High School Headstart
What if students could enter college already immersed in the disciplines and joys of deep learning? Amy Corey is working to make that a reality for the 11th and 12th grade students she teaches. Amy has parents who are inspiring examples of lifelong learners and Amy enjoyed growing up in their home. But Amy found she needed to go deeper in her approach to learning as a college freshman. Later, 10 years into a teaching career, Amy found she needed to view teaching itself through a different lens.
What follows is an approximate transcript of the interview which is found in this linked podcast.
[00:03] Mike Gray: Welcome to this, the 7th season of the Deep and Durable Learning Podcast. I'm your host, Mike Gray. I have 45 years of teaching experience in higher education. I've taught over 10,000 students. Many of my students would say that I taught them how to think. I've also been involved in faculty development for over 30 years, and many of those faculty participants would say that my approach to teaching was personally and professionally transformational. This season will be a series of interviews with faculty whose teaching has been transformed. My guests will come from a variety of academic disciplines, but they're all applying the principles of transformational teaching.
Well, this season I'm going to be talking with faculty who have implemented the principles of deep and durable learning in their classrooms as well as in their personal lives. And today I'm talking with Amy Corey, who teaches on the high school level. Welcome, Amy.
[01:19] Amy Corey: Thank you. It's good to be here.
[01:22] Mike Gray: So where do you currently teach?
[01:25] Amy Corey: I teach at Bob Jones Academy.
[01:27] Mike Gray: So, what level?
[01:29] Amy Corey: My courses are mainly for 11th and 12th grade, and I teach our honors chemistry, honors physics, and then a ladies Bible class.
[01:40] Mike Gray: So, your students are finishing up their secondary education. Tell us a little bit about how you got there. Have you always aspired to teach?
[01:53] Amy Corey: My mom is an art teacher, and my dad, I would say, is probably one of the greatest learners that I know. And pretty much all growing up, I really wanted to be in education, and it was my mom and dad who pointed me in the direction of science education. And so I came to BJ. I majored in composite science education, and then I ended up being a graduate assistant teaching chemistry. So that's been the path.
[02:26] Mike Gray: I know you've gotten some other degree preparation after your bachelor's in composite science. So, tell us about that.
[02:35] Amy Corey: Well, I was a graduate assistant. I worked on and completed a master's in counseling, and then most recently, I finished a graduate degree in teacher education through the University of Oxford in the UK.
[02:52] Mike Gray: So, you'll actually be headed over there to walk or march, whatever they call it.
[02:59] Amy Corey: Great. Yes.
[03:00] Mike Gray: Yeah, that's great. So, what have been the formative influences on your pedagogy? In some sense, you've already alluded to your dad and your mom's influence, but can you kind of take us back to your growth?
[03:18] Amy Corey: My parents are really learners, and I think growing up, anytime we did have a vacation or a break, our vacations tended to be places where you were going to learn, so they were museums or places that had historical significance. My dad is really curious, and I think just growing up, it was a natural thing in our house to have questions and to look for answers, and a lot of that was before the Internet, so there were encyclopedias and a lot of library visits.
When I came to Bob Jones and I started out in composite science education. And I was in I think it's Biology 101, the first biology class for majors. I think one of my biggest understandings, or moments of understanding how teaching influences learning, was in your class.
In the first few days of class, we talked about what's the role of the learner, what's the role of a teacher. And even though I was in some education courses that semester as well, I remember thinking, I need to watch what's going on in here because I'm experiencing a way of learning that I've not encountered before. And that first class, I think, is what put it in my mind that there is this way of teaching to help people understand and to continue to enjoy learning and not just look at coursework as being kind of a drudgery.
After that, again, I had really great classes. I had very good experiences my first few years in teaching. Very grateful for those. But I think in 2011 I was able to essentially, I guess, be a guest for SITS [Summer Institute in Teaching Science] for two weeks, and you all were looking at how to concept map a course. And I had never really thought of my courses that I taught in that way. And it was very challenging to me to really think through what's the plotline of a course and how can I help students to think, like, to some degree a physicist or to some degree a chemist?
