Transcript
Ixchell Reyes  0:00  
Are you guilty of assuming your students know what you know? We all fall into the curse of knowledge, but how can we break away and keep fresh eyes?
Brent Warner 0:22
Welcome to the DIESOL podcast, where we focus on developing innovation in English as a second or other language. I’m Brent Warner, Professor of ESL, and I’m here with Ixchell Reyes, award winning educator in innovation and professional development. Classroom, Teacher, Teacher, teacher, all the fun things. (laughter)
Brent Warner 0:40
I wish people could see your the video here, because
Ixchell Reyes 0:43
I’m making faces at him
Brent Warner 0:46
You’re making faces at me.
Ixchell Reyes 0:46
I’m being mature.
Brent Warner 0:46
I’m trying to be professional here. So come on. (laughter)
Ixchell Reyes 0:50
Crack a Smile!
Brent Warner 0:53
How was Halloween?
Ixchell Reyes 0:54
Halloween was great. I was Snow White. What were you
Brent Warner 0:57
Well, I was that skeleton ish thing, right? Like, with a skeleton cardigan on.
Ixchell Reyes 1:03
Oh yeah!
Brent Warner 1:06
So, yeah, it was but, but it was a fairly quiet Halloween, but still, you know, all is good. So
Ixchell Reyes 1:13
I gave out stickers. By the way, stickers are cheaper than candy and healthier. So
Brent Warner 1:19
Healthier than candy…. What if you eat them?
Ixchell Reyes 1:23
Well, there are zero calories.
Brent Warner 1:26
What did the kids faces look like when you handed them?
Ixchell Reyes 1:29
Ah, you No. You give them Halloween stickers or funny stickers or meme stickers or, come on, they liked it different. All right, don’t be. Don’t be.
Brent Warner 1:29
I mean, I’m honestly wondering, because I’d be like, lady, go back, go back in your kitchen and find something for me
Ixchell Reyes 1:47
that sounds like a Boomer 2.0
Brent Warner 1:49
0h my god, This is the new trend here, now. Alright, we’ll talk about that a little bit later. So let’s get into it. Ixchell, you were talking a little bit about, well, you’ve talked about this quite a bit, and we’ve mentioned bits of it, this idea, you’ve always called it fresh eyes, right? I think we’ve talked about a few episodes, right? So what do you mean by that?
Ixchell Reyes 2:11
First, well, I’ve always, number one. I always tended to be the youngest teacher in anywhere I was, so people discounted my voice all the time, saying, Oh, you’re too young. You just have too much energy. Blah, blah, blah. And then, of course, now I’m older, and I see my younger students coming in every year. They’re younger, but they see things with fresh eyes, and that’s one thing that I think is so important for us to to remember to see the world the way we saw it, as if we were fresh, as if we were new. And that’s hard to do, especially as you gain more expertise. So that’s what I mean when I talk about a fresh fresh eyes.
Brent Warner 2:55
Yeah, and I’ve kind of talked about this idea in another way of like, the beginner’s mindset, right? Is like, what does it mean to be a beginner? Like, what is it? What does it look like from that? And actually, there’s research on this, right, of course, well, as long as we still have access to research (laughter). So it’s a term called expert blind spot, and it looks like it came up from Nathan and Petrosino, I think. Anyways, we’ll have the link in the show notes in here, but, but this idea that basically the one of the one of the quotes from their article, it’s called expert blind spot among pre service teachers. And it said, they said that subject matter expertise across disciplines can, if unchecked, lead teachers to be blind to certain developmental needs of novice learners. Domain experts may forget what students find easy and difficult to learn. And so they were kind of talking about this idea where it’s like, okay, hold on a second. And we see this. I see this at my school all the time. So like, you know, there’s teachers who it’s like, I know what’s going on here. I’m an expert in this field, but maybe not necessarily, like an expert teacher, right? So, like a lot of teachers, don’t have degrees in teaching. For example, most of our audience probably does, because they have, like, TESOL type degrees, right? Which is, which is usually a subdivision teaching degree, but, but it could be, you know, all sorts of people going on and so, so. And even even those about those teaching degrees fall into these traps,
Ixchell Reyes 4:25
Or people who were placed in teaching positions without that, that that support of having a degree. I know plenty of instructors who were, they knew English, and they were placed there and then, now they’re English teachers, and could be by choice, and maybe they learn to like it. But again,
Brent Warner 4:45
Maybe not fully well, and even if fully developed like, if the point is not like that you have the right education or the wrong education. The point is that like, once you become an expert, or once you become so settled into your way of life or of your way of understanding things, it’s very hard to go back to, like, remembering what the students are seeing. So we’re going to kind of talk about some of the actual structural elements of it up front, and then we’ll talk maybe about kind of the broader, like structural, you know, language type of things around it. And then we’ll go broader into, like, understanding more of our students, hopefully. So I want to pull out another quote from, I think this was from the abstract in the front of that, that article by Nathan and Petrosino, they said participants with more this, they were kind of talking about math stuff to start with. So this. So they said participants with more advanced mathematics, equation education, regardless of their program affiliation or teaching plans, were more likely to view symbolic reasoning and mastery of equations as a necessary prerequisite for word equations and problem and story problem solving. Okay, so pause on that, right? So they’re saying, hey, you need to know this kind of this, this first level they were, they were saying, like, you have to understand symbolic reasoning and mastery in order to do word problems, right? And then they said this view is in contrast with students actual performance patterns and examination across several subject areas, including mathematics, science and language arts, suggests a common pattern. So they’re saying this whole idea is like, you know, as you become more advanced, you’re not really you may be guilty of finding that like you know you’re you’re putting the wrong information up for the students, or maybe putting it up in the wrong way, because you’re making assumptions that they already know some of the things that you know.
