Type.Tune.Tint.

Teaching the teachers, and the rest of us!

March 27, 2022 Season 3 Episode 4
Type.Tune.Tint.
Teaching the teachers, and the rest of us!
Show Notes Transcript

Frank Lyman has spent his life teaching children, adults and other teachers. It turns out that many of those lessons can apply to non-teachers. How do our kids learn to read and what's our role as parents in that effort? What parallels are there between teaching children in school and on-boarding a new employee, teaching adults EMT skills or how to navigate a database? Frank's book, 100 Teaching Ideas That Transfer and Transform Learning, is a starting point to answer these and other questions about teaching and communication.

Music: Tom Kranz

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:00 Music

:15 Tom Kranz

Hello and welcome to the Independent Author podcast. I’m Tom Kranz. My sincere thanks to those of you who listen regularly. This podcast just reached 750 downloads and I really appreciate you for that. My guest has spent his life as a teacher of children, adults and other teachers. In the process, he has gathered a collection of teaching strategies that benefit not only other teachers but those of us who write. Meet Frank T. Lyman, who has some great insights on learning, how we can teach learning and how both are relevant to writers and anyone interested in better communication.

(Music up and under)

:55 Tom Kranz
You've taught pretty much all levels of human beings all the way through college and spend a lot of time teaching teachers how to teach. And that brings us to the subject of your book, which is called 100 Teaching Ideas That Transfer and Transform Learning. First of all Frank, how are you today]?

1:14 Frank Lyman
I'm fine. Tom, I'm glad to be with you.

Good. I appreciate you joining me. And for those of you out there who are teachers, I hope that you'll spend the next 20 minutes with us here. But for those of you who are not teachers, don't go anywhere. Because, you know, I approached this book as somebody who just said, you know, I'm kind of interested in what this teacher of teachers has to say about that subject.  But as I read many of the 100 ideas that he lists here, I realized how many of them are relevant to me as a writer and also, and as a student of writing, and also relevant to me in kind of my parallel life as a part-time EMT and CPR instructor. So first of all Frank, you spent all this time teaching and teaching teachers was this, did you just start life deciding you wanted to be a teacher or did you start out like, you know, as a cello player or something?

2:12 Frank Lyman
I'm an only child. My mother took care of kids. I liked kids a lot. And when I was at Haverford College the guy from Harvard came on and said, who wants to, looking for people to come to their masters in education. And I was the only one there that wanted elementary. He thought it was better than innovation, everybody do that and I was encouraged. And so I went on to, a one-year master's program and was certified to teach elementary school.

Tom Kranz
And you taught elementary school where?

Frank Lyman
Originally, Montgomery County Maryland, two years, and then Lexington Massachusetts in the Ford Foundation Harvard University first team-teaching project, which was sort of the foundation of a lot of the ideas in the book.

Tom Kranz
And then you spent, we talked briefly before we started here, but it seems like a lot of your career was spent teaching teachers in this University of Maryland program. Can you just tell us about that real quick?

Frank Lyman
Right, I came down to Maryland in '68 to Columbia, the new town, and I worked two years in elementary school there. And then Harvard, I mean Maryland, had a teacher education center program where they placed a joint appointment with the public schools, Howard County and Maryland in a set of schools and then they sent every semester 25, 26 or around 25 student teachers which we placed we got some other years became friends with everybody and we became just like part of the crowd and we for 26 years and 1,000 university students, I did that job.

3:50 Tom Kranz
Wow. So as I said to our audience here, your book is comprised of basically a hundred, I don't want to call them tips because that sounds like we're telling people how to buy a car, right? It's a hundred different ideas on presenting, I guess, tools for teaching, and a lot of these seemed like they're aimed at children younger children. Maybe not all of them but some are. And the thing that got me, the most the thing that seems to be the underlying theme is involving students in the process, not just showing powerpoints, not just lecturing and actually involving them in the process of learning. Otherwise, then you're talking about, you know, the difference between memorizing and comprehending. You talk a little bit about that whole philosophy of drawing students into the process.