And then there were a few books that we read during that time period as well that really influenced how I wanted to communicate information rather than just essentially reading PowerPoint slides or showing PowerPoint slides and having students write those things down. And I think there was a third component to that SITS time where I was encountering teachers who would teach from some kind of illustration or some kind of experience in real life. And from that particular illustration, they were able to communicate the information that the student needs to learn or to motivate the student to learn things. And that really clicked in my mind of how I could do that on my level, to move what sometimes can be feeling like a drudgery for students to learn to something that they're eager and excited to learn.
[06:37] Mike Gray: And I guess particularly on the 11th and 12th grade levels, there's kind of this “I've been doing this for a long time.” If you're a student, and “I'm looking forward to it being over,” yes, maybe sometimes a lack of motivation or at least no expectation that anything life changing is going to happen because I'm in this course. And obviously, to some extent, we encounter that with freshmen coming in as well, that they're kind of habituated to same old, same old. I don't have a high expectation that things are going to be different.
Maybe circle around to a couple of things I've heard you say elsewhere. You said you came as an undergraduate to realize that listening is not learning. So how did that recognition—I mean, you came from a family of learners, it sounds like, which is somewhat unusual. I would say that was definitely a head start. But even with that head start, you said that realization came as an undergraduate, so how did that come about? What do you really mean by listening is not learning?
[08:02] Amy Corey: I think that my impression of what happened in classrooms was you listen, and that's how you learn outside.
[08:10] Mike Gray: Your job was to passively but aggressively. If you could put those together, listen carefully, be attentive, but that was it, right?
[08:19] Amy Corey: And I think in my mind, I split how I would learn outside of a classroom by just being curious and trying things out, which you always have to be a bit careful about. But my own learning that would take place outside of a classroom, as opposed to my impression was in a classroom, you listen, and it's kind of a give and take. The teacher gives you information, you give it back in the form of test or something like that. And I think that's how I had gotten through classes in high school a lot, where I was able to listen pretty well, and I was able to give back information pretty well. Not that all of my teaching and the high school level had just been okay, but I had done pretty well just being able to listen and give back information.
I think in those first classes, that first year of my college experience, I started to realize that I couldn't just be listening. I had to combine ideas together. I had to be able to apply what I learned in perhaps one setting to another setting. The information that I was getting in class, I had to do something with it other than just give back an answer. I had to process it and apply it in a way I hadn't really had to before.
[09:44] Mike Gray: So practically speaking, what changed? What did that look like going forward when you started to realize there's this—I would often call it negotiation with ideas. Like, these two have got to fit together in some way, and I'm not depending on somebody else to explicitly tell me how they work together. I need to work through that myself.
[10:09] Amy Corey: I wish I could say that I did as well as I could have. I think one of the big things that I found is that it would take a lot more time for me to process things and put them together when I would. It was a lot more satisfying and a lot more enjoyable. And I felt like I really owned what I understood. Sadly, though, as a college student, I probably didn't spend as much time doing that as I should have. And that's a bit of a disappointment to me. But I think the time factor and the real enjoyment of the learning are two things that I took away. It really was so much more enjoyable to learn when I was owning it.
[10:54] Mike Gray: Yeah, and there's probably a piece of that besides the load that a college student is under, particularly one who's conscientious like, you were. The norm of 2 hours outside of class for every hour inside class really amounts to a full-time job. So, there's a bit of, I guess, pragmatism that colors how you approach courses. Like, what am I going to be expected to do when I'm assessed? May actually be the drumbeat that I'm marching to. Rather than, are there ways that I can probe deeper and actually get joy from this class? That would be nice, but I've got a paper due in two days. All of that kind of time management kind of thing. This realization, at least at points, that learning can be a joyful experience that fuels a desire to learn more, is a pretty profound realization.
