and emerges different subjects together, but like students come back from college now to work on them because it’s that important to them.

Vicki Davis: If people ever say, but you’re an art teacher, like, does anybody ever say that?

Tim Needles: Nothing more. I used to get it, but not anymore. It’s been a while because a curious person, and I think curiosity is what you lead with as a teacher. I’m an art teacher and I process things through that lens, but I’m really interested in technology and quantum physics. I just took a class in quantum physics because I know it’s going to be important for AI the future.

Tim Needles: And when I go into an English classroom, I’m like, oh, what are you guys reading about? And I’m just as curious to learn what they’re doing. So I just bring that creative lens to whatever I’m doing. I think I’ve established enough of reputation now. They always see me as an art teacher. I think that’s the core of what I do.

Tim Needles: But it’s nice to kind of, you know, not get relegated to that space necessarily.

Vicki Davis: We’re creative creatures and encouraging our students. So what are the kind of habits you teach your students in class? You have they have art journals.

Tim Needles: Having a journal is just a really helpful thing. It might be just for yourself. It might not be something that is going to end up in the art. But I always believe in having a journal, and I also believe in having freedom with that journal. So you want to cloche in there? Go for it. Do you want to write?

Tim Needles: Absolutely. You want to draw and write. Fantastic. You know, you want to tape in pictures whatever you want to do. I think it’s an idea that came out a couple years ago about this journal where you specifically kind of will actually, you know, drip coffee on it and then find a way to make it creative. So I think one of the things you really need to do is push your own creativity.

Tim Needles: I think creativity is a skill you could build. So you need to challenge yourself. So like it can’t always be easy, you have to sometimes put yourself in a box so you can find a creative way out of it. I give students creative exercises every week where like it’s really specifically just to build your creativity. One of my favorites is to create a self-portrait without using any art materials whatsoever.

Tim Needles: So find things around the room, sort of draw with objects or nature or something like that.

Vicki Davis: Welcome back to our STEAM Super series. Today we’re talking about the mindset for STEAM subjects. You might be surprised to learn what is going on inside our students brains as we talk about mindset. Let’s tune in to some educators who have some insight for us.

Announcer: Cool Cat Teacher Talk with award winning teacher Vicki Davis.

Vicki Davis: So today we’re talking with Dr. Michael Rousell about the surprising science of life changing moments. So, Mike, you have studied these tiny personal moments that we look back and we say, you know, somebody said such and such to me when I was in sixth grade or this happened when I was in ninth grade, and it changes their life.

Vicki Davis: How would you describe these moments?

Dr. Michael Rousell: I describe these moments as dramatic, profound changes in how you feel about yourself, or how you understand yourself and beliefs about how you act in the world and how you see the world.

Vicki Davis: We want to be authentic in our compliments.

Dr. Michael Rousell: Absolutely.

Vicki Davis: But how do we nurture this sort of internal transformation towards positive things?

Dr. Michael Rousell: Vicki, you raised some really interesting points, and you sound like the veteran, the veteran of positive influence. The way you talk about that, and certainly praise does not work. Praise looks phony and artificial. And it’s just it’s empty calories for kids. And so one of the nuances of using surprise is when you deliver a comment, make sure it sounds declarative because praise can sound empty.

Dr. Michael Rousell: So make it so you’re stating the facts, just the facts. So when somebody is struggling with math, instead of saying, you sure struggle with math, you say something like, oh, you’re a bill! Your ability to work through your math problems is a sure sign of strong learner. Now, if little Johnny was working at math and third grade or something, if he’s working at math and he’s struggling, he’s going to give up easily because his dopamine level is motivator neurotransmitter.

Dr. Michael Rousell: Dopamine drops a little bit every time he does math, because why waste time here? The payoff isn’t that good. But if you say your struggles, there’s a sure sign of a strong learner or your ability to stick with your struggles. It’s a sure sign of a strong learner. That little comment now boost to stop me levels. Why? Because you just mentioned that he’s a he’s a strong learner who doesn’t want to be a strong learner.

