Notes & References

Notes & References PDFDownload

Introduction

  1.  For more about the state of K-12 education in the U.S., see Charles Fadel, et al, Four-Dimensional Education (Boston: The Center for Curriculum Redesign, 2015) & Ted Dintersmith, What School Could Be (Princeton:  Princeton University Press, 2018).  For more about the state of undergraduate education in the U.S., see Richard Arum and Josipa Roksa, Academically Adrift: Limited Learning on College Campuses (Chicago:  University of Chicago Press, 2011).
  2. Edward O. Wilson, The Future of Life (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2002).
  3. Dintersmith, What School Could Be, p. xiii.
  4. See, e.g., Crisis at the Core: Preparing All Students for College and Work (Iowa City, IA:  ACT, Inc., 20005) or Performance of U.S. 15-Year-Old Students in Science, Reading, and Mathematics Literacy in an International Context:  First Look at PISA 2015 (U.S. Department of Education:  Institute of Education Sciences, 2015).
  5. An archived copy of the report can be found at https://www2.ed.gov/pubs/NatAtRisk/risk.html
  6. Dintersmith, What School Could Be, p. xviii.
  7. Parker J. Palmer, The Courage to Teach: Exploring the Inner Landscape of a Teacher’s Life (San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 1998), p. 41.
  8. Rene Descartes, John Cottingham (Translator), Robert Stoothoff (Translator), Dugald Murdoch (Translator), The Philosophical Writings of Descartes, Vol. 1 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1985).
  9. John Feinberg, Altered Egos: How the Brain Creates the Self (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001) & V.S. Ramachandran and Sandra Blakeslee, Phantoms in the Brain: Probing the Mysteries of the Human Mind (New York: William Morrow, 1998)
  10. John Medina, Brain Rules: 12 Principles for Surviving and Thriving at Work, Home, and School (Seattle:  Pear Press, 2014), p. 92.
  11. David A. Sousa, How the Brain Learns, 2nd ed.  (Thousand Oaks, CA: Corwin Press, Inc.), pp. 108-109.
  12. The research and literature on this are extensive, but for anyone wanting to get a general overview, an accessible book for the non-biologist is Daniel Levitin’s The Organized Mind (New York:  Dutton, 2014).
  13. Andreas Schleicher, quoted in Fadel, et al, Four-Dimensional Education, p. 1.
  14. For more on complex systems, see Stuart Kauffman, At Home in the Universe: The Search for the Laws of Self-Organization and Complexity (New York: Oxford University Press, 1995).
  15. Palmer, The Courage to Teach, p. 10
  16. Palmer, The Courage to Teach, p. 2.

Chapter 1

  1. Heading is taken from the title of Parker Palmer’s To Know as We are Known:  A Spirituality of Education (San Francisco:  Harper & Row, 1983)
  2. The Skinnerian school of thought remains the most unrestrained proponent for this position, and an accessible but fictionalized exploration of the topic can be found in B. F. Skinner’s famous novel, Walden Two (New York: Macmillan Publishing Co., Inc., 1948).  For a more theoretical overview, see E. L. Thorndike’s Psychology and the Science of Education. (New York: Lencke and Buechner, 1949) and B.F. Skinner’s The Technology of Teaching (New York: Appleton-Century-Crofts, 1968).
  3. I am not the first to suggest such a distinction, and as an educator, I am heavily influenced by the work of John Dewey, Maxine Greene, and especially Parker Palmer.
  4. Palmer, The Courage to Teach, p. 97; my emphasis.  The metaphysics here are essentially Alfred North Whitehead’s; see Science and the Modern World (New York: The Macmillan Company, 1925).
  5. Palmer, The Courage to Teach, p. 97.
  6. Medina, Brain Rules, pp. 86-87. 
  7. Palmer, The Courage to Teach, p. 104.
  8. Eleanor Duckworth, “Engaging Learners with Their Own Ideas” in Teaching by Heart: The Foxfire Interviews; ed. Sara Day Hatton (New York: Teachers College Press, 2005), p. 17.
  9. Duckworth, “Engaging Learners with Their Own Ideas,” p. 18.
  10. Palmer, The Courage to Teach, p. 120. 
  11. Palmer, The Courage to Teach, p. 90.
  12. Maxine Greene, Teacher as Stranger: Educational Philosophy for the Modern Age (Belmont, CA:  Wadsworth Publishing Company, 1973).
  13. Vivian G. Paley, “Listening to Children’s Stories” in Teaching by Heart: The Foxfire Interviews; ed. Sara Day Hatton (New York: Teachers College Press, 2005), p. 51.
  14. Donald Graves, “Articulating Learning Experiences that Work” in Teaching by Heart: The Foxfire Interviews; ed. Sara Day Hatton (New York: Teachers College Press, 2005), pp. 44-45.
  15. Catherine Little, “What Matter to Students” in Educational Leadership, Oct. 2001, p. 64.
  16. Graves, “Articulating Learning Experiences that Work,” p. 44.