Now, on the other side, you realize that telling is not teaching. Not only is listening not learning, but telling is not teaching. So, what catalyzed that epiphany?
[12:15] Amy Corey: I think what had happened over ten years, I had taught a number of different courses, and time again was another factor of how much time do you have to prepare? You’ve got to see the students tomorrow. You have to have something to do with them. And so, a lot of my preparation had been pretty much in a survival mode. And I found myself that I felt like a presenter. I clicked through slides. I had a demonstration timed for a certain point, but it was in my own mind, not as connected as it should have been. And I found that I loved my students, but I really didn't enjoy what I was doing.
And I think that's interesting because this aspect of enjoyment, that's not how we make all our choices. But learning was more enjoyable when I was understanding. And teaching became more enjoyable as I moved to try to help students understand in deeper ways. So, this idea of telling, not being teaching again, just feeling like I was really presenting information and that was coming up empty. And so, I really started trying to think through, what am I doing? This is also around the time period I came to SITS and in 2011, and I realized, okay, how could I help my students to think? Yes, they're high school students, so it may not be in super deep ways, but how can I help them take their next understanding step? And how could I have my teaching be less—I just tell you a bunch of information and you give me answers back? But how could I have my teaching be more—Like, I am, of course, helping you meet the objectives that the state of South Carolina has for this course. But how can I help you be a deeper thinker? How can I help you put ideas together as a student? How can I help you have a greater understanding of concepts that, yes, in your mind up to this point have been separate, but how can we bring them together and see the connections? And it was at that point that I realized this was super helpful, but I personally needed some sort of more training in order to even better help my students.
[14:42] Mike Gray: So, having been further down the road as a learner (and a teacher should always be a learner) and recognizing that actually you do have a much more positive experience when you go deeper and you not only have the well, officially they're called positive epistemic emotions. People don't equate normally with being a rational being that you're thinking can result in something positive emotionally, but that actually when you take the time and effort to try and learn something and understand it deeply, you also remember it and you can use it. And obviously that's the passion of my podcast, which is why it's named Deep and Durable Learning because I think those two are inextricably linked that it will be durable when it's deep. And deep is not an artificial kind of standard. It's really thoroughly understanding ideas.
It's interesting your story of ten years in could be repeated with many faculty who have had a real commitment to students. But then there's something about being at that point in your career that you look at how effective am I actually being? So, the transience of so called learning is discouraging to somebody who wants there to be more than “I remember Miss Corey in class, and she was so kind” and that's good, and we should exemplify the Fruit of the Spirit. But what about physics? What about chemistry? What did you learn? There is not an artificial standard because all of us know that the factual piece tends to drop away in terms of our immediate recall of it, just that the lasting takeaways don't include applying that in life in any substantial way. We want to have more of an effect from having spent those hours with students than it looks like we're having. Many faculty talk about content. You talked about the state of South Carolina standards and there's often this sense that we're burdened by so much content to cover that that actually drives our decision making. Do you feel at the high school level, the onus is on you to cover as much as possible?
[17:39] Amy Corey: I think there's a certain degree where, with the state standards we have to cover certain things. In my context, I am able to really work with the other teachers in my department and have taught some of the other courses. So, I'm familiar with what is being covered or is being taught in those other courses. And that's really been a help to me, especially in the physics class because I do know what's happened in these other courses. So, my chemistry class is the last required class that students have to take. And then the physics class is completely an elective. And the way that I teach those, I do find myself. In chemistry, I have to cover certain things. We have to get there by a certain time. But in physics I do tend to be a bit more—the students are really interested in a particular concept, okay, let's take a day or two extra and go into that. Or let's construct this set of lessons in a way that we're able to go really deep as opposed to just going a bit broader. I think where I am in my pedagogy and my development, I don't know that I've hit it exactly right, but I'm working to develop those courses—specifically physics, I'm working to develop that course in a way where we can go deep and still be learning really the critical thinking skills and understandings that we need. But going perhaps deeper instead of just broader.