Ixchell Reyes 6:35
So this whole phenomena seems counterintuitive, that sometimes being an expert can actually work against you, but the article shows that this happens in a few interesting ways. For example, when you’re teaching something, the methods that work great for beginners can actually backfire with experts. It’s sort of like trying to teach someone who already knows how to drive by making them relearn the basics, right? It just gets in the way. But what’s fascinating is that experts can struggle with creative tasks that require making unusual connections between ideas, and that is because experts have spent years organizing their knowledge into these really efficient mental frameworks, right? They’re the well worn paths in their brain. So this is usually great for speedy for speed and accuracy, right? The brain is trying to be effective and efficient, but when you need to think outside the box or connect seemingly unrelated concepts, those mental paths can actually trap you, so you keep going down the same familiar roots or routes. Meanwhile, a novice and I always think of a novice instructor because I’m a teacher trainer, they don’t have those grooves yet in their brain, so they’re actually freer to explore what others might consider weird or unexpected connections, right? Yeah. So in an example of this is the that this article quotes Wiley from 1998 and they mentioned the Think Aloud studies, which is where researchers ask people to verbalize what they’re doing while they’re solving a problem where novices can describe their thought process pretty easily, but experts often struggle to explain what they’re doing, and that’s because expertise creates these automatic routines. You just do things without consciously thinking about each step. And it’s like trying to explain how to tie your shoes right? You know how to do it, but the actual process has become so automatic that there’s nothing left in your conscious memory to describe. And so I’m going to just sort of throw in that when I’m teaching my teachers how to teach their students, their language students, I have to tell them that they’ve got to do think aloud, and they’ve got to actually verbalize the process so that they learn to verbalize it for their students, who will then now internalize it and then verbalize it for themselves.
Brent Warner 9:02
Yes, yeah, for sure. Well, and that’s kind of going to go very close, in line with this article that I found in TES magazine, but basically it’s called why teachers need to tackle their expert blind spots. Is by a teacher named Adam Goodridge, and he gave again, there’s a lot of math people talking about this, I guess, right? Because it’s probably very easy to get step by step, yeah, like, formulas, right? And so, but I kind of converted the ideas that he gave so and it lines up with what you’re saying here to Ixchell is, you know, he kind of said, well, okay, you know, I start asking myself, why? Like, why are these? The reasons for these, you know, these steps or and, and then being able to explain those through because you you’re making assumptions that students know two different sides, or all the information that you’re explaining to them. So, so I kind of switched from what he said into a pronunciation example here. So a lot of times, like, you know. You’re doing a pronunciation. It says, For the TH sound, like a teacher might say something like, Okay, now put your tongue between your teeth for the TH sound, and it’s like, okay. So to to all of us, right, listening, right? Now, we’re probably like, Yep, I get it right. But let’s actually think about that for a second, right? So you have to unpack it. And so it says, so the idea is, like, what is actually meant by between your teeth, right point to the specific place, like the the tip of the tongue, touching the back of the upper front teeth, mostly, and then maybe slightly protruding, sticking out right? What does your tongue mean? Which part of the tongue, right? So, so you could, like, say, Hey, I’m going to slide my tongue, oh, you know, in between my molars, and go, you know, is that the TH sound, no. And so it’s like, maybe, right? It seems obvious to us. Of course, that’s not the right thing. But like, are we being clear about that, right? You know, again, I think most teachers are pretty good about this physically showing them, making sure that they can see what it is. So there’s extra steps inside of there. But you know, again, we might produce this automatically and say it in a way that’s just kind of short and to the point, but maybe those details there are not quite clear for the listener, and so they might not know all these words or all these ideas. So are we paying attention to those and and are we breaking down for ourselves. What are the steps we’re explaining? Are each of those steps, or even parts of the steps, and even vocabulary words clear to the students as we’re going,
Ixchell Reyes 11:30
Yeah, especially when your students might be from a country whose native language doesn’t use those parts of the tongue, or, again, like that, just could be so abstract to someone else, right?
Brent Warner 11:42
Yeah, yeah, for sure. So we’re kind of talking about this in terms of, like, the the concrete points of language, maybe. But I think it’s also Ixchell, you and I really wanted to talk about was more, kind of, like, the cultural aspect of this as well, right? There’s a little bit more to it. So I think we’ll, we’ll jump over after the break, and then we’ll talk a little bit about kind of applying this across the board.
Ixchell Reyes 12:09
All right, I’m going to take a quick moment to send a shout out to all our new listeners. I know we have some teachers listening in from Egypt, Vietnam, Colombia, Kurdistan and all other places. So if, if the show is serving you and you are enjoying our content, I’d like to invite you to rate and review us. I think our last review on Apple podcast is still from 2023 so we would love to have some fresh reviews from some fresh listeners, and also leave us a comment.
Brent Warner 12:40
It is real hard to get people to do that, but yeah, (laughter) if you like the show, that that’s the thing that helps us, right?
Ixchell Reyes 12:46
So awesome. And thank you for listening.
Brent Warner 12:46
and thank you for listening!
Ixchell Reyes 12:52
Alright. So talking about fresh eyes, I think Brent, I often think of the struggles that my students go through when they’re adjusting to the culture here, and this might be different for every every teacher out there listening, because maybe your students are going to be here for, I don’t know, four years of college, but some are only going to be for two months. So they may not actually become members of the community, or they may be living within a restricted area where they’re not able to travel, for example. And so I think one of the things that I often come back to is to stay fresh and to remember who your audience is, is that most of the routine tasks for us here as members of the community may not be routine for students without cars, for example. It could also be that just going shopping for groceries or getting medicine when you’re battling a cold might not be as easy as just your teacher saying, Well, why don’t you go get some cold medicine when you have to walk two miles to the nearest grocery store, even going to the post office, that for some of my students can be very difficult, and so often I have to remember not everybody has the same access to what I have, which is a car, simply in just a car or a store nearby, and that’s hard for us to remember when we’re so used to that being second nature, right? Right?
Brent Warner 14:15
Yeah, they’re, they’re like, they’re like, luxuries that we take for take for granted, right? And so for sure, there’s a lot of these things where it seems really obvious and quick to to someone who has the benefits of these things, but maybe your students don’t all have those things. And so what are you what are you asking them to do? That may seem like it’s easy, but could actually be, actually, you know, quite a barrier for them. So, yeah, so I’m going to talk about a different one here a little bit, which is like, I think we’re so do it. Can I do it? You can do it? 6767 Okay, okay, all right, that’s enough. Knock it off with that. Six seven. So. The idea here is we are just like all of us we were, as we get older, like we stopped following all the trends, all the things that are popular for the young kids. I think, you know, a lot of classroom teachers can be a lot better at this if they’re proactively trying to keep on top of the trends and talk with their students, but, but it can be a little harder to know what’s resonating, right? I still know, like, I’m guilty of this. A lot of my, you know, other teachers that I work with are guilty of it. It’s like, oh, we’ve got these materials that are talking about the Spice Girls, right? And it’s like, oh, yeah, blah, blah, blah. And it’s like, kids today don’t know what the Spice Girls are, or, you know,
Ixchell Reyes 15:40
I didn’t even like them, when I knew what the Spice Girls were.