Frank Lyman
From suffering and watching process, solving all kinds of, watching people fail, myself fail, realized that the kids really were being left out, that we were sort of like the high priests of the mind. So I decided, I mean, I guess one of the latest ways of saying that I found is that restoring students' minds to the rightful owners of students themselves, having them talk with each other, which of course, we should know that's the only way to remember anything, you remember your response and having them actually create their own questions from, in this case, from a set of say seven different ways of thinking cause and effects, similarities,  difference and so forth called metacognitive, knowing how they know. So knowing how you know and desiring to know or that are two major aspects of the book.

Tom Kranz
Absolutely. I guess I took some wisdom from that theme in recalling how we teach EMTs to be EMTs. I'm not going to you know, go into a long dissertation about that but for many years it was all about going through PowerPoints, presenting a series of skills that you had to learn and then you were tested on the content of the PowerPoints and the content and the way of doing the skills, right? What it really came down to was memorizing a lot of numbers, doing a lot of mnemonic devices to remember sequences and then passing the skills tests by doing certain skills a certain way in a certain order, right?  Then, back in the, I would guess the mid-2010s, the EMT curriculum was changed, allegedly to what they call competency-based learning and they claim they, they change the way it was taught. And yeah, no, we're gonna make sure that everybody understands what it is that they're learning here and that sounded great to me. But at the end of the day, whether or not, you got your certification was still dependent on whether you memorized certain numbers, you memorized sequences of skills and you memorized how to do certain skills, and the teacher said, they're with a checklist, did they do this? Did they do this? Did they do this? And if one or two items are missing from--So, to me, it was basically a relabeling of what had happened all along and I always thought that there's got to be a better way to teach people to do this. So where the hell have you been Frank? I mean, we could have used you and me your book to do that now. I think EMTs are still taught the same way. I don't know what the fail rate is these days. I know that there's a shortage of EMTs but that seems to me like a way that would have been you know, something that would have been well utilized in this curriculum. 

7:33  Frank Lyman
You are learning response. In graduate school was very fond of this professor. He said, you'll learn your response and you have to realize that and pushing that. And I didn't get it. When I one day I was teaching children reading to them about the Chinese immigration. And then I asked them as a group, what did I just say? Nobody knew they had no recollection. It was actually Italians and banana carts in New York. So, then I said, talk to each other, everybody talk to each other, and by God, they all knew and my whole career shifted at that point.  And I went into peer learning at that time for the next three years. And I put in practice this idea and that's the origin of the well-known, Think-Pair-Share technique, which is now worldwide.

Tom Kranz
So, something that struck me about what you just talked about is that it took them talking to each other to realize that they actually knew the answers to the question. 

Frank Lyman
Absolutely.

8:25 Tom Kranz
And I kind of parallel that to my writing process other people's. And I, you know, I'm not an expert on writing, believe me, I just know what I know, but people ask me how do you get started? Because the hardest part of writing a book or a novel can be the very first, you know, sentence and I tell them, you know, what worked for me is to not sit there and think about the answer. It's to just sit and write. There's a movie out there, I don't know if you ever saw it, it's called Finding Forester. It stars Sean Connery and he plays this reclusive writer who had his one big novel and he makes friends with this teenager who doesn't know how to write. The Sean Connery character sits him down at a typewriter, and he sits next to his typewriter and says, all right, just start to write. And the kid says, what do I write right about? He said, don't think about that, just write. Damn it. And so he starts to write and that's what I tell people and that's what I've done myself. I sit down and I start to write. And as I start to write, then you know what's kind of inside comes out and I come back 10 minutes later and I read what I write and I say oh, okay. I knew how I wanted to start. I just didn't do it. So that seems to me like, you know, a principle that works.