Dr. Michael Rousell: So he associates because the way you did the comment, he is struggling with being a strong learner. And so as dopamine level boosts a little bit now if you surprise him with that comment, that kind of a comment, a descriptive, declarative comment about how this cause staying with math makes you a good learner. That’s descriptive. But if it surprised him, a surprise is essentially a neurological error signal that says it’s a big burst of dopamine that says, pay attention.

Dr. Michael Rousell: Something really important is happening. That’s what that’s what our surprise is. It’s an error signal. Saying something really important is happening. And surprise is essentially a two burst dopamine. The first burst only last millisecond says pay attention. Something really important is happening, and the second is a slow burst says learn something instantly.

Vicki Davis: Today we’re talking with Liesl McConchie. She’s an international expert on how the brain learns and coauthor of the bestselling book A Brain Based Learning with Doctor Erik Jensen.

Liesl McConchie: Before we even get. Into how do we get ready to learn, we first need to acknowledge that the brain doesn’t walk into classrooms ready to learn. Most students don’t walk into our classrooms ready to learn math. And that’s the first step is just acknowledge that reality. So what can we do to get the brain ready to learn? And that’s where we can dive into the research of how the brain naturally learns and what it likes to learn, and use that to help us in a math classroom.

Liesl McConchie: So first of all, it’s important to understand that all learning is dependent on the state that a student is in. I’m not talking about the state of California where I’m from or the state of Georgia, but I’m talking about the brain state. So if a student is walking into a classroom feeling anxious or nervous or fearful or hungry, all of these things impact their ability to learn math.

Liesl McConchie: So many students walk into a math classroom not only carrying their present state of whatever they’re in that moment, but also carrying with them so much from their past mathematical experience. So I spent most of my career working in middle school, high school, teaching math there, and so many of them come with five, ten, 15 years of poor experiences of math.

Liesl McConchie: And so they bring this identity with them that I’m not a math person. And so working with that is also important. Another strategy is important to understand who is walking into your class with those walls up. It doesn’t have to be a guessing game. There are so many ways that we can engage with our students to understand what their past math experience is, so have them do a quick writing assignment at the beginning of the year.

Liesl McConchie: What is your experience and math been like so far? Have them do a quick Flipgrid activity where they communicate with you a short video. What’s your experience been like in math? Have some one on one student conferencing where you can learn about their previous experience so you know what you’re working with. And then from there, then we can know what we’re working with, and we can try to reprogram those neural connections around the topic of math.

Liesl McConchie: So it’s all about recognizing so many teachers. We try to like push, push, push. Let’s get excited about math. And we forget that sometimes these parking breaks are on. Vickie, have you ever tried to drive your car with the parking brake on?

Vicki Davis: Yes.

Liesl McConchie: Okay, good. I’m glad I’m not the only one here. I have to, and I don’t know what your experience has been like, but for me, my first initial reaction is I get really frustrated and I press on the gas pedal really hard. Like, I just, I press harder. I don’t know if you do something similar to that. And so many times as teachers, we do the same thing like, hey, the student isn’t learning, they’re not ready to learn.

Liesl McConchie: So we try to push harder on the accelerator and we go and we spend money on prizes and candy and rewards and pizza parties trying to get them more excited with some kind of external reward. And we forget to pause and to look to see if there’s any parking brake going on.

Announcer: Okay. Teacher talk with award winning teacher Vicki Davis.

Vicki Davis: Throughout history.

Vicki Davis: The most brilliant minds weren’t just born curious, but someone taught them to be. Nobel Prize winning biochemist Jennifer Doudna co-invented the CRISPR gene editing technology that can edit DNA itself. She grew up in Hilo, Hawaii, and it didn’t feel like she fit in and she didn’t see herself as a scientist. Her 10th grade chemistry class teacher was Jeanette Wong.