Brent Warner 15:42
Yeah, I mean it’s like trying to be on trend at the time, and then all of those things. You know, it’s not trendy anymore, right? But like, being connected to the trends actually does matter. To make connections with your students, right? And like, what’s the world reality? Yeah. And so it’s like harder to know a little bit what resonates, right? I don’t know. Like, I was talking to some colleagues about K Pop Demon Hunters, right?
Ixchell Reyes 16:04
That was my fun find. Well, was it, yeah, a couple episodes ago. Oh,
Brent Warner 16:08
yeah, you did mention that. And so did I tell you that my friend’s husband’s the director of that?
Ixchell Reyes 16:15
What? No, that’s cool !
Brent Warner 16:16
A friend from college. Like, anyways, so k pop, demon hunters, right? Is like, one example, right? Super on trend, right? Now a lot of people are talking about it. I have access to it. I have Netflix, but I haven’t watched it yet, right? Same thing with like, Tiktok influencers, God, you have to watch it. I will, I will. I’m putting it on my list of things to watch. So, like Tiktok influencers, like, I, you know, like, I don’t even have Tiktok and so, like, it’s hard for me to stay up with, like, which of the Tiktok influencers, what are they talking about? What are the things that connect with them, right? And so, so some of these things in the past, when I was, like, my younger indie, you know, punk rock person, whatever it was, kind of, you know, well, this is, this is, this is what we’re getting to, right? Is in the past, it was a badge of honor, right? Like, I don’t know what’s going on in the mainstream, and now I’m just a disconnected old man, right? So, like, this is the boomer conversation, which I am, I am squarely, squarely at the end of Gen X, right? Gen X, Gen X, millennial bridge, right? I don’t know you want to call me a boomer, so, but the point is, we’re all going to be that next generation at some point. Anyways, right? So are you keeping up with the trends? What parts of them, like? What parts can you do, little like, strategic ways to keep up with trends? Were you not necessarily totally on top of it, but know a little bit about what’s going on, so that you can better connect with your students.
Ixchell Reyes 17:44
Yeah, and Brent, I just want to remind our audience that we’ve been talking about this for a while, because there was a couple of episodes where we talked about Generation Z, and then soon after, we started talking about generation alpha. And again, this is where we are. If you don’t know what your students are into. If you don’t know what they’re watching, how they’re getting their information, then you are missing largely on on a way to approach and also re envision how your how your whatever strategies you’re using, you’re using in class. So it’s a mindset. It’s a mindset. It’s not about age. That’s and that’s my two cents. So moving on to another aspect, is that we are so used to having devices and Wi Fi and access to information so quickly that we often forget that not not all students have that what if? What are you going to do if a student, only one student in your classroom has a phone, or perhaps no phone at all. I’ve had students who don’t have a phone, or they have a phone, but it’s a foreign phone with no service and only Wi Fi, so therefore certain things they cannot, you know, they cannot access. And so I constantly have to when I’m when I’m thinking of a lesson, I have to think, how am I going to make this either low tech, no tech, high tech. How am I going to make it accessible for the students that might not once they leave my classroom? There’s no Wi Fi,
Brent Warner 19:10
yeah, yeah, right, yeah, that whole phone thing, it’s like, it’s so easy to fall into the trap of like, everybody has a phone, right? Or everybody has this technology available to them, but –
Ixchell Reyes 19:19
Not everybody can afford the Wi Fi services either.
Brent Warner 19:22
So, yeah. I mean, I’ve seen students at my school coming in super early because they’re trying to connect to the school’s Wi Fi because they don’t have anything at home, right? And you know, you’ll see these different things and so, yeah, so definitely an issue. Okay, so now I’m also going to to the idea of putting yourself back into students shoes, right? So, and this one for me, I’m going to start with teaching a new class. Like as a teacher, we always, we always give the advice, right?
Ixchell Reyes 19:52
Teach the same class again, because you’re better at it now, and to recreate everything. Well, I do. But.
Brent Warner 20:00
Um, but also, like, when you take on a new class, right? Like we get, we get super comfortable, like you’re saying, right? Okay, hey, I’m used to these things. I’m familiar with it. I’ve got my patterns down. But when you go in and teach a new class, you you really do start thinking about, like, oh, wait a second. Hold on. A second. I knew this. I remember all this stuff, but I don’t really remember how I teach it, or what, you know, hooked with the students. And so right now I’m teaching. I took over a grammar class on our campus, and I’m like, I’m still feeling very, you know, fish out of water in that class. And we’re like, halfway, more than halfway done at this point. But it’s like, Oh, am I getting it down? Am I getting it all together for it? Like, am I organized? Do I remember all of these rules? You know, my it’s an advanced class, so my students are asking these great, higher level questions, and I’m like, yeah, yes, I remember, like, I have to kind of do the pause and pull back from the dusty cobwebs of my brain, right? And so, you know, things like cobwebs of my brain and Yeah, and so, or like, you know, pronunciation, right? So it’s like, oh, anybody, I can just walk into a pronunciation class, but if you’re teaching in an advanced pronunciation class, that’s super hard, right? Like, beginning pronunciation classes are pretty easy, right? But, but advanced ones are, like, they are demanding because of the very small nuance sounds and like, do you know, like, finding a really good pronunciation teacher, for example, is a challenge because not a lot of people really understand the depth of you know, all of the things that you need to know around you know, phonemes and how diphthongs (unclear) create different all that stuff
Ixchell Reyes 21:37
Onomatopeia! (laughter)
Brent Warner 21:40
So anyways, so teaching a new class can be a good way for you to kind of reset yourself and go, Okay, hold on. Let me think again about what’s actually going on here.
Ixchell Reyes 21:49
Agree, 100% agree. I just got over teaching a writing class, and I love teaching writing I was a writing teacher, an academic writing teacher, forever, but not having taught it for quite a while meant I had to retrace my steps and go back to, as you said, the very humble beginnings of onsets arrives and dip dogs and all sorts of things, and how words come together. Because you’re still, at the end of the day, you’re still trying to make sure that your students are interested in that and honor whatever it is that you’re teaching, right? So along with that, if you can’t teach a new class, you can certainly take a class in a new language.
Brent Warner 22:26
And how many classes are you taking right now?