Chapter 2

  1. Sara Lawrence-Lightfoot, The Essential Conversation: What Parents and Teachers Can Learn from Each Other (New York: Ballantine Books, 2003), p. 30.
  2. Robert Evans, Family Matters: How Schools Can Cope with the Crisis in Childrearing (San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 2004), p. 42.
  3. Evans, Family Matters, pp. 21-34 & pp. 39-43.
  4. Lawrence-Lightfoot, The Essential Conversation, p. 246.
  5. Mahzarin R. Banaji & Anthony G. Greenwald, Blindspot: Hidden Biases of Good People (New York: Bantham Books, 2013).
  6. Bobby Ann Starnes, “Letting Go of the Need to Be Certain, Exploring Possibilities” in Teaching by Heart: The Foxfire Interviews; ed. Sara Day Hatton (New York: Teachers College Press, 2005), p. 92.
  7. Nel Noddings, “Teaching: A Lifelong Moral Quest” in Teaching by Heart: The Foxfire Interviews; ed. Sara Day Hatton (New York: Teachers College Press, 2005), p. 70.
  8. Greene, Teacher as Stranger.
  9. Noddings, Teaching by Heart: The Foxfire Interviews, p. 70.
  10. U.S. Department of Education, National Center for Education Statistics, 2005.
  11. Frederick Buechner; quoted in Palmer, The Courage to Teach, p. 30.
  12. Lawrence-Lightfoot, The Essential Conversation, p. 152.
  13. This excerpt is from a speech I have given on a number of occasions now.  But it was first delivered to Disney’s American Teacher Awards selection committee, June 8, 1998.
  14. Lowell Ganz and Babaloo Mandel, A League of Their Own (Columbia Pictures, 1992).

