The Resilient Pedagogy podcast with your host, Travis Thurston. On this episode, we discuss "Distracted: why students can't focus and what you can do about it" with special guest, James Lang. This is the space where we discuss practical teaching strategies to overcome distance disruption and distraction. We also explore how approaching course design classroom communities, and pedagogies of care can humanize our learning environments. James Lang is a professor of English and the director of the Center for Teaching Excellence at Assumption College. He is the author of several books on teaching in higher ed, including small teaching. And the topic of our conversation today distracted why students can't focus and what you can do about it. Jim, welcome to the show.
Thank you. Thanks for having me.
I'm really looking forward to discussing this topic with you today. Before we get started, I want to ask you the question that we ask all of our guests, as an emerging term, resilient pedagogy has been defined in a number of different ways. And it continues to be applied in varying contexts. What does resilient pedagogy mean to you?
As I would think about it, sort of in parallel to like, universal design for learning. So Universal Design for Learning, obviously, is where we make decisions about the course. So that students have multiple access points. So if we create an assessment, for example, where students have to give a presentation that we might offer another way to do that, like having them record a video instead, or, you know, do the presentation in a different kind of context. And so that that gives kind of multiple access points. And I would, I guess, I would think resilient pedagogy is kind of similar, but just kind of coming at it from another perspective, anything that I'm doing in the class is capable of being adapted into different formats. So that when change and disruption occurs, so I don't know maybe it's kind of coming at it from slightly different angles. But that same idea is that this this one thing that I'm using, is capable of, maybe it's just like student and teacher ways to approach it, right, like, so the students can approach that thing from multiple avenues. And same for me, like a teaching strategy or approach I create, I can approach it from multiple avenues, like whether it's online or hybrid or face to face. So I guess I would that's how I would think about it.
Yeah, like that. There are definitely so many different ways to, to attack that term.
Yeah, yeah. But it's a really helpful term, actually. I mean, I first heard it from Josh Eyler. And, you know, as soon as he as soon as I read, I was like, Oh, yeah, that makes sense. And it's absolutely something that we should be thinking about and working toward, not only right now, but you know, going forward in the future. Because, of course, one of the things that I think, well, from where I live, where we live here in New England, you know, there's disruptions throughout the winter. But I think one of the things that we've all recognized is that doesn't have to happen anymore. So when there's, you know, what would normally have been like a snow disruption, we can keep teaching, but we need to be able to make sure that what we're doing is adaptable to doing something online from our snowed in houses.
That's absolutely true. That no excuse for snow days anymore.
Which is kind of sad and nostalgic way for those of us who love snow days, and have fond memories of snow days. But that's okay.
Good. So on this episode, I wanted to highlight just a few of the sections from your book that really impacted me. But having said that, before readers even get to page one, in your book, you lead with this fantastic quote from Mary Oliver. "Instructions for living a life. Pay attention. Be astonished. Tell about it." Why did you choose this quote, to begin your book?
Mary Oliver, for me is like the poet of attention. So many of her poems are about like kind of essentially calling us to wake up and like look at the world with a new sense of wonder. And I think a lot of poetry does that. But you there's the kind of argument from like the Russian theorist that, you know, estrangement or defamiliarization, that that's what literature does for us. And it forces us to kind of step back and see like common experiences or the everyday world in a new light. I think Mary Oliver's poem really does that. In her poetry in general, does that really well. And that poem in particular, makes it very explicit. And I would argue that that's what we're trying to do in teaching as well. Right? So like we're seeing, you know, we're trying to get students to think, to see the world around them in new ways to kind of be astonished at the wonders of our discipline, and to come up with like creative new solutions to old problems. And the way we do that is like we find new lenses with which to view things. So I I think the idea that that kind of three parts in that right, like, pay attention is one something that we obviously want students to do in our courses to our teaching to one another, be astonished. And I think that's a really important thing. Like recognize there's something amazing here, if you look at it in the right way, and then tell us about it like so then what did you learn, like and show me how you're going to solve this problem now? Or what? Write me an essay about what you found amazing in this. And so that's a pretty good description, actually, what we hope for an education.