Ixchell Reyes 22:28
Ixchell, well, I have sort of paused official classes for a moment, but I was recently, as most of you maybe have heard in the other episodes, I was taking Arabic classes, again, a different dialect, and I’m learning Ukrainian on my own, which is a whole other thing. But if you can take another new language class or a class in a new language in an immersive style, if possible, and we don’t mean like dual lingo or an app that can really take you out of your comfort zone because you think yourself as a teacher, that you’re going to be a great student, but you’re going to find out very quickly that the way that the teacher interacts is not the way that you maybe normally expect the teacher to interact, because now you’re doing the comparison thing, and also your teacher, your tutor or teacher, may be a different generation as well, which means, often younger. It also might be online, which means, what kind of materials are they? How are they laying out the class? And it might be different than what you might expect, or what you thought it should look like. The activities, do they make sense for the language you’re you’re learning? Do they make sense? And then also, I think one thing I found was quite different for me is note taking. I consider myself an expert note taker. I even sold my biology notes when I was in college because they’re so thorough and so good. But the note taking strategies that you remember when you were in college or when the ones you maybe even teach now are just different. Our students neural connections are so different, and so what works for them, or the way that they even annotate is just different. And so I make it a habit to collect their notes, to see what they’re writing or to see what they’re and I do both, yeah, actually, because what they’re writing is just a lot different. And a lot of the times they’re going to see it’s connected to some Tiktok keyword or meme, and you’ll see those notes, but if you don’t recognize them, then you’re missing out. But again, it just kind of humbles you, because even writing now with a pencil, if you’re not doing it all the time or a pen, it’s harder than taking notes on a keyboard, and you may just be used to using a keyboard, but if you’re learning a new language, you’re probably going to have to do things by hand. With neural connections,
Brent Warner 24:43
yeah. We and we know that the that you know, there are better neural connections when you hand write courses vs. when you type
Ixchell Reyes 24:50
Of course! It’s a different part of your brain – it’s a different part of the brain.
Brent Warner 24:52
Absolutely. I love that part about taking notes, though, or taking taking your students notes and using them to inform your own understanding. Notes, literally taking notes. Okay, so the my last one, and I’ve mentioned this before too, but it’s like, this idea of, like, setting up a new hobby, taking taking up an old one, right? Like, like, are you doing something that you’re not good at, right? And are you intentionally hard? It is hard, right to do? Yeah. So, like, I’ve talked to before about, like, getting a guitar and like, trying to practice guitar a little bit, and like, I fell off for a while, like, I haven’t done it for a little bit, and then it’s like, oh, shoot, I gotta get back into it. I got, you know, it’s like, and like, all those things. It’s like, that’s the same thing that happens with language learners, right? It’s like, oh, I need to get back. I need, I’ve got other things that prioritizing in my life, whatever else it is, right? And then questions as you go through the process of learning something like a hobby for yourself is like, what can you figure out by yourself? Right? Well, what are you trying to figure out for yourself? What are you holding back on before you even start because you think you can’t do it without a certain amount of knowledge? Right there? But by the way, that might be false, right? It might very well be false that you can’t get started without XYZ. But, like, think about those things, right? Because for yourself as a learner, you’re going, well, what am I? What am I holding myself back from? What am I getting into? What techniques are you using to improve yourself, right? So I one of the ones that I thought was really interesting around this is, like, as I was kind of coming up with ideas is this idea is, like, are these techniques things that you would encourage or discourage in your own class, right? So, like, Hey, I’m going to use chat GPT to learn, you know, Arabic a little bit. I’m going to practice some of the Arabic. And I’m like, wait a second, what would I tell my students if they’re doing this? And, like, what types of things would I be asking them to think about? Would I say you can’t do this in my class, and yet, I’m choosing to do it for my own studies and learning, right? So all these kinds of things are really kind of considerations that we want to make sure that we’re putting into place, because they can make a big difference, absolutely. So lots of different things, kind of keeping in mind what it is to be a beginner. We’re not just talking about only the language class, but also the cultural things. Anyways, I hope, I hope that some people get some value out of thinking about that and reconsidering again. It’s kind of a reflection idea, too. And like, what are the points where you can make steps to better understand where your students are at right now?
Ixchell Reyes 27:20
Alright, it is time for our fun finds. And Brent, do you know Bananagrams, the tile game? Okay, so Bananagrams kind of like a Scrabble anagrams type game. So this could be a cool stocking stuffer for those of you who are shopping early. But I play Bananagrams with my students a lot of the times, and when they’re packing up, it’s just too heavy to actually carry a banana gram set, and they’re maybe a little bit pricey for some of my teachers, so I found the world’s smallest Banana Grams, and it’s about two inches, maybe an inch and a Half, and it actually contains every single tile in the original game. So it is a choking hazard. It’s a choking hazard so and so I gave them out as prizes when we played Banana Grams. And my students love them. And of course, it’s a little memento, plus it, you know, it just reminds them of their time here. So if you’re looking for a stalking stuffer or something fun to give out kind of language related Banana Grams, the world’s smallest Bananagrams, about 10 bucks.
Brent Warner 28:27
Very cool, very cool. So mine is a band, I know we just passed Halloween, but this is kind of a Halloween band, but there’s a band called The Mismiths. So if you happen to like either the Misfits or the Smiths, guess what? So they’re lot of fun. I went and saw we went to a demolition derby last weekend, and they were playing, – that was its own – that could have been its own fun find – but anyways, if you they kind of combine the two bands, so they do cover songs, but they do their own original songs in both of those styles, and they really do a good job of bringing them together. They’ve got some of their songs on, you know, streaming services, so we’ll put a couple links in the show notes. But if you’re if you’re into that, if you kind of want to have a fun time, and if you live in Southern California, I think you can see them quite a bit more often they play and so anyways, the Mismiths, it’s a fun time for a spooky Halloween ish band.
Ixchell Reyes 29:34
All right, for the show notes or other episodes, check us out at DIESOL.org/129 we are on most of the socials, YouTube, Facebook, Instagram, at @DIESOLpod. You can find me some of the time on IXY Underscore PIXY Underscore,
Brent Warner 29:54
That’s double underscore.
Ixchell Reyes 30:00
@ixy_pixy_
Brent Warner 30:03
Got it maybe, (laughter) if not, check the check the website, and then you can find me at, you can find me at. Brent G Warner, pretty easy. Yeah, I’m out there too, some places.
Ixchell Reyes 30:18
Thank you.
Brent Warner 30:19
Thank you so much for listening, everybody. Take care.
Are you guilty of assuming your students know what you know? We all fall into the curse of knowledge, but how can we break away and keep fresh eyes?
Brent Warner 0:22
Welcome to the DIESOL podcast, where we focus on developing innovation in English as a second or other language. I’m Brent Warner, Professor of ESL, and I’m here with Ixchell Reyes, award winning educator in innovation and professional development. Classroom, Teacher, Teacher, teacher, all the fun things. (laughter)
Brent Warner 0:40
I wish people could see your the video here, because
Ixchell Reyes 0:43
I’m making faces at him
Brent Warner 0:46
You’re making faces at me.