Chapter 3

  1. Glenn Whitman and Ian Kelleher, Neuroteach: Brain Science and the Future of Education (New York: Rowman & Littlefield, 2016), pp. 16-17.
  2. Feinberg,  Altered Egos; for a more accessible “lay-account” of this research, see Oliver Sacks, An Anthropologist on Mars (New York: Knopf, 1995).
  3. John Fink, “Underdiagnosis of Right-Brain Stroke” in The Lancet, Vol. 366, Issue 9483, 30 July-5 August, 2005; pp. 349-351.
  4. Medina, Brain Rules, p. 94
  5. For an excellent and accessible overview of what took place, see Christopher Stringer and Robin McKie, African Exodus: The Origins of Modern Humanity (New York:  Henry Holt and Company, 1996).
  6. Medina, Brain Rules, pp. 4 & 9.
  7. Medina, Brain Rules, pp. 10-11; Adam Gazzaley and Larry D. Rosen, The Distracted Mind: Ancient Brains in a High-Tech World (Cambridge:  The MIT Press, 2016), pp. 64-65.
  8. Medina, Brain Rules, p. 5; my emphasis.
  9. Medina, Brain Rules, pp. 6-7; Gazzaley and Rosen, The Distracted Mind, p. xiv.
  10. Gazzaley and Rosen, The Distracted Mind, p. 33.
  11. Anil Seth, “Our Inner Universes” in Scientific American, Sept. 2019; pp. 40-47.
  12. Medina, Brain Rules, pp. 169.
  13. Gazzaley and Rosen, The Distracted Mind, p. 24.
  14. All Kinds of Minds is a nationally renowned training program for employing neuroscience’s findings in the classroom.  Details are available at https://www.allkindsofminds.org/.
  15. Gazzaley and Rosen, The Distracted Mind, p. 55.
  16. Medina, Brain Rules, p. 2.
  17. Whitman and Kelleher, Neuroteach, p. 60.
  18. Whitman and Kelleher, Neuroteach, p. 86.
  19. Whitman and Kelleher, Neuroteach, p. 55.
  20. Medina, Brain Rules, p. 65.
  21. Medina, Brain Rules, pp. 63 & 67.
  22. Paul Tough, How Children Succeed (Boston:  Mariner Books, 2012), p. 17; also see Medina, Brain Rules, p. 72, for more on the socio-economic influence on cortisol levels in the brain.
  23. Peter Brown, Henry Roediger III, & Mark McDaniel, Make It Stick: The Science of Successful Learning (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2014), p. 91; Lisa Damour, Under Pressure: Confronting the Epidemic of Stress and Anxiety in Girls (New York:  Ballantine Books, 2019), pp. 3-11.
  24. Gazzaley and Rosen, The Distracted Mind, p. 3.
  25. Gazzaley and Rosen, The Distracted Mind, p. 9.
  26. Gazzaley and Rosen, The Distracted Mind, p. 55-57.
  27. Gazzaley and Rosen, The Distracted Mind, p. 93.
  28. Gazzaley and Rosen, The Distracted Mind, p. 83.
  29. Medina, Brain Rules, p. 131.
  30. Medina, Brain Rules, p. 131.  I must give credit where credit is due; I have borrowed this word spacing idea entirely from Medina’s own use of it.
  31. Medina, Brain Rules, pp. 131-135; Whitman and Kelleher, Neuroteach, p. 38.
  32. Brown, Roediger III, & McDaniel, Make It Stick, p. 7; their emphasis deleted.
  33. Medina, Brain Rules, p. 47.
  34. Medina, Brain Rules, pp. 137, 141, 147, & 155.
  35. Brown, Roediger III, & McDaniel, Make It Stick, pp. 3-8; Medina, Brain Rules, pp. 150-151.
  36. Brown, Roediger III, & McDaniel, Make It Stick, p. 7; their emphasis
  37. Medina, Brain Rules, p. 136.
  38. Carol Dweck, Mindset: The New Psychology of Success (New York:  Ballantine Books, 2016)

Chapter 4

  1. Palmer, The Courage to Teach, p. 10.
  2. Ramachandran and Blakeslee, Phantoms in the Brain & Antonio Battro, Half a Brain Is Enough: The Story of Nico (Cambridge Studies in Cognitive and Perceptual Development) (Cambridge: The University Press, 2000).
  3. Jean Piaget and Bärbel Inhelder, The Psychology of the Child, (New York: Basic Books, 1969).
  4. John Dewey, Democracy and Education: An Introduction to the Philosophy of Education (New York: The Free Press, 1944), p. 80.
  5. Alfie Kohn, “Offering Challenges and Creating Cognitive Dissonance” in Teaching by Heart: The Foxfire Interviews; ed. Sara Day Hatton (New York: Teachers College Press, 2005), p. 103; my emphasis
  6. Dewey, Democracy and Education.
  7. Stuart Palonsky, 900 Shows A Year: a Look at Teaching from a Teacher’s Side of the Desk (New York: Random House, 1986).
  8. Paul J. Lin, A Translation of Lao Tzu’s Tao Te Ching and Wang Pi’s Commentary (Ann Arbor: The University of Michigan Center for Chinese Studies, 1977), p. 49.
  9. Ira Shor, “Teaching and Cultural Democracy” in Teaching by Heart: The Foxfire Interviews; ed. Sara Day Hatton (New York: Teachers College Press, 2005), p. 109.
  10. The Annual Phi Delta Kappa/Gallop Poll Survey; available on-line at http://poll.gallup.com/.
  11. Dintersmith, What School Could Be, p. 96.
  12. Whitman and Kelleher, Neuroteach, p. 55
  13. Linda Gottfredson, “What Do We Know About Intelligence?” in The American Scholar, Winter 1996.
  14. Gary Marx, Ten Trends: Educating Children for a Profoundly Different Future (Arlington: Educational Research Service, 2000); Thomas L. Friedman, “It’s a Flat World, After All” in The New York Times, April 3, 2005.
  15. Shor, “Teaching and Cultural Democracy,” p. 109.
  16. Shor, “Teaching and Cultural Democracy,” p. 109.