Yeah, I like that it that really resonates with me, that idea that, that as we're as we're engaging, as we're learning new things, that that we should be astonished, it kind of kind of grabs on to the idea of curiosity. And then, and then, of course, like sharing those things. Right?
Right. And that's part you know, I mean, this connects, I mean, I actually think a lot of the research on attention that I did, and the practices I saw, are tied into so many other just general good practices of teaching. So attention, I mean, you might actually consider like that. The, the arguments that I'm making about attention and distraction are just another lens of like, looking at how to teach effectively, right? So I'm just trying to kind of provide another avenue into teaching strategies that are recommended through other ways that maybe have become overly familiar to people, right. So like, you know, people hear things like think pair share, and these common active learning strategies that are recommended. And those can become very familiar to us as teachers. Yeah, I've heard about that, I do that etc. Well, here's a new lens, which to look at, like why some of those things are important and valuable. In the same way that like in, you know, two books ago, I tried to do the same thing with looking at cheating, right, like so if we look at the teaching and learning process through the lens of academic integrity and cheating, we can also kind of start to see things in a different way, and maybe come up with some some new strategies and recognize the value of some familiar strategies that we have, as we're trying to teach.
So later on in your book, you're as you're addressing this concept of curiosity, and you talk about course questions, like from Rebecca Zambrano. So a couple that stood out to me were like: what fills you with a sense of wonder?or, what large questions remain unanswered in your field? As a way to frame a course and kind of spark curiosity and students. So specifically, you point out that we can't inherently force students to become curious about a topic. Right? That we can simply kind of provide that environment so that there are ways, ways to provide the environment for students to become curious. So I guess the question is, what are some ways that instructors can create a learning environment that sparks curiosity?
Yeah, I mean, I think what we have to do is sort of foreground the questions and foreground the problems and questions that are, you know, really the fascinating ones of our discipline. And that can be like these kinds of big overarching questions like, you know, what's the best form of government that, you know, creates justice for the most amount of people? Right? These are, I think, questions that people find inherently interesting if they're given a few minutes to think about them and their implications. You know, Michael Sandel, his very famous philosopher Harvard for opening his closet, there's videos available that people can watch, you know, he starts his class with a presentation of this classic the trolley problem and then invites people to think okay, well, what would you do right? And then immediately, you're drawn in like, well, what would I do and then, and then you have to think through the implications. But you know, you can even do it. Like I started my introduction to literature class, typically, with a poem called My Papa's Waltz by Theodore Roethke, which presents this sort of description of this boy remembering when his father after drinking would come home and after a day's work, it would sort of waltzing around the kitchen. And the poem has got like some sort of hidden says, like an astrology memory of a positive experience. And some other hints that there's like violence underlying here, and that there's a negative side. So on the first day of the semester, I show this poem to my students, and I say, okay, you know, here's this poem, and most students have, you know, something like this, they remember, like, they're thinking back about their own childhood, and maybe some negative aspects of their experience with their parents. And I'll say to them, okay, is this a negative? You know, is it is this a poem about child abuse? Or is this a poem about, like, sort of a warm memory? And even though it's just like, you know, a simple little thing, they kind of get interested, they're like, Huh, like, let's see, and like, how would I know? And then they have to, like, Look carefully at the words and that then allows me to introduce, you know, this is what we're going to be doing, we're going to be like, asking these kinds of questions about really interesting poems that speak to all of our life's experiences, and then trying to use the words and the specific details from the poem in order to come up with our answer. So, you know, it can be done in these kinds of big open ended philosophical ways like Michael Sandel does or like can these more kind of smaller ways but to just begin by letting students know this is like an open ended question this there's something interesting here, let's try to explore it together.