Ixchell Reyes 0:46
I’m being mature.
Brent Warner 0:46
I’m trying to be professional here. So come on. (laughter)
Ixchell Reyes 0:50
Crack a Smile!
Brent Warner 0:53
How was Halloween?
Ixchell Reyes 0:54
Halloween was great. I was Snow White. What were you
Brent Warner 0:57
Well, I was that skeleton ish thing, right? Like, with a skeleton cardigan on.
Ixchell Reyes 1:03
Oh yeah!
Brent Warner 1:06
So, yeah, it was but, but it was a fairly quiet Halloween, but still, you know, all is good. So
Ixchell Reyes 1:13
I gave out stickers. By the way, stickers are cheaper than candy and healthier. So
Brent Warner 1:19
Healthier than candy…. What if you eat them?
Ixchell Reyes 1:23
Well, there are zero calories.
Brent Warner 1:26
What did the kids faces look like when you handed them?
Ixchell Reyes 1:29
Ah, you No. You give them Halloween stickers or funny stickers or meme stickers or, come on, they liked it different. All right, don’t be. Don’t be.
Brent Warner 1:29
I mean, I’m honestly wondering, because I’d be like, lady, go back, go back in your kitchen and find something for me
Ixchell Reyes 1:47
that sounds like a Boomer 2.0
Brent Warner 1:49
0h my god, This is the new trend here, now. Alright, we’ll talk about that a little bit later. So let’s get into it. Ixchell, you were talking a little bit about, well, you’ve talked about this quite a bit, and we’ve mentioned bits of it, this idea, you’ve always called it fresh eyes, right? I think we’ve talked about a few episodes, right? So what do you mean by that?
Ixchell Reyes 2:11
First, well, I’ve always, number one. I always tended to be the youngest teacher in anywhere I was, so people discounted my voice all the time, saying, Oh, you’re too young. You just have too much energy. Blah, blah, blah. And then, of course, now I’m older, and I see my younger students coming in every year. They’re younger, but they see things with fresh eyes, and that’s one thing that I think is so important for us to to remember to see the world the way we saw it, as if we were fresh, as if we were new. And that’s hard to do, especially as you gain more expertise. So that’s what I mean when I talk about a fresh fresh eyes.
Brent Warner 2:55
Yeah, and I’ve kind of talked about this idea in another way of like, the beginner’s mindset, right? Is like, what does it mean to be a beginner? Like, what is it? What does it look like from that? And actually, there’s research on this, right, of course, well, as long as we still have access to research (laughter). So it’s a term called expert blind spot, and it looks like it came up from Nathan and Petrosino, I think. Anyways, we’ll have the link in the show notes in here, but, but this idea that basically the one of the one of the quotes from their article, it’s called expert blind spot among pre service teachers. And it said, they said that subject matter expertise across disciplines can, if unchecked, lead teachers to be blind to certain developmental needs of novice learners. Domain experts may forget what students find easy and difficult to learn. And so they were kind of talking about this idea where it’s like, okay, hold on a second. And we see this. I see this at my school all the time. So like, you know, there’s teachers who it’s like, I know what’s going on here. I’m an expert in this field, but maybe not necessarily, like an expert teacher, right? So, like a lot of teachers, don’t have degrees in teaching. For example, most of our audience probably does, because they have, like, TESOL type degrees, right? Which is, which is usually a subdivision teaching degree, but, but it could be, you know, all sorts of people going on and so, so. And even even those about those teaching degrees fall into these traps,
Ixchell Reyes 4:25
Or people who were placed in teaching positions without that, that that support of having a degree. I know plenty of instructors who were, they knew English, and they were placed there and then, now they’re English teachers, and could be by choice, and maybe they learn to like it. But again,
Brent Warner 4:45
Maybe not fully well, and even if fully developed like, if the point is not like that you have the right education or the wrong education. The point is that like, once you become an expert, or once you become so settled into your way of life or of your way of understanding things, it’s very hard to go back to, like, remembering what the students are seeing. So we’re going to kind of talk about some of the actual structural elements of it up front, and then we’ll talk maybe about kind of the broader, like structural, you know, language type of things around it. And then we’ll go broader into, like, understanding more of our students, hopefully. So I want to pull out another quote from, I think this was from the abstract in the front of that, that article by Nathan and Petrosino, they said participants with more this, they were kind of talking about math stuff to start with. So this. So they said participants with more advanced mathematics, equation education, regardless of their program affiliation or teaching plans, were more likely to view symbolic reasoning and mastery of equations as a necessary prerequisite for word equations and problem and story problem solving. Okay, so pause on that, right? So they’re saying, hey, you need to know this kind of this, this first level they were, they were saying, like, you have to understand symbolic reasoning and mastery in order to do word problems, right? And then they said this view is in contrast with students actual performance patterns and examination across several subject areas, including mathematics, science and language arts, suggests a common pattern. So they’re saying this whole idea is like, you know, as you become more advanced, you’re not really you may be guilty of finding that like you know you’re you’re putting the wrong information up for the students, or maybe putting it up in the wrong way, because you’re making assumptions that they already know some of the things that you know.
Ixchell Reyes 6:35
So this whole phenomena seems counterintuitive, that sometimes being an expert can actually work against you, but the article shows that this happens in a few interesting ways. For example, when you’re teaching something, the methods that work great for beginners can actually backfire with experts. It’s sort of like trying to teach someone who already knows how to drive by making them relearn the basics, right? It just gets in the way. But what’s fascinating is that experts can struggle with creative tasks that require making unusual connections between ideas, and that is because experts have spent years organizing their knowledge into these really efficient mental frameworks, right? They’re the well worn paths in their brain. So this is usually great for speedy for speed and accuracy, right? The brain is trying to be effective and efficient, but when you need to think outside the box or connect seemingly unrelated concepts, those mental paths can actually trap you, so you keep going down the same familiar roots or routes. Meanwhile, a novice and I always think of a novice instructor because I’m a teacher trainer, they don’t have those grooves yet in their brain, so they’re actually freer to explore what others might consider weird or unexpected connections, right? Yeah. So in an example of this is the that this article quotes Wiley from 1998 and they mentioned the Think Aloud studies, which is where researchers ask people to verbalize what they’re doing while they’re solving a problem where novices can describe their thought process pretty easily, but experts often struggle to explain what they’re doing, and that’s because expertise creates these automatic routines. You just do things without consciously thinking about each step. And it’s like trying to explain how to tie your shoes right? You know how to do it, but the actual process has become so automatic that there’s nothing left in your conscious memory to describe. And so I’m going to just sort of throw in that when I’m teaching my teachers how to teach their students, their language students, I have to tell them that they’ve got to do think aloud, and they’ve got to actually verbalize the process so that they learn to verbalize it for their students, who will then now internalize it and then verbalize it for themselves.