Frank Lyman
It does work and an epiphany I had there--this book is about epiphanies-- is about eureka moments where I said wait a minute, everything changes for this. And I had these kids writing  stories and these third graders and they couldn't do it. One kid wrote this terrific Winnie the Pooh story, practically A.A. Milne. I couldn't understand. So I went to this other teacher and I said, how does this happen? That only one kid can do this. She said Frank, for God's sake, you have to teach them the craft. They have to understand the craft of writing. They have to have models. They have to write descriptive or if they have to get into it. They have to see and they have to be observers. You have to do it in pieces. And they have to then believe in themselves as writers. So from that point on, my career changed and I did that a lot and then we took this writing they did and turning into free verse poetry everything changed. So that is a very, very important thing I learned about writing.

Tom Kranz
So actually doing a lot of reading and as you called it modeling is actually important to develop young writers.

10:50 Frank Lyman
Yeah, we read them great lines from great children's books like Charlotte's Web and then they actually tried to write like that and they did, and it was really something.

Tom Kranz
So that brings me to item number 25 in your book, which jumped out at me here. I have it in front of me, and this one is called Reading as Seeing with Hearing. And I'm just going to read a really small brief of it because this, this really kind of this brought a couple things home to me and you say, 'Recently a first greater marveled that she didn't know how she learned to read. She and many other young children have learned to read before they enter first grade. If they can learn to read without knowing how they did it and even without their parents, quote, teaching them purposely, then perhaps the secret of how can be used in school. The secret seems to be that they have been read to consistently, are surrounded by books and most importantly perhaps have had their eyes on the page as they listen to the reading. What better way to learn to read than seeing the words as one listens to them?

Tom Kranz
So, I just found ur, you know, it never occurred to me that I never knew how I learned to read either. You know, one day I'm sitting there in second grade in Mrs. Junk's class, and I'm reading shit, you know? And you, I could never have described how that process happened. And so how do you, you know, teach people how to teach kids to read, that's got to be a lifetime of-- Is it trial and error? Or is it knowledge?

Frank Lyman
I was terrible at that in any sort of classical sense. But I will say this--in working with student teachers, I came to understand that there's much to where the reading than, say, phonics and that type of thing, which I also I sort of suspected. But that story, the one you just read comes from my daughter. One day we're playing Uncle Wiggly with my daughter at the age of perhaps three and a half, or four. She's kind of an exceptional person still and in literature writing. But she read the Uncle Wiggly cards. We had no idea she could read. Now she, what had happened while she had the 45 records and the little book that goes ding, and the page turns she'd been following those pages for probably several months. We didn't really know that she learned to read. So that's how that particular principle came to me. But there is research in education that shows that children who see the words and hear the words at the same time can learn to read.

Tom Kranz
So reading to your kid is not just something to help them sleep. It actually is helpful.

Frank Lyman
No, and in this case and when they actually can see the words or actually read the book enough times they can look at the book and remember it and they can do the same thing.

13:40 Tom Kranz
More with Frank Lyman in a moment. Here's a quick preview of another podcast for independent authors and writers in the making.

(Promo for Writer In The Making podcast)

14:48 Tom Kranz
So, I bookmarked item number 27 in your book. This one's called Novel Beginnings. This one smacked me in the face because this speaks to what every writer of, pretty much, every book fiction, nonfiction, deals with which is how to start. It's always been the hardest part for me and you write, 'How does an author begin a story? It can be argued that the first sentence of a story is the most important of all. As with great lines of poetry, students can look for great beginning sentences of books and develop a concept of what makes the sentences great. Also, they can try to write another first page from the selected first line and can create multiple first lines themselves from which to begin a story. A class collection of beginning lines can be posted from which students can write. And you go on here and again, this talks to that whole concept of, you know, just writing. You know, let's get some first lines down, read some first lines, use them as models and make a collection and that's kind of the beginning. I love that.

Frank Lyman
I do too and related to that is,  my daughter in first grade wrote a letter to Sonny Jurgensen telling him how sorry she was about his hurting his foot. And anyway, she had these worksheets and I said to the teachers look, just let's just write down 80 things that Sarah likes. I'll write them down. We'll put them on a little chain. And when she comes in, she'll have a little chain to clip through it and you'll find something she wants to write. Big problem in schools is nobody can remember what they know, what they did, what they do. So that was a flop in that situation but it's an idea related to what you're doing there.