[19:20] Mike Gray: Maybe we talk about the difference between facts. We often talk about terms like content and information. A fact is a fact. So is the job to recall that fact or is that fact—because it's the result of somebody else's thinking—that it would be more helpful if I understood how they got to that conclusion, which is back into the realm of ideas?
So I think for people maybe who aren't used to slicing and dicing those terms with precision, how do you go deep in a fact? I mean, a fact is a fact. How do you go deep where ideas, I think, are things and ideas would be the common term concept is really what we're talking about can have varying levels of depth, varying levels of connection to related concepts that lead to the ability to do certain things, to explain phenomena, to predict, et cetera. When you have some options about so called coverage, and I think coverage is, again a loaded term, what does it mean to have covered it? Don't you remember when we talked about—fill in the blank— and you got blank student faces as well? No, they don't remember that we talked about it, but maybe they would remember if we dealt with ideas in a way that gave some context for and some power to these factual conclusions that people have arrived at. So, I know that's a difficult balance. Any of that resonate with you? How do you prioritize that in the classroom?
[21:18] Amy Corey: Right. I think there are certain facts you have to know to be able to talk about the ideas. So, there's a component of we want the students to understand the terminology and to be able to understand definitions, but let's not just stop there and perhaps even the way that we explain things. Is there a way that we can explain and get to those definitions where the student has a part in whether it's combining Latin, combining forms to understand? Okay, where is this term coming from, using those facts to talk about the ideas is something I try to push toward.
Again, on the pre-college level, I think you've addressed it. We have some limitations, perhaps in the kinds of preparations we're doing, whether it's for standardized tests or it's the student population that we're working with, whether it's an honors group or a college prep group, and wanting to have a way of assessing that can assess higher level thinking skills. But a good amount of our assessment is also going to have just kind of factual questions. However, I found that it is more enjoyable, I think, for the students when they are combining those ideas or rather those facts and putting those facts together into concepts. I find myself and my students laugh at me about this, but I do tell a lot of stories. But telling stories that bring in the facts or addressing a historical component or an application in current times that would bring those pieces of information together. And the idea would be to make it more memorable and perhaps to create a package or maybe a chunk that now is, okay, we did have to bring in those facts, but we've assembled them into this concept, and that's helping us make it more memorable.
[23:16] Mike Gray: You're tapping into one of the strengths of the brain. So, the brain in previous podcasts, we've talked about that in some depth, but the brain is pretty poor as a database of factual information. It leaks like a sieve. But the brain is really good at two things. One is recognizing patterns, and the other is integrating patterns into narratives—into stories. So, I think being able to utilize those pieces actually tap into the strength. I mean, the Bible is a narrative. It was written as a narrative. There's this storyline that goes through all of the Bible, even though not every book in the Bible reads like a narrative—Proverbs comes to mind, for instance. It's kind of broken up. But overall, there is this narrative arc that if we miss that, then the Bible becomes dull, and I have difficulty remembering it or putting together something from the Old Testament with something from the New Testament. So, I think teaching is always better when we tap into the brain strengths rather than areas where drill has to happen frequently or it leaks the information that we thought we had and we don't have it anymore. Maybe you could talk about the idea of motivation at all levels. Is significant motivation or lack of motivation, apathy, even in the worst case. What's been your experience about motivation to learn with high school students?
[25:10] Amy Corey: I think a lot of my students are coming from a context where grades are a significant motivator. The courses that I teach right now, especially the honors chemistry, the honors physics, it seems like a very real motivator is the grades. What kind of work do they need to do in order to get a certain grade? And the expectations that perhaps their parents have or even requirements for some of the college funds that are available. They have to have a certain GPA. So that, I think, is a big motivator. Often I have some students, though, and I've encountered a number of students over the years who they do seem to have an intrinsic interest, and maybe grades are not as important to them. The ideal would be to be very interested, and then your grades are showing how really interested you are. A lot of them are probably motivated by grades.