Brent Warner 9:02
Yes, yeah, for sure. Well, and that’s kind of going to go very close, in line with this article that I found in TES magazine, but basically it’s called why teachers need to tackle their expert blind spots. Is by a teacher named Adam Goodridge, and he gave again, there’s a lot of math people talking about this, I guess, right? Because it’s probably very easy to get step by step, yeah, like, formulas, right? And so, but I kind of converted the ideas that he gave so and it lines up with what you’re saying here to Ixchell is, you know, he kind of said, well, okay, you know, I start asking myself, why? Like, why are these? The reasons for these, you know, these steps or and, and then being able to explain those through because you you’re making assumptions that students know two different sides, or all the information that you’re explaining to them. So, so I kind of switched from what he said into a pronunciation example here. So a lot of times, like, you know. You’re doing a pronunciation. It says, For the TH sound, like a teacher might say something like, Okay, now put your tongue between your teeth for the TH sound, and it’s like, okay. So to to all of us, right, listening, right? Now, we’re probably like, Yep, I get it right. But let’s actually think about that for a second, right? So you have to unpack it. And so it says, so the idea is, like, what is actually meant by between your teeth, right point to the specific place, like the the tip of the tongue, touching the back of the upper front teeth, mostly, and then maybe slightly protruding, sticking out right? What does your tongue mean? Which part of the tongue, right? So, so you could, like, say, Hey, I’m going to slide my tongue, oh, you know, in between my molars, and go, you know, is that the TH sound, no. And so it’s like, maybe, right? It seems obvious to us. Of course, that’s not the right thing. But like, are we being clear about that, right? You know, again, I think most teachers are pretty good about this physically showing them, making sure that they can see what it is. So there’s extra steps inside of there. But you know, again, we might produce this automatically and say it in a way that’s just kind of short and to the point, but maybe those details there are not quite clear for the listener, and so they might not know all these words or all these ideas. So are we paying attention to those and and are we breaking down for ourselves. What are the steps we’re explaining? Are each of those steps, or even parts of the steps, and even vocabulary words clear to the students as we’re going,
Ixchell Reyes 11:30
Yeah, especially when your students might be from a country whose native language doesn’t use those parts of the tongue, or, again, like that, just could be so abstract to someone else, right?
Brent Warner 11:42
Yeah, yeah, for sure. So we’re kind of talking about this in terms of, like, the the concrete points of language, maybe. But I think it’s also Ixchell, you and I really wanted to talk about was more, kind of, like, the cultural aspect of this as well, right? There’s a little bit more to it. So I think we’ll, we’ll jump over after the break, and then we’ll talk a little bit about kind of applying this across the board.
Ixchell Reyes 12:09
All right, I’m going to take a quick moment to send a shout out to all our new listeners. I know we have some teachers listening in from Egypt, Vietnam, Colombia, Kurdistan and all other places. So if, if the show is serving you and you are enjoying our content, I’d like to invite you to rate and review us. I think our last review on Apple podcast is still from 2023 so we would love to have some fresh reviews from some fresh listeners, and also leave us a comment.
Brent Warner 12:40
It is real hard to get people to do that, but yeah, (laughter) if you like the show, that that’s the thing that helps us, right?
Ixchell Reyes 12:46
So awesome. And thank you for listening.
Brent Warner 12:46
and thank you for listening!
Ixchell Reyes 12:52
Alright. So talking about fresh eyes, I think Brent, I often think of the struggles that my students go through when they’re adjusting to the culture here, and this might be different for every every teacher out there listening, because maybe your students are going to be here for, I don’t know, four years of college, but some are only going to be for two months. So they may not actually become members of the community, or they may be living within a restricted area where they’re not able to travel, for example. And so I think one of the things that I often come back to is to stay fresh and to remember who your audience is, is that most of the routine tasks for us here as members of the community may not be routine for students without cars, for example. It could also be that just going shopping for groceries or getting medicine when you’re battling a cold might not be as easy as just your teacher saying, Well, why don’t you go get some cold medicine when you have to walk two miles to the nearest grocery store, even going to the post office, that for some of my students can be very difficult, and so often I have to remember not everybody has the same access to what I have, which is a car, simply in just a car or a store nearby, and that’s hard for us to remember when we’re so used to that being second nature, right? Right?
Brent Warner 14:15
Yeah, they’re, they’re like, they’re like, luxuries that we take for take for granted, right? And so for sure, there’s a lot of these things where it seems really obvious and quick to to someone who has the benefits of these things, but maybe your students don’t all have those things. And so what are you what are you asking them to do? That may seem like it’s easy, but could actually be, actually, you know, quite a barrier for them. So, yeah, so I’m going to talk about a different one here a little bit, which is like, I think we’re so do it. Can I do it? You can do it? 6767 Okay, okay, all right, that’s enough. Knock it off with that. Six seven. So. The idea here is we are just like all of us we were, as we get older, like we stopped following all the trends, all the things that are popular for the young kids. I think, you know, a lot of classroom teachers can be a lot better at this if they’re proactively trying to keep on top of the trends and talk with their students, but, but it can be a little harder to know what’s resonating, right? I still know, like, I’m guilty of this. A lot of my, you know, other teachers that I work with are guilty of it. It’s like, oh, we’ve got these materials that are talking about the Spice Girls, right? And it’s like, oh, yeah, blah, blah, blah. And it’s like, kids today don’t know what the Spice Girls are, or, you know,
Ixchell Reyes 15:40
I didn’t even like them, when I knew what the Spice Girls were.
Brent Warner 15:42
Yeah, I mean it’s like trying to be on trend at the time, and then all of those things. You know, it’s not trendy anymore, right? But like, being connected to the trends actually does matter. To make connections with your students, right? And like, what’s the world reality? Yeah. And so it’s like harder to know a little bit what resonates, right? I don’t know. Like, I was talking to some colleagues about K Pop Demon Hunters, right?
Ixchell Reyes 16:04
That was my fun find. Well, was it, yeah, a couple episodes ago. Oh,
Brent Warner 16:08
yeah, you did mention that. And so did I tell you that my friend’s husband’s the director of that?
Ixchell Reyes 16:15
What? No, that’s cool !