Vicki Davis: Jeanette Wong didn’t just teach the periodic table. She showed Jennifer that science was about solving puzzles, quote, asking questions and figuring out how to answer them. One teacher, one class. One moment that told her that she belonged in science. Temple Grandin and Mr. Carlock. Diagnosed with autism as a child, many people wrote her off. Her science teacher was Mr. Carlock, a former NASA employee, and he saw past her diagnosis.

Vicki Davis: He saw her talent. Temple built a squeeze machine to help with her anxiety. Other adults dismissed it, but Mr. Carlock noticed. He said, if you want to understand why it works, you need to study science. He connected her deepest personal need to scientific inquiry, and it changed her life. And she became one of the most influential animal scientists in the world.

Vicki Davis: Number three, Grace Hopper and her parents, and yes, parents are teachers. To Grace Hopper was a pioneer of computer programing. She helped invent the compiler. She coined the term debugging. Her mother, Mary Murray Van Horne, loved math at a time when women didn’t study mathematics. Her mother arranged special instruction in geometry for her daughters. Her father, Walter Fletcher Murray, had both legs amputated due to vascular disease, but despite that, he modeled courage every single day.

Vicki Davis: He never complained, and he never quit. Both parents insisted that their daughters deserved the same education as their son. Grace went on to change the world of computing. She retired from the Navy as a rear admiral at age 79. Number four Katherine Johnson in WW Shefflin Claytor, the mathematician from Hidden Figures, calculated orbital trajectories for NASA. Her professor at West Virginia State was WW Shefflin Claytor, only the third African-American to earn a PhD in mathematics in the entire country at that time.

Vicki Davis: He saw something extraordinary in Katherine. He created entirely new math courses just for her courses that did not exist before. She walked into his classroom and he told her, if you don’t show up for my class, I will come and find you. Number five George Washington Carver and Mariah Watkins, born into slavery, orphaned as an infant, walked Miles to attend school.

Vicki Davis: No school in his town would accept him. His first real teacher was Mariah Watkins in Neosho, Missouri. She told the 11 year old boy, you must learn all you can, then go back out into the world and give your learning back to the people. Carver spent his whole life doing exactly that. He revolutionized agriculture. He developed hundreds of uses for peanuts.

Vicki Davis: And as the Georgia Peanut Princess, 1987. That’s pretty special to me. Number six, I’ll tell you my story about Phil Adler from Georgia Tech. So I’m a farm girl from small town Camilla, Georgia. I went to Georgia Tech, even though back then not many girls went there, and certainly they didn’t like computers. And I heard of an amazing professor, doctor Phil Adler.

Vicki Davis: In fact, the well-known Bobby Cremins at basketball at the time had all of his basketball players take his class. Doctor Adler was different. He never gave tests. His class was 100% Socratic seminar. I remember my first semester with him at midterm. I had a B and I didn’t usually make B’s, but he’d never given us a test. And I went to see Doctor Adler and I said, Doctor Adler, I have a B.

Vicki Davis: What am I going to do? You don’t give a test. And he says, I know I don’t. Then he looked at me and he said, Vicki, can you look me in the eye? I said, I don’t care how you compare to anybody else. You’ve spent your whole career trying to be better than everybody else so that you can make a higher grade.

Vicki Davis: But here’s my question are you doing the best compared to what you can do? So in some ways, he called my bluff. It wasn’t that I wasn’t trying. It wasn’t that I wasn’t learning, he said. A standard of excellence of was I doing my best? Was I constantly exceeding what I had done before? I’ve carried that with me as I create, podcast and create shows.

Vicki Davis: This is not about competition. This is about being my best. I remember more from those classes principles of R&D, management and high tech management and all the things he taught that I apply all the time as I talk about technology. He never gave a test. He forever shaped my thinking on teaching. My last semester before I graduated, Adler asked me to be his teaching assistant.

Vicki Davis: I was in awe of Doctor Adler and I didn’t want to let him down. And he told me before I graduated, and he told lots of this because I know that a lot of people thought Doctor Adler was amazing. He told me I was super special and I was going to do remarkable things, and it really meant a lot to me.