Chapter 5

  1. Marshall G. S. Hodgson, The Venture of Islam: Conscience and History in a World Civilization, Vol. 1: the Classic Age of Islam (Chicago, 1974), p. 379; my emphasis; all quotes in this paragraph from same page.
  2. Karen Armstrong, The Spiral Staircase: My Climb Out of Darkness (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2004), p. 284; my emphasis.
  3. Greene, Teacher as Stranger; I provide no single page reference because Greene’s entire book is an exposé on the moral character of teaching and learning.
  4. Thomas Kuhn, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, 2nd ed.  (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1970), p. 2.
  5. Greene, Teacher as Stranger, p. 269.
  6. Armstrong, The Spiral Staircase, p. 298.

Chapter 6

  1. Jeffrey A. Kottler, Stanley J. Zehm, & Ellen Kottler, On Being a Teacher: the Human Dimension, 3rd ed. (Thousand Oaks, Ca: Corwin Press, 2005), p. 22.
  2. Palmer, The Courage to Teach, p. 137.
  3. Palmer, The Courage to Teach, p. 139; my emphasis.
  4. Palmer, The Courage to Teach, p. 140.
  5. Palmer, The Courage to Teach, p. 140.
  6. Roland Barth, Learning by Heart (San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 2004), p. 27.
  7. M. Scott Peck, The Road Less Traveled: A New Psychology of Love, Traditional Values and Spiritual Growth (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1978), p. 81.
  8. Kottler, Zehm, & Kottler, On Being a Teacher, p. 22.
  9. Kottler, Zehm, & Kottler, On Being a Teacher, p. 23.
  10. As a follow-up to what happened that day with Beccy and her classmates, the reader might be interested to know that out of such momentary ashes, she and I would develop one of the strongest mentor-mentee relationship I have had with one of my students, and I was there for her college graduation, her dissertation defense, and, most recently, her wedding.  And for those who would like to know how I ultimately handled the educational situation in this story, each research team was given the chance to explain in their conclusion to their report why the mistakes they had made were, in fact, mistakes, and if they could successfully display the necessary metacognition without any aid from myself, there would be no penalty.
  11. Dweck, Mindset, p. ix.
  12. Dweck, Mindset, Chapter 1.
  13. Dweck, Mindset, p. 47.
  14. Whitman and Kelleher, Neuroteach, p. 43.
  15. Tough, How Children Succeed, p. 183.
  16. Tough, How Children Succeed, p. 121.
  17. Dintersmith, What School Could Be, p. xix; Tough, How Children Succeed, p. 161.
  18. Dweck, Mindset, p. 137.
  19. Dweck, Mindset, pp. 75-76.
  20. Dweck, Mindset, p. 75.
  21. Dweck, Mindset, p. 220.
  22. Barth, Learning by Heart, p. 29.
  23. Barth, Learning by Heart, pp. 31-32.
  24. Barth, Learning by Heart, p. 33.
  25. Barth, Learning by Heart, p. 36.
  26. Barth, Learning by Heart, p. 34.
  27. Whitman and Kelleher, Neuroteach, p. 149.
  28. Lest I be accused of hypocrisy, the irony of my own “telling” about the “doing” has not been lost on me:  it’s why I have used so many scenes from my own teaching to illustrate what student-centered education looks like.
  29. Dintersmith, What School Could Be, p. 210.
  30. National Commission on Excellence in Education, A Nation at Risk: the Imperative for Educational Reform (United States Department of Education:  archived at http://www.ed.gov/pubs/NatAtRisk/risk.html, 1983).
  31. Crisis at the Core, p. 11.
  32. Dintersmith, What School Could Be, p. 70.