I find it very fun in class when we're going through a concept, especially a concept that is taking a lot of our effort to really think through, to make the connections. And when we're moving through something like that, to see on students faces or to hear their questions or their answers, and you can see that they're following a train of thought and they're actually eager to do it. One of the most exciting moments of my teaching career was when a student spontaneously just expressed, “learning is fun when you understand.” And it was really quite genuine, and you could tell the students they were actually really understanding this concept. We had brought down, I think maybe there were three or four concepts that came from their math, from algebra, and I think probably a little from pre-calc. And we had just combined it all and you could see they understood and there was an enjoyment. And then the student says that. Now that doesn't happen all the time.
I think we do have a struggle to, as teachers, to model, especially on the pre-college level in my context, but to model what it looks like to be an eager learner and to be a learner who puts together concepts that are potentially quite difficult, and to really show that that's enjoyable and show that it's beneficial. So, it is a hard thing to motivate students, but I think their motivation, it is in there somewhere.
[27:44] Mike Gray: Maybe just to round out our discussion, we could talk for a long time about the classroom and the particulars of secondary education. I know effective teaching has become one of the things that you're pretty passionate about. Maybe even that's part of what catalyzed your master's at Oxford. So how does your passion for teaching spill over to other people? Maybe other faculty members, friends, people who notice things about you?
[28:21] Amy Corey: Over the past two years, I've been able to work with the administrators at our school. They've been wanting to start some professional development, and they've been very supportive of helping faculty grow. And over the past two years, I've gone to our administrators and asked what way I could help. And we have done some professional development that was just an optional professional learning community where we would get together.
One of the semesters, we tried to work on a solution for our orientation for our high school faculty coming in as new faculty. This last year, we focused on different topics that teachers had said they would like a little bit more support in. And what we did we basically would go through. We talked about how to read about best practices, how to kind of filter through the literature that we might read, and we would read an article on a topic and then we would work to sift through, make sure we got some of the good concepts out of that article. We deploy them in our room, our classrooms, and then we would come back and talk about how it went. So it was really just let's inform ourselves, try it out, and then work with other faculty members to get feedback on how our experience went. So that's one of the things that I was able to be involved in on a practical level of just every day I talk with other teachers, we talk about ideas that we've encountered best practices and we are encouraging each other in those.
This next year at the academy, we're looking at having every teacher in a professional learning community. And I'm really excited to be part of that and to be looking at how can we structure those learning communities so that they can have the best effect and help, really, teachers where they want to be helped and to help teachers grow in areas that they're really specifically interested in.
[30:46] Mike Gray: Obviously, I've spent a lot of my time since we're in the 19th summer of SITS here, and probably a good ten years before that. I did that on a divisional level and tried to get some consensus that led finally to okay, well, if we could find a way to pull this off in the summertime, it would be ideal. And we don't have all these competing priorities with trying to make the classroom work.
God graciously provided some finances to make that happen. But yeah, I hear what you're saying as being people trying to support people who want change, but solo change is almost inevitably going to be not as deep and helpful as it should be. And having something close to a consensus among the faculty is invaluable because the expectations for students are much more consistent from one class to the next, that everybody within their own subject matter is concerned with making the most of the time together with the students and have students embracing a vision for their own personal growth.
That's more that the student brings to the table and more than just trying to achieve a grade. So that's key to making progress. We've got a community, in SITS, we've got 20 people this summer and that's a typical summer. So, what we have in all of the sciences and engineering is really a significant amount of consistency. And by that I don't mean that everybody sounds the same, that there's cookie cutter kind of consistency, but philosophical consistency that comes out in the way the classroom works, in the way student learning is assessed the practical project that they're supposed to work on. But this idea that this is going to allow you to do something that you didn't think you could accomplish or that you're proud to tell other people about, like we did, that we made, that. We explained that. So I think those kinds of rewards are real world rewards for real learning.
Thanks for being with us today.
Amy Corey: Gladly.