It kind of reminds me or calls to mind, John Keller's motivational design. And and his ARCS model. And attention, of course, is one of one of the points that he talks about. And he has some of these process questions like, How do I capture student attention? How do I maintain student attention? And I think thinking through those questions for ourselves, really can provide, provide an opportunity for us to think about, well, what what would help the students to kind of process through this? What's interesting to me, what sparked my attention? And what can I do to help the students kind of get that same spark?
Absolutely. And, you know, again, like the idea that attention here can kind of link us to other, you know, commonly recommended teaching approaches and practices, we know that it teacher enthusiasm helps, right, so like, you know, if the teacher is enthusiastic and interested in the material, it's more likely the students are going to be as well. And this in part comes from, like, the literature on Joint A ttention, right. So like, we know that attention is shared. So like, if you're standing on a street corner, looking up at a building, people are going to come by walking by, and are going to look up at that building, because we tend to, like follow the attention of other people. And likewise, when someone's enthusiastic and interested about something that tends to generate more enthusiasm and interest amongst the people around so, you know, again, we want to just, I think, use kind of see it that if you think about attention, think hard about attention, and what is going to invite the attention of your students, you're going to start to see clear implications for your teaching and connections to maybe other things that you've thought about or learned or know about effective teaching.
You make another point in the book that often there are ebbs and flows in the tempos of our teaching. And you provide some helpful strategies like, like signposting that can help us structure our class. How can instructors build some of these things like signposting into their class sessions?
Signposting for me is a huge one. I don't know, maybe this is just me. But like, I know, whenever I go to like a talk or something, there's always in the back of my mind, I'm thinking like, how long is this going to go? And like, what's like, the main idea here? Or like, how many points is the person going to make, because it's hard, it's hard to like, unless you're actively taking notes, which, you know, we often don't do, like, I'm just listening to like a colleague lecture or something. You know, it's hard to kind of, like, keep yourself oriented, and that that lack of orientation, you know, so your mind starts to drift after a while. So I think a really helpful thing we can do for students is to just sort of make the structure of the experience transparent. And like, the two easiest ways I know how to do that are, you know, if you're in a classroom, put it on the board, like, segment off a little piece of the board and say, okay, there's four parts to class today. And then occasionally, as you're going through, okay, now we're, you know, in part three, that's very easy to do, it takes no extra time. But I think it can really help students, you know, if they're in like, in the middle of a thing, okay, why Yeah, I'm gonna just keep focused here, because I know we're about to do this next, right. And like, so I've got to listen to this, because I know that the next thing is going to be an active thing in which I'm going to have to use what, what the instructor talking about. Now. If you're teaching an online class, you can easily just put something like this on a slide right, and just sort of introduce it at the beginning of the session, and just kind of remind people as you go, right, so remember, there were three parts today. So we're now on our final part, and we'll be done here in about 15 minutes, whatever it might be. You don't have to do it constantly. But I just think the more that we can do, the more we help people kind of stay grounded in the experience. And that grounding is going to kind of keep people from just doing what I what I'm often doing in these like, experiences was like how long is this going to go on again, like those are things that send our minds often to other places.
Now, you also addressed focus in a number of different ways. In the book, which is a topic that really interests me, and you argue that in essence, we can achieve focus in teaching and learning through what you call signature attention activities. How can signature attention activities help our students to focus?