Chapter 7

  1. As teachers, we are often privy to some very emotionally sensitive and potentially perilous private information.  Accordingly, this vignette from my career has had any identifying elements deliberately changed, and the real “Brooke” has read it and given me permission to share what is written.
  2. Damour, Under Pressure, p. 58.
  3. See The Baltimore Sun editorial, “Larry Hogan’s legacy: Fighting education with dark money” (Sept. 20, 2019) and for the original announcement of support, visit https://governor.maryland.gov/2016/08/09/governor-senate-president-and-house-speaker-announce-former-usm-chancellor-kirwan-as-chair-of-maryland-education-commission/; the recommendations of the Kirwan Commission can be found at http://dls.maryland.gov/pubs/prod/NoPblTabMtg/CmsnInnovEduc/2019-Interim-Report-of-the-Commission.pdf; the announcement of the 2019 school ratings can be found at https://digitaledition.baltimoresun.com/html5/desktop/production/default.aspx?edid=5c74efdd-71be-49bc-b22b-e3908cfdfd6c; and the data on Marylander’s generally positive views about the potential tax hike can be found at https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/education/a-battle-for-the-soul-of-maryland-baltimore-education-advocates-gear-up-for-kirwan-funding-fight/2019/10/27/ba855db6-f8ef-11e9-8190-6be4deb56e01_story.html.
  4. Evans, Family Matters, pp. 12-13.
  5. Evans, Family Matters, p. xi.
  6. Sherry Turkle, Alone Together: Why We Expect More from Technology and Less from Each Other, 3rd Edition (New York:  Basic Books, 2017); p. 164.
  7. Catherine Steiner-Adair, The Big Disconnect: Protecting Childhood and Family Relationships in the Digital Age (New York:  Harper, 2013); p. 11.
  8. Steiner-Adair, The Big Disconnect, p. 16.
  9. Steiner-Adair, The Big Disconnect, p. 18.
  10. Lawrence-Lightfoot, The Essential Conversation, p. 217.
  11. Barbara Kingsolver, “Somebody’s Baby,” in High Tide in Tucson: Essays from Now or Never (New York: HarperCollins, 1995), pp. 102 & 100.
  12. Palmer, The Courage to Teach, p. 45.
  13. Palmer, The Courage to Teach, p. 182.
  14. Barth, Learning by Heart, p. 186.
  15. While all other stories from my career have been as deliberately authentic as memory recollection allows, this vignette is equally deliberately a composite of several different parent conferences over the many years, and the names are fictious.  Unfortunately, the scene described was not a unique one in my career.
  16. For those unfamiliar with the philosophy behind the “Thou”/“It” distinction in existentialism, see Martin Buber’s I and Thou (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1970).
  17. See Greene’s Teacher as Stranger for an in-depth discussion of this idea.
  18. Palmer, The Courage to Teach, p. 111.
  19. Christopher Leighton, Director of the Institute for Christian and Jewish Studies, speaking at the Day of Rembrance address at Roland Park Country School, Baltimore, Maryland on April 7, 2004.
  20. Turkle, Alone Together, p. 293.
  21. Kingsolver, “Somebody’s Baby,” p. 106.

