Eight Simple Tips for Better Army Presentations

Why is it so funny to watch people fall asleep when they are trying to stay awake? I have a video of my then-two-year-old sitting upright and falling asleep. His head bobs down, wakes him up, and his eyelids smoothly lower again. Hilarious!

Adults are even funnier, though the motions are the same. It happened yesterday during what the Army calls "briefings." To form, the presenter wasn't particularly skilled at gaining attention, keeping it, or getting us "gazers" involved in learning.

Now I'll admit, having congressionally mandated classes with attendance enforced by the Uniform Code of Military Justice isn't a recipe for classroom innovation. But for those of you who want to be effective at dispensing knowledge that your students will actually take away from a class they might appreciate and remember in a good way, here are eight super easy tips to incorporate into your military presentations. If you're Army, you might even say they're "too easy."

1. Don't Apologize
I hear this all the time-- instructors say they're sorry the students have to sit through this. They wish they didn't have to, but those darn bureaucrats have insisted this class be given, and that it last six hours. They are admitting defeat up front, and if the presenter doesn't believe in the material, then students probably won't either. If you apologize for the course material or for having to teach it, you've lost an opportunity to make an impact. Sell your material!

2. Move Around
"The sage on the stage," is how we refer to it in the civilian world, and derisively so. No human wants to watch you talk in front of them for hours on end. Most people can barely handle a concert for more than two hours, and Taylor Swift puts on a quite a show, I'm told. What's her secret? She moves! So should you, it makes a big difference. Try pacing up and down the aisles. You can talk just as easily from the back of the room as from the front, so mix it up.

3. Follow the 20-minute Rule
Also mix it up by shutting up. Just as we don't want to see you in the same spot the entire class time, we don't want to listen to you the whole time, either. Don't do the same thing for more than 20 minutes. There are various rules of thumb for how long different age groups can pay attention, but 20 minutes has been a good limit in my experience teaching. It's not that you aren't a subject matter expert, it's just that you don't need to prove it. Remember, your objective is for your students to learn something. After 20 minutes, most people are just going to stop listening. Unless you're Taylor Swift.

4. Track your Teacher-Student Talk Ratio
But if other people are talking, your clock resets, so get others involved. If a student can say the same thing you would have said, let her. And other people can read, so let them. And there are quite a few experts among these classes. You're not teaching calculus, so get over yourself and let others do some of the teaching. I like to keep the student participation level at about half the time, and I can tell if I'm hogging it because attention starts to wane. So track and adjust.

5. Ask Questions
One way to get students involved is to ask questions. It sounds simple, because it is! But I'm always amazed at how seldom presenters do it. One teaching model demands that teachers ask questions about five times a minute! That's hard, and it might be excessive. But generally more is better. And your questions can be leading, so make them part of your teaching, as in, "What are some things you can do to improve communication with your kids?" I'll bet that all the answers in the textbook will be identified by the audience.

6. Trigger Various Learning Styles
The reason people fall asleep in these classes is because they are just sitting there! It's harder to fall asleep if they are doing something. And, crazy thing, doing is a better way to learn. Just ask Taylor Swift. (Okay, going a little long on the TS references.) Learning styles are probably arbitrary constructs, but they help good teachers vary their instruction. Have students talk to one another. Have them write. Have them read. Have them watch. Have them move. You'll activate various strengths with each activity, and your students won't have the opportunity to fall asleep.

7. Use Examples
Knowledge has to be generalized. I get it. But people don't think in generalities. They think in terms of specific, unique circumstances. Use those examples to make your point. Most people do this, but some instructors need a reminder. So here's an example: the guy giving a financial management class today talked about "when a company was overvalued, the stock did such and such..." Which company? How about telling us what happened to the value of Apple stock in 1997? Or, since you're taking my suggesting to heart (#6) ask a participant to share his example of a particular stock purchase and describe what it meant. Taylor Swift would approve (alright, that's enough!)

8. Give an Assessment
Instruction is one of those things that should be measured. Administer a quiz or survey, or some other tool that will help students evaluate whether they got something value from it.

Most people will have to present at some point. Please, for the sake of our vets who have served, let's get these post-deployment presentations on track. Something about Taylor Swift should emphasize my point. 

The Responsibility of Learning

The following originally appeared in the blog "Musings of a Factotum" on August 18, 2008.

I am an American Soldier.

My brief experience in the United States Army has been eye-opening. It strikes me with awe to think of the vast resources with which we are trained to fulfill our mission, and the professionalism with which most soldiers approach it. It has also given me plenty to think about in terms of learning.