Vicki Davis: I kept up with Doctor Adler until he died in July 2023. He always told me I was remarkable, and now I want to tell you and tell my students that you’re remarkable to so we can see that we have to have a mindset and encouragement to be curious, but also to inspire excellence with these conversations. None of these things happen in isolation.

Vicki Davis: Excellence in teaching and learning happens in a culture. Next, we’re going to hear from Doctor Sam Nix. He’s a chief academic officer at a major district in Texas, and he studies what makes some classrooms electric. And while others may not measure up.

Announcer: Cool Cat Teacher Talk with award winning teacher Vicki Davis.

Vicki Davis: What do you look for in an excellent classroom.

Dr. Sam Nix: And an excellent classroom? I look for for why? Structure is there a structure and a culture that is conducive? Is there a relationship where the learning is relevant for the students? Where the student was showing their learning, where the student is passionate about what they’re learning? Is there what I’m going to call aligned? Is there an aligned lesson between what the teacher is trying to convey and what she’s acting, assessing, or he is assessing with students?

Dr. Sam Nix: Ultimately is a place where students and Jordan and how do I know and how can I tell that? And when I talk to the students, are they they’re trying to get through it or are they enjoyed?

Vicki Davis: So your expertise is transforming school culture. There’s classroom culture and then there’s school culture. And when you have an amazing school culture, it does make it easier to build a great classroom culture. So how do you go about shaping a school culture?

Dr. Sam Nix: One of the things that you just mentioned is so appropriate, because we have all seen the student that goes to Teacher A’s classroom and is assigned, right. It goes to teach a classroom. Oh my goodness. Right. So the goal is how do we create a functional just students but also staff, parents, everyone that’s in the culture. Preciate quality relationships, appreciates quality instruction, focused on learning and enjoys being there.

Dr. Sam Nix: And it starts with it starts with leadership. It starts with the example, the mindset, the language of the leader. And so when I am talking about shifting school cultures and when I work with principals and I work with schools, and I went to school districts and I work confidence with shifting IT culture, I hear so many times you say, well, start to bottom up.

Dr. Sam Nix: And I don’t disagree with that, but the leadership tone and what the leader allows or doesn’t, what the leader sets the tone for or doesn’t set the tone for, what the leader warns or how to before really makes a sustainable difference.

Vicki Davis: Fascinated with what you said about the language of leadership, could you contrast perhaps successful language? And we all know that language has to be backed up by action, so that’s just assumed. But let’s talk about successful language versus language that may not have the impact that a leader thinks it will have.

Dr. Sam Nix: I love it. I’m going to use a story. I have a sister. I have a younger sister. Her name is Sharice. So my sister and I were born in Arlington, Texas. Okay, so we speak like Texans. We say things like ball, Texas. So my sister, she graduated high school. She went to college in Louisiana. She went to college at Dillard University in New Orleans.

Dr. Sam Nix: After a semester, she came back home and she was speaking with a dialect that was formed to the family with almost like a Cajun dialect. I was like, Sharice, you don’t talk like that. Like, why are you talking like that? What I realized was she was talking like the environment that she was. Then. I’m using that as an example because leadership is about solving problems.

Dr. Sam Nix: Leadership is about not complaining about the problem, not pointing out the problem, not complaining about how someone else didn’t solve the problem. Leadership is about identifying issues and problems and working to solve it. That’s why leadership is there. So when you have people who have about why they can’t, when you have people who talk about all of the barriers and all of the challenges and all of the issues, it amazes me how many leaders talk and complain about the thing that they’re hired to solve.

Dr. Sam Nix: When I say leadership talking, I talk about I can hear a leader because when I when I’m in the presence of a leader, I hear possibility, I hear solution. I hear problem solving. I hear strategy. It’s not that they don’t focus on the problem, but they don’t prioritize the problem. So to me, the leadership language is a language that helps people and the organization reach the vision, not language that talks about all of the reasons that it’s them from reaching the business.