Chapter 8

  1. Lawrence-Lightfoot, The Essential Conversation, p. 113.
  2. Lawrence-Lightfoot, The Essential Conversation, pp. 144.
  3. The negative impacts of the chronic stress experienced by people of color in the United States on health are starting to be well-documented (https://www.apa.org/topics/health-disparities/fact-sheet-stress).
  4. Dintersmith, What School Could Be, p. 103.
  5. Banaji & Greenwald, Blindspot, p. 138.
  6. Banaji & Greenwald, Blindspot, pp. 57 & 118.
  7. Banaji & Greenwald, Blindspot, p. 135.
  8. Banaji & Greenwald, Blindspot, Chapter 4. 
  9. Banaji & Greenwald, Blindspot, p. 146; the research on bias is quite extensive now, and for anyone wishing to pursue a better understanding of the topic and even of his, her, or their own personal hidden biases, numerous implicit association tests are available at Harvard University’s Project Implicit (https://implicit.harvard.edu/implicit/takeatest.html).  But as the web site itself points out:  be forewarned that you might not like what you find.
  10. Barth, Learning by Heart, p. 28; my emphasis.
  11. Barth, Learning by Heart, p. 164.
  12. Just to provide some perspective, approximately 17% of the children in this country now live below the poverty line, and about 43% of them rely on the federal Free or Reduced-price Lunch (FRPL) program for a daily meal.  One in 30 children in this country are homeless, and the impact of the opioid crisis has resulted in an estimate 8.7 million children (and growing) living in a household with a substance abuse problem (https://www.census.gov/; https://www.aap.org/en-us/Pages/Default.aspx).
  13. Tough, How Children Succeed, p. 85.
  14. Whitman and Kelleher, Neuroteach, p. 17; the skills are:  critical thinking, curiosity, collaboration, adaptability, initiative, communication, information analysis.
  15. Dintersmith, What School Could Be, p. xvi; my emphasis.
  16. Dintersmith, What School Could Be, p. xix.
  17. Dintersmith, What School Could Be, p. 70.
  18. Barth, Learning by Heart, p. 164.
  19. Audre Norton, Sister Outsider (Berkley, CA: The Crossing Press, 1984), pp. 110.
  20. Tough, How Children Succeed, p. 85.
  21. Tough, How Children Succeed, p. 85.
  22. Barth, Learning by Heart, p. 185.
  23. Tough, How Children Succeed, p. 184.
  24. Tough, How Children Succeed, p. 85.
  25. Tough, How Children Succeed, p. 184.
  26. A google search can currently bury in you stories; here’s one from a reliable news source: https://www.fnlondon.com/articles/dealmaking-on-autopilot-investment-bankers-toy-with-automation-20190107
  27. Palmer, The Courage to Teach, p. 182.
  28. See Kira J. Baker-Doyle’s Transformative Teachers:  Teacher Leadership and Learning in a Connected World (Cambridge:  Harvard Education Press, 2017) as well as Dintersmith’s What School Could Be.