Brent Warner 16:16
A friend from college. Like, anyways, so k pop, demon hunters, right? Is like, one example, right? Super on trend, right? Now a lot of people are talking about it. I have access to it. I have Netflix, but I haven’t watched it yet, right? Same thing with like, Tiktok influencers, God, you have to watch it. I will, I will. I’m putting it on my list of things to watch. So, like Tiktok influencers, like, I, you know, like, I don’t even have Tiktok and so, like, it’s hard for me to stay up with, like, which of the Tiktok influencers, what are they talking about? What are the things that connect with them, right? And so, so some of these things in the past, when I was, like, my younger indie, you know, punk rock person, whatever it was, kind of, you know, well, this is, this is, this is what we’re getting to, right? Is in the past, it was a badge of honor, right? Like, I don’t know what’s going on in the mainstream, and now I’m just a disconnected old man, right? So, like, this is the boomer conversation, which I am, I am squarely, squarely at the end of Gen X, right? Gen X, Gen X, millennial bridge, right? I don’t know you want to call me a boomer, so, but the point is, we’re all going to be that next generation at some point. Anyways, right? So are you keeping up with the trends? What parts of them, like? What parts can you do, little like, strategic ways to keep up with trends? Were you not necessarily totally on top of it, but know a little bit about what’s going on, so that you can better connect with your students.
Ixchell Reyes 17:44
Yeah, and Brent, I just want to remind our audience that we’ve been talking about this for a while, because there was a couple of episodes where we talked about Generation Z, and then soon after, we started talking about generation alpha. And again, this is where we are. If you don’t know what your students are into. If you don’t know what they’re watching, how they’re getting their information, then you are missing largely on on a way to approach and also re envision how your how your whatever strategies you’re using, you’re using in class. So it’s a mindset. It’s a mindset. It’s not about age. That’s and that’s my two cents. So moving on to another aspect, is that we are so used to having devices and Wi Fi and access to information so quickly that we often forget that not not all students have that what if? What are you going to do if a student, only one student in your classroom has a phone, or perhaps no phone at all. I’ve had students who don’t have a phone, or they have a phone, but it’s a foreign phone with no service and only Wi Fi, so therefore certain things they cannot, you know, they cannot access. And so I constantly have to when I’m when I’m thinking of a lesson, I have to think, how am I going to make this either low tech, no tech, high tech. How am I going to make it accessible for the students that might not once they leave my classroom? There’s no Wi Fi,
Brent Warner 19:10
yeah, yeah, right, yeah, that whole phone thing, it’s like, it’s so easy to fall into the trap of like, everybody has a phone, right? Or everybody has this technology available to them, but –
Ixchell Reyes 19:19
Not everybody can afford the Wi Fi services either.
Brent Warner 19:22
So, yeah. I mean, I’ve seen students at my school coming in super early because they’re trying to connect to the school’s Wi Fi because they don’t have anything at home, right? And you know, you’ll see these different things and so, yeah, so definitely an issue. Okay, so now I’m also going to to the idea of putting yourself back into students shoes, right? So, and this one for me, I’m going to start with teaching a new class. Like as a teacher, we always, we always give the advice, right?
Ixchell Reyes 19:52
Teach the same class again, because you’re better at it now, and to recreate everything. Well, I do. But.
Brent Warner 20:00
Um, but also, like, when you take on a new class, right? Like we get, we get super comfortable, like you’re saying, right? Okay, hey, I’m used to these things. I’m familiar with it. I’ve got my patterns down. But when you go in and teach a new class, you you really do start thinking about, like, oh, wait a second. Hold on. A second. I knew this. I remember all this stuff, but I don’t really remember how I teach it, or what, you know, hooked with the students. And so right now I’m teaching. I took over a grammar class on our campus, and I’m like, I’m still feeling very, you know, fish out of water in that class. And we’re like, halfway, more than halfway done at this point. But it’s like, Oh, am I getting it down? Am I getting it all together for it? Like, am I organized? Do I remember all of these rules? You know, my it’s an advanced class, so my students are asking these great, higher level questions, and I’m like, yeah, yes, I remember, like, I have to kind of do the pause and pull back from the dusty cobwebs of my brain, right? And so, you know, things like cobwebs of my brain and Yeah, and so, or like, you know, pronunciation, right? So it’s like, oh, anybody, I can just walk into a pronunciation class, but if you’re teaching in an advanced pronunciation class, that’s super hard, right? Like, beginning pronunciation classes are pretty easy, right? But, but advanced ones are, like, they are demanding because of the very small nuance sounds and like, do you know, like, finding a really good pronunciation teacher, for example, is a challenge because not a lot of people really understand the depth of you know, all of the things that you need to know around you know, phonemes and how diphthongs (unclear) create different all that stuff
Ixchell Reyes 21:37
Onomatopeia! (laughter)
Brent Warner 21:40
So anyways, so teaching a new class can be a good way for you to kind of reset yourself and go, Okay, hold on. Let me think again about what’s actually going on here.
Ixchell Reyes 21:49
Agree, 100% agree. I just got over teaching a writing class, and I love teaching writing I was a writing teacher, an academic writing teacher, forever, but not having taught it for quite a while meant I had to retrace my steps and go back to, as you said, the very humble beginnings of onsets arrives and dip dogs and all sorts of things, and how words come together. Because you’re still, at the end of the day, you’re still trying to make sure that your students are interested in that and honor whatever it is that you’re teaching, right? So along with that, if you can’t teach a new class, you can certainly take a class in a new language.
Brent Warner 22:26
And how many classes are you taking right now?