Dr. Sam Nix: So much like my sister, when I’m around really great high performing leaders, I can hear it. And I asked leaders all of the time if I were to talk to your staff, if I were to talk to your team. What do they sound? What’s their dialect? What are they focusing on? Because they have learned, and now they’re in an environment where they’re complaining, where they are talking about people, talking about the problem being negative.

Dr. Sam Nix: That is not conducive to transformation. That’s not conducive to improvement, that’s conducive to stagnation or regression.

Vicki Davis: But interestingly, sometimes.

Vicki Davis: Culture starts with a single word. Here’s math teacher Dr. Lidia Gonzalez.

Vicki Davis: Stated, sitting with a challenging problem.

Vicki Davis: Brow furrowed.

Vicki Davis: Trying.

Vicki Davis: Different approaches. Many well-meaning teachers or parents might rush into rescue them from this discomfort. But what if that struggle, when properly supported, is actually where the most powerful learning happens? This is the concept of productive struggle, and it’s transforming how we think about difficulty in mathematics. The seventh teaching practice supporting productive struggle and learning mathematics recognizes that this sweet spot between challenge and support is where mathematical resilience is born.

Vicki Davis: It’s not about making math needlessly difficult. It’s about creating the optimal zone for growth. One of the most powerful insights came from Doctor Dr. Lidia Gonzalez in Part one of this math series, and it’s the transformational power of the word.

Vicki Davis: Yet it.

Dr. Lidia Gonzalez: Really troubled me that a lot of people are so comfortable saying that they’re bad at math. And we’re talking people across all different fields, people with all different levels of education. I’ll just openly admit that they’re not good at math, but you would be ashamed to say you don’t know how to read. And so it doesn’t sit well with me that so many people are so comfortable saying this.

Dr. Lidia Gonzalez: And I think that the fact that our society accepts this is one of the reasons why it’s sort of difficult to get everyone on board and to make it so that the majority of students excel at it because there’s like this way out, right? It’s okay not be good at it.

Vicki Davis: Right? I know I teach technology and and if I ever have a student who says technology doesn’t like me, I have to deal with that belief before I can teach that student, because they’re excusing and they don’t have a growth mindset. They have a fixed mindset.

Dr. Lidia Gonzalez: You were saying about having a growth mindset. I think that the word that really helps us get. So just to to look at it as, you know what, you might not be very good at math yet, but that doesn’t mean that you can’t be successful going forward and then find tasks and activities where that student is successful and and keep reminding them that what you just did, you’re just in some math there, and you were really good at it, because most students are certainly capable of doing the work.

Dr. Lidia Gonzalez: It’s just that the the mindset sometimes gets in the way. And with parents who I would get that all the time as a high school math teacher, well, I wasn’t very good at it either. And then.

Vicki Davis: You know.

Dr. Lidia Gonzalez: But but to say, well, but I think your student could be great at it. It’s just a matter of working at it and finding ways we can, you know, support the student and things of that nature. But that little word yet, I think is goes a long way.

Vicki Davis: Yet that is three letters y e t and everything changes. Justin Reich from MIT says some empowering things to help us teachers know how. We might not be there yet, but we make a huge difference.

Dr. Justin Reich: Just aren’t enough principals in the building to make teaching better in Mandarin and sixth grade Earth science and third grade and everything else that you have going on. So iterate is really a book about teacher leadership, about the incredibly important roles that teachers play in experimental and bringing new ideas to life. If improving schools, and the way that coaches and consultants and principals can help and support teachers in doing that incredibly important work.

Dr. Justin Reich: Part of what I want people to think about is how can we start with smaller bets? How can we validate ideas with smaller, lightweight experiments? Maybe we’re not doing them with the whole class. Maybe we’re doing them with a few students. Maybe we’re doing them as part of an after school activity. Maybe we give students a little bit of extra credit to try something new.