Chapter 9

  1. Gazzaley and Rosen, The Distracted Mind, p. xiv.
  2. Gazzaley and Rosen, The Distracted Mind, p. xiv.
  3. Medina, Brain Rules, p. 115. 
  4. Medina, Brain Rules, pp. 116-117.
  5. Gazzaley and Rosen, The Distracted Mind, pp. 11 & 79.
  6. Gazzaley and Rosen, The Distracted Mind, p. 78.
  7. Medina, Brain Rules, p. 117.
  8. Gazzaley and Rosen, The Distracted Mind, p. 111; their original emphasis.
  9. Medina, Brain Rules, pp. 58 & 105; Gazzaley and Rosen, The Distracted Mind, pp. 124 & 128; Turkle, Alone Together, p. 163.
  10. Gazzaley and Rosen, The Distracted Mind, p. 108.
  11. Ana Homayoun, Social Media Wellness: Helping Tweens and Teens Thrive in an Unbalanced Digital World. (Thousand Oaks: Corwin Press, 2018), pp. 5-6.
  12. Gazzaley and Rosen, The Distracted Mind, p. 108; Ana Homayoun, Social Media Wellness, p. 5; Gazzaley and Rosen, The Distracted Mind, p. 11; Ana Homayoun, Social Media Wellness, pp. 5 & 66.
  13. Evans, Family Matters, p. 4; my emphasis.
  14. Evans, Family Matters, p. 5.
  15. Steiner-Adair, The Big Disconnect, pp. 52, 58 & 197, 250; Turkle, Alone Together,   pp. 168, 177-179; Ana Homayoun, Social Media Wellness, pp. 77-79.
  16. Gazzaley and Rosen, The Distracted Mind, p. 126.
  17. Where students are showing up without the “traits of persistent learners and original thinkers eager to engage;” Steiner-Adair, The Big Disconnect, p. 105.
  18. For further information about this project, see my chapter in “It Is the ‘Little Things’ That Can Change the Way You Teach” in Exemplary Science in Grades 9–12: Standards-Based Success Stories. (Arlington: NSTA Press, 2005), pp. 1-9.
  19. In fact, as a historical note, the famous Medieval philosopher and theologian, Thomas Aquinas, was nick-named “the dumb Ox” for his large size and habit of remaining quiet.
  20. Crisis at the Core, p. i.
  21. Evans, Family Matters, pp. 114-116.
  22. Steiner-Adair, The Big Disconnect, p. 5.
  23. Palmer, The Courage to Teach, p. 45.
  24. Gazzaley and Rosen, The Distracted Mind, p. 112.
  25. Ana Homayoun, Social Media Wellness, pp. 70-71; Steiner-Adair, The Big Disconnect,  p. 54; Turkle, Alone Together, p. 172.
  26. Ana Homayoun, Social Media Wellness, p. 70.
  27. Palmer, The Courage to Teach, p. 103.
  28. Ana Homayoun, Social Media Wellness, p. 71. 
  29. In fact, “our devices are ever more closely coupled to our sense of our bodies and minds” (Turkle, p. 167) to the degree that a third of people even check their phones while using the bathroom and 9% even do so during sex (Gazzaley & Rosen, pp. 11 & 108).  As Catherine Steiner-Adair summarizes it well, “our digital devices have finally come to define us” (p. 4).
  30. As with my parent conference vignette in Chapter 7, this one is also deliberately a composite of the many similar conversations I have had over the past 10 years, with fictious names to protect privacy.
  31. Evans, Family Matters, p. 118.
  32. Ana Homayoun, Social Media Wellness, pp. 29, 41, & 150.
  33. Steiner-Adair, The Big Disconnect, p. 69.
  34. Steiner-Adair, The Big Disconnect, p. 197.
  35. Turkle, Alone Together, p. 172
  36. Steiner-Adair, The Big Disconnect, pp. 52, 58, 196.
  37. Ana Homayoun, Social Media Wellness, p. 16.
  38. Steiner-Adair, The Big Disconnect, pp. 51, 63; Ana Homayoun, Social Media Wellness, p. 17.
  39. Turkle, Alone Together, p. 163; Steiner-Adair, The Big Disconnect, p. 5; Ana Homayoun, Social Media Wellness, p. 139.
  40. Damour, Under Pressure, pp. 131-135.
  41. Steiner-Adair, The Big Disconnect, p. 11.
  42. Steiner-Adair, The Big Disconnect, p. 217.
  43. Ana Homayoun, Social Media Wellness, p. 40.
  44. Ana Homayoun, Social Media Wellness, p. 165
  45. Gazzaley and Rosen, The Distracted Mind, p. 170.
  46. Damour, Under Pressure, p. xvi.
  47. There has been some recent push-back from the research community that the studies of digital technology’s impact have been strictly observational and have not met the rigor of controlled experiments (see Lydia Denworth, “The Kids are All Right” in Scientific American, Nov. 2019, pp. 44-49).  However, I agree with David Katz, director of the Yale-Griffin Prevention Research Center at Yale School of Public Health, when he points out that  “the idea that you can’t learn something from observation is glaringly false.  Think about telling kids not to run with scissors.  We don’t have randomized controlled trials of kids running with scissors, do we? We just know from observation that it’s dangerous.” AARP Bulletin, Dec. 2019, Vol. 60, No. 10, p. 33.
  48. Gazzaley and Rosen, The Distracted Mind, pp. 11, 111, 124, & 127.
  49. Ana Homayoun, Social Media Wellness, pp. 8, 69, 110, and 113.
  50. Ana Homayoun, Social Media Wellness, p. 79.
  51. Turkle, Alone Together, pp. 177-179.
  52. Gazzaley and Rosen, The Distracted Mind, p. 170.
  53. Ian Leslie, Curious: The Desire to Know and Why Your Future Depends on It (New York: Basic Books, 2014), p. 115.
  54. Ian Leslie, Curious, p. 123.
  55. Turkle, Alone Together, p. 240.
  56. Turkle, Alone Together, p. xxii.
  57. Turkle, Alone Together, p. 293.