So I mean, the core way to think about a signature attention activities, it's it's designed to kind of renew the attention of your students to something like that's really essential in your discipline. And that is really amazing. But that like familiarity, or just kind of the, The act or process of just being in class over and over again, in a kind of routine way has kind of dulled, it's dulled the, their ability to kind of see the amazingness of this thing or the importance of it. So signature attention activity is designed to kind of really, reopen that sense of wonder that Mary Oliver talked about right to pay attention and be astonished. So that's what a signature attention activity is. And I always get a, you know, a couple examples that I like to give people are, I observed a theologian on my campus who was teaching, and she had students, you know, reading the first few paragraphs of the book of Genesis, which to many of the students was familiar, they like and heard this story before. They knew it, many of them had read it in other maybe like in, you know, they had gone to like a religious school for secondary education. So what she did is she put the students in pairs, had them sit across from one other and read the text aloud, very slowly, stopping after each sentence or two to say, okay, what's important here, like, what do I notice what's, what's unique about this, and I observed her doing this. And just, you know, the, the things that students came up with were really amazing. Then afterwards, when they had their discussion, the students were kind of expressing their wonderment. And like, you know, I've read this text many times before, and I've never thought of this. And it was because she created a structure in which they had the opportunity to look really closely, and she prompted it. So that's what I think signature attention activities are designed to do. And the thing about them is, you know, it's not something you want to do every day, right? Like, they should be kind of seated deliberately throughout the course. So every, you know, two or three weeks or every week, or whatever it might be, how do I want to kind of stop things and do something kind of creative and interesting. And I give, you know, some other examples of what that looks like in the book. But really, they're just kind of creative pedagogical strategies to renew the wonder of your students at the essentials of your course.
That's such a great way to frame some of the things that we do in our classes. I really love that.
And I think they're, they're like a fun, you know, that's, that's part of our teaching is fun, right? to come up with creative new strategies. That's like the best part of teaching, right? And then to be able to kind of think about, all right, what's really going to energize my class today. And, you know, draw inspiration from your fellow teachers from experiences you've had outside of school, whatever it might be, and to try to come up with some kind of new, interesting teaching strategy. That's that's, you know, that's the best part. As far as I'm concerned.
That's what it's all about. Yeah. Good. So my last My last question for you today. Jim, is I know, very often, we, well, even in the subtitle of our podcast, we say, we say practical strategies to overcome distance disruption and distraction. And so we we point to this idea that distraction should be viewed and kind of this as this negative thing. So when, when can when can distraction actually be viewed in a positive light?
Yeah, I mean, so that, you know, we we know that mind wandering actually is not a bad thing. Mind wandering, actually can be a source of creativity. So like, letting your attention just kind of drift. And you know, I've recommended in a chronicle article I wrote for how faculty can sort of improve their attention and abilities that like taking a walk, for example, where there's there's good research that shows that taking a walk, and just letting your mind drift. That can be like a great source of creative thinking. And, you know, if you're stuck in a problem in your desk, and you go and walk up for 30 minutes, just the both the act of walking, but then also kind of getting out in your environment and seeing new things that can actually be really helpful to people. So it's not like we should be this is and this is part of my whole approach, right? Like focus on intention. And don't worry so much about like, when your mind drifts, or the fact that you get distracted sometimes, because that's not always a bad thing. The question we have to ask ourselves is, when is that appropriate, like in the classroom, right? So you know, a student, we might think about the fact that we have such a limited amount of time with our students, that we might favor in that environment, the kinds of things that are going to kind of keep their attention, more focus, but that we want to then encourage them to, you know, when they're doing their research, or when they're trying to come up with solutions to the questions that we asked them that then yeah, absolutely. Go take a walk, let your mind drift or, you know, search, bounce around on the internet for a while, like or look at twitter. Like I've gotten plenty of good ideas for things that I was working on from just kind of random things I saw on social media. So like there's a there's a time and a place where that might work. And maybe even in class, there was a time where we would say, you know, for example, you know, I'm going to introduce a new topic and I want students to tell me, okay, what do people say about this? Like, what are people's common perceptions of that? Great, let's all jump on social media, put in the hashtag and see what comes up. And like that could be cool and fun and interesting to do. So you know, we want to think deliberately about that's, you know, distraction and attention can both actually lead to learning and deeper thinking. My argument all along is just let's pay attention to it and be deliberate about it. And try to consider how attention is going to support their learning and maybe leave some opportunities for a little distraction in mind wandering too.