Tom Kranz
So, the last one that I wanted to, I wanted to bookmark and talk to you about was item 26 which is called Comprehension or Memory, question mark? And this goes back to what we were talking about, you know, are you memorizing shit or are you actually learning the stuff? And you write, "When students are said to be having difficulty with reading comprehension, they have usually been tested in part on what they remember. So aren't they being tested for recall? If so, then how does one recall what has been read? The answer would seem to be that one recalls what one has repeated or discussed. This is true for most of us. This being  true, students should discuss what they read after they read it if they are to be tested on what they remember and comprehend.' So this goes on. It seems to be more like a, how-to kind of test on what you just remembered. But I, I guess I wish there was a little bit more here on kind of remembering versus comprehending because the two really aren't the same, are they?

Frank Lyman
They're not and they're treated the same. My book has lots of destruction of myths, that this is reading comprehension. That kid takes a test, read the thing and now he's comprehending. No, no, he's recalling it or he's not recalling it, but to comprehend it means you have to understand it and it doesn't mean you just can repeat it.  So I try to make that point.

Tom Kranz
Well, you know, I've only touched on a few of these things. There's a hundred of these little excerpts and the book is called, 100 Teaching Ideas That Transfer and Transform Learning. But, you know, there's so much more here than just a kind of how-to for teachers. There's a lot of ideas here on things like relating to kids, anybody who has anything to do with reading, reading to children, teaching almost anything. There's a million ideas in here that will make you, I think a better teacher, or at least think about things that you hadn't thought about. Frank, if people wanted to buy this book where were they find it?

Frank Lyman
Now, just look at Routledge Press and just type in 100 Ideas and it'll come right up and show you how to do it.

Tom Kranz
Okay. I think I searched for it and I think it's on Amazon too, if I'm not mistaken. Yes. Now, I think there's at least the paperback edition is there. Anyway, Frank...

Frank Lyman
Yeah, you made a good point there, Tom, about the aspect of, it's noticing kids. That's a central aspect of the book. One teacher said me once, they don't know they're there until you look at them. And I mean, there's a lot in there about noticing. And I have friends now from 1960, I taught my first year in teaching sixth grade that my Harvard professor said, I stunk when he came down to watch me, and I have friends there in that group and 1960 and only because I guess I noticed them.

Tom Kranz
You know, I wish you were one of my high school teachers because my high school experience wasn't great and I'm not gonna go on at length about this, but and I had a couple of really wonderful teachers a couple English teachers specifically, but there were a couple teachers there who were so obviously just kind of going through the motions. This is something they've done for years. They didn't really care. I mean, they just to them, it was getting through another 45-minute session and it was reflected in the attention span of the kids. These teachers put up with a lot of abuse by kids, who didn't pay attention, talking. Some of them openly made fun of these teachers. And, you know, it was all about, like, just getting through the day. So I could have used you back in Central High School, but I have a feeling a lot of kids and teachers have benefited from your ideas here. 

Frank Lyman
Basically, this book is a thinking teacher's book. It is a teacher as scientists book, in teacher looking reading something and saying, hey I get the principal, I can apply that to my work, it encourages moments of discovery. It was turned down by three presses for not being detailed enough. What you need to know is to do every minute. No, the teacher needs to have something to think about amazing thinking about it.

Tom Kranz
So they were looking for more of a, how-to kind of thing?

Frank Lyman
Yea, because I wouldn't do that. Got you. There are some things in there that I've never done. I just made them up... 4 or 5, anyway.

Tom Kranz
I like you more and more the more we talk. But I think we're gonna wrap it up at this point Frank. I really appreciate you being with us and I hope that everybody, you know, takes a little bit of time to, you know, at least the very least listen to this podcast five or six times. But at the very most buy Frank's book, because there's something in there for almost everybody, Frank T. Lyman, author of 100 Teaching Ideas That Transfer and Transform Learning. Thank you so much for being with me.

Frank Lyman
Thanks, Tom.