Dr. Justin Reich: And then once we identify some ideas that seem more promising than we build up to larger and bigger experiments. So schools have this oftentimes have this sort of real linear mindset towards change. A lot of schools that have five year plans that have sort of big long term thinking about change, and part of the book is trying to shift from thinking about lines and climbing mountains to to circles and spirals.

Dr. Justin Reich: What are small, lightweight experiments that we can conduct them that will make our schools better? And how can we build on all those things?

Vicki Davis: What we learn has to work on Monday. And you know, that’s a goal for this show. Cool Cat teacher talk. And for my podcast, A ten Minute Teacher, I want you to be able to use what you learn tomorrow in part two of this STEAM.

Vicki Davis: Super series is going to be about action. But as we wrap up, let’s remember that we do have to align to standards. Patti Duncan said.

Dr. Michael Rousell: Stem.

Patti Duncan: Is more about.

Vicki Davis: How.

Patti Duncan: We teach than it is what we teach, and it shouldn’t be about necessarily. I’m making these check marks and hitting these levels of meeting certain DCIs or science and engineering practices or crosscutting concepts as much as it is. What experiences. Am I bringing to the students through my planning? What am I being intentional about bringing into my classroom so that the students experience these things, to develop these skills, to see these connections, to understand this content in the context of solving a real world problem and where they answer questions about real scientific phenomena.

Vicki Davis: And now let’s hear from teacher Stephanie Zeiger.

Stephanie Zeiger: So one of my favorite projects we do has to do with an electricity unit in our seventh grade. And so we ask students to develop an interactive toy. The students work as mechanical and electrical engineers to learn about circuits like series and parallel current and voltage, and then they design a toy that’s going to incorporate a push button and LED or a motor.

Stephanie Zeiger: And what we found was our students like, oh yay, my button works and the LED works, but they really want a more interactive toy that does a little bit more than light up or spin. And so we took the project to the next level and added in what’s called physical computing. And so now our students are using Arduino to actually light LEDs and patterns spin a motor to a certain degree that they want, so they get more control over the toy or just even play a song by changing the frequency of sound waves using a buzzer.

Stephanie Zeiger: The excitement of this project grew exponentially, and our students are even more excited when they finally get through that, trying things out and really get a working toy that incorporates that Arduino. This was in a seventh grade class.

Vicki Davis: So remarkable educators. Here’s a takeaway about the stay mindset. First, let’s start with inquiry. Let’s work to spark wonder and curiosity. That’s our foundation for the STEAM mindset. Then we pull in creativity as we work to solve problems. And as we’ve learned, if you can surprise your students in interesting ways that can help this whole process, we can also create a culture of high.

Vicki Davis: Expectations, individual conversations, and we can connect with our standards. It’s just part of what we do. All of our guests today have said the same thing in their own way. Start with sparking wonder. I love seeing the light go on in students eyes when they realize they can do something they didn’t know how to do. I love it when remarkable teachers spark that sense of wonder.

Vicki Davis: Are you sparking a sense of wonder? And do we have a sense of wonder as individuals, whether we have students or children or grandchildren or kids in a club or sports team, we can all spark wondering, curiosity and learning and create a culture of learning and excitement. This has been part one of our STEAM Super Series, sponsored by the Van Andel Institute of Education and their New Educators studio that helps bring inquiry based learning into every classroom.

Vicki Davis: Next week in part two, you’ll learn what happens when this STEAM mindset meets the real world. You’ll hear from more than a dozen educators with ideas you can try out your next day in class. That’s a STEAM in action. Next week, I’ll call Kat teacher talk the show notes and links to every resource we mentioned today. Is it cool cat teacher for.

Vicki Davis: Mindset. I’ll see you next week. See you later. Educator.

Announcer: Cool Cat Teacher Talk with award winning teacher Vicki Davis. Stay in the loop. Visit coolcatteacher.com. Follow at Cool Cat Teacher everywhere you connect.