Ixchell Reyes 22:28
Ixchell, well, I have sort of paused official classes for a moment, but I was recently, as most of you maybe have heard in the other episodes, I was taking Arabic classes, again, a different dialect, and I’m learning Ukrainian on my own, which is a whole other thing. But if you can take another new language class or a class in a new language in an immersive style, if possible, and we don’t mean like dual lingo or an app that can really take you out of your comfort zone because you think yourself as a teacher, that you’re going to be a great student, but you’re going to find out very quickly that the way that the teacher interacts is not the way that you maybe normally expect the teacher to interact, because now you’re doing the comparison thing, and also your teacher, your tutor or teacher, may be a different generation as well, which means, often younger. It also might be online, which means, what kind of materials are they? How are they laying out the class? And it might be different than what you might expect, or what you thought it should look like. The activities, do they make sense for the language you’re you’re learning? Do they make sense? And then also, I think one thing I found was quite different for me is note taking. I consider myself an expert note taker. I even sold my biology notes when I was in college because they’re so thorough and so good. But the note taking strategies that you remember when you were in college or when the ones you maybe even teach now are just different. Our students neural connections are so different, and so what works for them, or the way that they even annotate is just different. And so I make it a habit to collect their notes, to see what they’re writing or to see what they’re and I do both, yeah, actually, because what they’re writing is just a lot different. And a lot of the times they’re going to see it’s connected to some Tiktok keyword or meme, and you’ll see those notes, but if you don’t recognize them, then you’re missing out. But again, it just kind of humbles you, because even writing now with a pencil, if you’re not doing it all the time or a pen, it’s harder than taking notes on a keyboard, and you may just be used to using a keyboard, but if you’re learning a new language, you’re probably going to have to do things by hand. With neural connections,
Brent Warner 24:43
yeah. We and we know that the that you know, there are better neural connections when you hand write courses vs. when you type
Ixchell Reyes 24:50
Of course! It’s a different part of your brain – it’s a different part of the brain.
Brent Warner 24:52
Absolutely. I love that part about taking notes, though, or taking taking your students notes and using them to inform your own understanding. Notes, literally taking notes. Okay, so the my last one, and I’ve mentioned this before too, but it’s like, this idea of, like, setting up a new hobby, taking taking up an old one, right? Like, like, are you doing something that you’re not good at, right? And are you intentionally hard? It is hard, right to do? Yeah. So, like, I’ve talked to before about, like, getting a guitar and like, trying to practice guitar a little bit, and like, I fell off for a while, like, I haven’t done it for a little bit, and then it’s like, oh, shoot, I gotta get back into it. I got, you know, it’s like, and like, all those things. It’s like, that’s the same thing that happens with language learners, right? It’s like, oh, I need to get back. I need, I’ve got other things that prioritizing in my life, whatever else it is, right? And then questions as you go through the process of learning something like a hobby for yourself is like, what can you figure out by yourself? Right? Well, what are you trying to figure out for yourself? What are you holding back on before you even start because you think you can’t do it without a certain amount of knowledge? Right there? But by the way, that might be false, right? It might very well be false that you can’t get started without XYZ. But, like, think about those things, right? Because for yourself as a learner, you’re going, well, what am I? What am I holding myself back from? What am I getting into? What techniques are you using to improve yourself, right? So I one of the ones that I thought was really interesting around this is, like, as I was kind of coming up with ideas is this idea is, like, are these techniques things that you would encourage or discourage in your own class, right? So, like, Hey, I’m going to use chat GPT to learn, you know, Arabic a little bit. I’m going to practice some of the Arabic. And I’m like, wait a second, what would I tell my students if they’re doing this? And, like, what types of things would I be asking them to think about? Would I say you can’t do this in my class, and yet, I’m choosing to do it for my own studies and learning, right? So all these kinds of things are really kind of considerations that we want to make sure that we’re putting into place, because they can make a big difference, absolutely. So lots of different things, kind of keeping in mind what it is to be a beginner. We’re not just talking about only the language class, but also the cultural things. Anyways, I hope, I hope that some people get some value out of thinking about that and reconsidering again. It’s kind of a reflection idea, too. And like, what are the points where you can make steps to better understand where your students are at right now?
Ixchell Reyes 27:20
Alright, it is time for our fun finds. And Brent, do you know Bananagrams, the tile game? Okay, so Bananagrams kind of like a Scrabble anagrams type game. So this could be a cool stocking stuffer for those of you who are shopping early. But I play Bananagrams with my students a lot of the times, and when they’re packing up, it’s just too heavy to actually carry a banana gram set, and they’re maybe a little bit pricey for some of my teachers, so I found the world’s smallest Banana Grams, and it’s about two inches, maybe an inch and a Half, and it actually contains every single tile in the original game. So it is a choking hazard. It’s a choking hazard so and so I gave them out as prizes when we played Banana Grams. And my students love them. And of course, it’s a little memento, plus it, you know, it just reminds them of their time here. So if you’re looking for a stalking stuffer or something fun to give out kind of language related Banana Grams, the world’s smallest Bananagrams, about 10 bucks.
Brent Warner 28:27
Very cool, very cool. So mine is a band, I know we just passed Halloween, but this is kind of a Halloween band, but there’s a band called The Mismiths. So if you happen to like either the Misfits or the Smiths, guess what? So they’re lot of fun. I went and saw we went to a demolition derby last weekend, and they were playing, – that was its own – that could have been its own fun find – but anyways, if you they kind of combine the two bands, so they do cover songs, but they do their own original songs in both of those styles, and they really do a good job of bringing them together. They’ve got some of their songs on, you know, streaming services, so we’ll put a couple links in the show notes. But if you’re if you’re into that, if you kind of want to have a fun time, and if you live in Southern California, I think you can see them quite a bit more often they play and so anyways, the Mismiths, it’s a fun time for a spooky Halloween ish band.
Ixchell Reyes 29:34
All right, for the show notes or other episodes, check us out at DIESOL.org/129 we are on most of the socials, YouTube, Facebook, Instagram, at @DIESOLpod. You can find me some of the time on IXY Underscore PIXY Underscore,
Brent Warner 29:54
That’s double underscore.
Ixchell Reyes 30:00
@ixy_pixy_
Brent Warner 30:03
Got it maybe, (laughter) if not, check the check the website, and then you can find me at, you can find me at. Brent G Warner, pretty easy. Yeah, I’m out there too, some places.
Ixchell Reyes 30:18
Thank you.
Brent Warner 30:19
Thank you so much for listening, everybody. Take care.
We tend to think expertise is always an advantage, but what if knowing too much can actually hold you back? In this episode, we explore the surprising research showing that experts can struggle with creative problem-solving in ways beginners don’t. Discover why well-worn mental pathways can become traps, how automaticity makes it harder to explain what you know, and when a fresh perspective beats years of experience. Listen in for ways to open your mind back up to the “beginner’s mindset” and seeing your students’ learning experience with fresh eyes.
Research
- Goodridge, A. (2021). Why teachers need to tackle their ‘expert blind spots’. https://www.4myschools.org/teacher-job-news/teachers/why-teachers-need-to-tackle-their-blind-spots/
 - Nathan, M. J., & Petrosino, A. (2003). Expert blind spot among preservice teachers. American Educational Research Journal, 40(4), 905–928. https://doi.org/10.3102/00028312040004905
 
Fun Finds
- Ixchell – World’s Smallest Bananagrams
 - Brent – The Mismiths (YouTube Music) (Spotify)
 


