About two months ago (of the time the writing of this post), I read this article, which mentioned Peter Liljedahl's book Building Thinking Classrooms.1 I was intrigued straight away. I thought, gee I'm trying to build thinking in my classrooms; what's this Liljedahl guy have to say?
I watched the video, I perused the website, I ordered the book. It's a lot to take in, but I realized that I have been doing similar things for a long time, but hadn't test-driven them systematically in the way Liljedahl did. There are many missing pieces that are just what I have been looking for. However, there is one glaring issue. Not a deal-breaker, but something that needs to be attended to and worked out.
In the introduction, Liljedahl talks about student behavior he observes in the classroom and classifies most of it as "not thinking," even when it looks like the students are engaged. In fact, Liljedahl never really explicitly defines what thinking is; we glean what it is through discussing what it is not. His number one target of behavior that looks like engagement but is not to be considered thinking is mimicking. The whole book provides an elaborate system of avoiding the "I do, we do, you do" model that is prevalent, dominant even, in classrooms.
While he never really makes this statement, problem-solving is thinking for Liljedahl. The kind of trial-and-error, testing hypotheses, finding success through a lot of failure processes that we imagine scientists engaging in on a regular basis is thinking. Pretty much that and that alone. I can see why this might be true for a math class. Math isn't just about numbers. I reckon there are mathematicians out there who would say math isn't about numbers at all (Liljedahl just might be one of them). It's about logic and systems and relationships. Euclid alone has looked on Beauty bare, after all. Liljedahl's book is about teaching math and teaching math alone. He stays in his lane, does not tackle any other subject, and does not suggest that one apply his methodology to other subjects.
Yet I also want my music students to be thinking — problem-solving, hypothesis testing, failing their way to success — and not just regurgitating back what I feed them. I want them creating, honestly. I want to test drive Liljedahl's ideas, because, as I stated above, I have been doing many similar things already; this would be a chance to refine.2
Here's the rub: Mimicking is a huge part of learning music. Enormous. It's also a part of learning to speak a language, learning a sport, learning to act, learning to dance, learning to make art… Can one learn anything kinesthetic without mimicry?
Immediately, you run back into what Liljedahl is talking about. Let's take practicing. Practicing is so often mindless, non-thinking mimicry. You ask students how they are going to fix a problem spot in the music, and 9 out of 10 times you get a shrug, an I-don't-know, and I-guess-I'll-just-practice-it (note the meaningless circular definition, here). Students don't really know what to do in the practice room. I've tried telling them more explicitly and the results aren't great. When I think about what I did as a flutelet,3 I used a metronome to go from slow to fast and I worked out rhythms with the 1-e-&-a system of counting. That was the extent of problem-solving and I was told to do those things by my teachers. Not that they are band things, but it’s not quite the level of thinking we are looking for. That said, I finally got the flute sound I needed, when I found a teacher who could verbally explain in succinct detail what to listen for, what to do physically, what to look for in the mirror, what to sense on the inside, and give a realistic timeline for how long it would take for it all to come together. It took me 17 years to find that person. I don't think I would have figured it out myself eventually, despite my strengths in analyzing and music.
What we want, perhaps, as teachers in kinesthetic fields, is mimicry intimately bound up with critical thinking and problem solving. How accurately are you mimicking? Where and how does it deviate? At what point are you no longer mimicking but the gesture has become your own?4
I think there are two solutions to approaching Building Thinking Classrooms with non-math, kinesthetic activity. The first is from the book itself, but it doesn't appear until chapter 9 under the idea of providing hints and extensions to keep students thinking. When you can keep thinking, you enter a state of flow. Students need activities that keep them in a state of flow. Problem-solving, however, is not the only way to enter a state of flow. Musicians, for example, know this very well — the long, narrative lines of Common Practice classical music create flow; the rhythmic repetitions of dance music create flow; the suspended sounds of ambient music create flow.
This leads to the second way forward: What does thinking look like in your subject area? Defining this, say for dance, would look very different than for math, and it wouldn't involve dry-erase markers for the most part, but I could imagine having groups of three in front of mirrors working out dance "problems" and the teacher adding on ideas as they go from group to group. Then maybe they write ideas out on the mirrors.
This is fraught, too. So much of creating is simply making decisions. Is decision-making thinking? Is choosing thinking? I don't know. I do know it drives me crazy when students spend 30-40 minutes avoiding making a decision, avoiding choosing this and not that, avoiding just picking something and getting started. How do you get people to make first, edit later? How do you get them to understand all that self-censure is a dead end?
I have begun trialling some of the BTC concepts/actions/methods/what-have-you with my students. I'm not quite ready to discuss it all here, but this is not the last you are hearing from me and BTC.
Mr. Neibauer writes quite openly and honestly about his teaching practice — the good, the bad, the ugly, the work both inside and out. I recommend.
Examples of things I do that overlap with BTC: defronting the classroom, working in small groups, thin slicing, self-assessment (though not in the way he does it, which I'm looking forward to trying next school year), fostering student autonomy.
Robert Dick used this term in a master class. When I guffawed at its cuteness, he mistook it as a criticism about approaching something as a beginner and said slowly and kindly, "We were all flutelets at one time."
Julyen Hamilton might say immediately. Lynda Barry might agree.
I piloted BTC with my students 1.5 years ago. I’ve had mixed results. Last year’s students resisted at first, but eventually I think benefited from the practices (defronting, vertical surfaces, small groups, etc). This year, students have actively fought against almost all aspects of school, so it wasn’t a surprise that they hated the thinking tasks. I’ve had to modify a bit to incorporate more deliberate practice, note taking, etc. Still, I’m seeing the benefit of talking about math, collaborating with others. We will see how next year goes.
I’d love to keep chatting with you about BTC as you get more into it. Let me know how it goes!