Conclusion

  1. I have always liked this analogy, and in those horrible moments in the classroom when nothing seems to be going right, I have been known to start repeating to myself like a mantra: I’m planting dates; I’m planting dates; I’m planting dates….
  2. Wilson, The Future of Life, p. 23.  Depending on your choice of mathematical equations you use, this number can range from 3.5 to 5.5 Earths, but 4 is the most commonly used number in the environmental science literature.
  3. E. O. Wilson, “The Bottleneck” in Scientific American, Feb. 2002; pp. 83-91.
  4. Peter Ward, The End of Evolution: On Mass Extinctions and the Preservation of Biodiversity (New York: Bantam Books, 1994).
  5. Sara Day Hutton, ed., Teaching by Heart: The Foxfire Interviews (New York: Teachers College Press, 2005), p. 62.  Indeed, this experience of isolation and lack of support on the part of teachers was a central theme of the educational journal, The Active Learner, for its entire five-year life-span; see also pp. 53, 63, 75, 87, 93, 102, 108, 114, 126, & 133.
  6. Paley, “Listening to Children’s Stories,” p. 55.
  7. Palmer, The Courage to Teach, p. 171; original emphasis.
  8. Seymour B. Sarason, Letters to a Serious Education President, 2nd ed. (Thousand Oaks, CA:  Corwin Press, 2006), p. 110.

Afterword

  1. Norris K. Smith, “Medicine & the New Time” in Washington University School of Medicine Outlook Magazine, vol. 20, no. 3; pp.14—19.
  2. Kottler, Zehm, & Kottler, On Being a Teacher, p. 23.
  3. Paley, “Listening to Children’s Stories,” p. 51; my emphasis.
  4. Joseph Joubert, Pensées, trans. by Katharine Lyttelton (New York:  Dodd, Mead & Co. 1899), 18.18.
  5. Palmer, The Courage to Teach, p. 63; my emphasis.
  6. Barth, Learning by Heart, p. 185.

Additional Reading

While the following works required no formal citing in any specific chapter, their content has had significant impact on the thinking informing the ideas and arguments I present.

  • Paul De Palma, “http://www.when_is_enough_enough?.com–Putting Microcomputers in Their Place” in The American Scholar, Winter 1999.
  • Paulo Freire, Pedagogy of the Oppressed (New York:  Continuum Publishing Company, 1970).
  • Carol Gilligan, In a Different Voice: Psychological Theory and Women’s Development (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1982).
  • Michael Harris, The End of Absence: Reclaiming What We’ve Lost in a World of Constant Connection (New York:  Current, 2014).
  • Joyce Kaser, Susan Mundry, Katherine E. Stiles, & Susan Loucks-Horsley, Leading Every Day: Actions for Effective Leadership, 3rd ed. (Thousand Oaks, CA:  Corwin Press, 2013).
  • Pepi Leistyna, Arlie Woodrum, & Stephen A. Sherblom, Breaking Free:  The Transformative Power of Critical Pedagogy (Cambridge: Harvard Educational Review, 1996).
  • Ramin Mojtabai, Mark Olfson and Beth Han, “National Trends in the Prevalence and Treatment of Depression in Adolescents and Young Adults” in Pediatrics, December 2016, 138 (6) e20161878.
  • Ken O’Connor, A Repair Kit for Grading: 15 Fixes for Broken Grades, 2nd ed. (Boston: Pearson, 2011).
  • Parker J. Palmer, Let Your Life Speak: Listening for the Voice of Vocation (San Francisco:  Jossey-Bass, 2000).
  • Sharon Parks, The Critical Years: The Young Adult Search for a Faith to Live By (San Francisco:  Harper & Row, 1986).
  • Robert Quinn, Deep Change: Discovering the Leader Within (San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 1996).
  • Ira Shor, Critical Teaching & Everyday Life (Chicago:  The University of Chicago Press, 1987).
  • Ira Shor & Paulo Freire, A Pedagogy for Liberation: Dialogues on Transforming Education (Granby, MA: Bergin & Garvey Publisher, Inc., 1987).