Whether it's called "training," or "learning," the process is the same. What I get at the Defense Information School (DINFOS) depends upon the same fundamental principles as what a third-grader gets in his science lesson, or what a high school math teacher tries to give her students in a geometry lesson.

Given that an organizational goal is that its students learn some set of information, the entire responsibility of the affair rests on the organization. When students are learning, or don't meet the programmed outcomes, then at least one of the things designed to produce the outcome has failed. In standards-based teaching system, instruction is planned from the end goal. Each instructional unit is designed to bridge the gap that exists between students' abilities and the standard ability.

For example, if I want to teach someone how to create a header in MS Word, and I plan the instruction, then I would expect anyone who received my instruction to be able to create a header. If the student attempted to follow my instruction and couldn't create the header, then some part of my instruction was faulty. There is no other way around it.

Teachers have a hard time coming to grips with this reality. They want to attribute all of the gaps in learning to students. True, some student behaviors contribute to a lack of learning, but instruction can resolve such a lack.

The military instructors at DINFOS need to learn the lesson even more. If a certain instructional strategy consistently has bad reviews and results in poor knowledge acquisition, then it should be abandoned. When do teachers continue to put their faith in methods that yield such dismal results?

Teaching at Musa Zajmi

The following originally appeared in the blog "Musings of a Factotum" on June 6, 2009

Serving a peacekeeping mission to Kosovo has given me many opportunities, and a recent one I had was to reconnect with my civilian profession: teaching.

I never realized how much I enjoyed teaching, especially math, until I began a career as a full-time professional Soldier. I left the classroom over two years ago, just days before I shipped to Basic Training. Since then I have worked as a consultant, visiting many classrooms and students, but not having any to call my own.

Last Friday visited another classroom, at a school called Musa Zajmi in Gjilane, Kosovo. I had asked the month before if I could teach a math class, and the teachers there graciously assented. It was a bit unnerving—I had never taught to a classroom full of Albanian-speaking students—but I feel very at ease teaching, so I quickly found myself lost in the moment.

Soldiers looking for improvement would conduct an After Action Review following any drill, exercise, or mission. Good teachers do the same thing. Here are a few things that I noted.

Three things I did well were in the areas of preparation and presentation. First, I followed a lesson plan that has served me well in my years of teaching my own students and evaluating other teachers. It consisted of a warm up phase, a short presentation, practice, and a closure. Even in the short classes (30 minutes) I was able to keep students interested by moving from one activity to the next frequently and efficiently.

My second strength was to have everything written for the students. I had everything translated into Albanian (I even learned a few phrases myself) so that student could check what I was saying against the written version.

Finally, I had a specific objective that corresponded with our activity and end-of-lesson exercise. Students understood that my expectations of them were very narrow, and they didn’t have to concern themselves with peripheral facts and formulas.

A few things I could improve on are: creating a small homework task that was more tightly-aligned to the objective, having students identify themselves, and being clearer about instructions during the lesson.

The last point is a particularly important one. Clarity is the most important trait instruction can have (after accuracy, I suppose). I did my best, given the circumstances, to make my intentions crystal clear to these Kosovar students. But even small things, like asking for volunteers, can get muddled and have cumulatively detrimental effects on learning. For instance, in an attempt to get a variety of students up to the board I employed a simple strategy that I have used in the U.S., which was to require the student at the board to choose the next participant. In my experience, students choose their friends or others who might not want to go to the board. 

What happened at Musa Zajmi was that students chose their classmates who also raised their hands. Thus, only the most confident students got to the board. I could have been more explicit about my desire to see a greater variety of students demonstrating at the chalkboard.

I had a lot of fun, and practiced a skill that is too easily lost in my case. I want to remain sharp, reflective, and progressive. Teaching at Musa Zajmi helped me do it.

Are Soldiers and Teachers that Similar?

My two chosen life endeavors seem very different. I began teaching around 1999, then abrubtly joined hte Army in 2007. The worlds sometimes feel very far apart.

But I never really left teaching. Whether I am in a reserve status and in a civilian classroom, or activitated and doing the NCO thing, I teach.

You see, I believe that delivering instruction and training is at the heart of the NCO’s role in the Army. Although leading troops and supporting operations are critical jobs for non-commissioned officers, training and mentoring never stops, even during operations.

There has been a long debate about what makes for effective teaching. With the billions of dollars that are poured into K -12 public education in the United States, valid and reliable findings about the return on that investment has interested administrators, parents, and taxpayers for some time. Only recently have studies and measures been developed to answer the questions that get at the heart of what it means to be an effective teacher.

Ronald Ferguson, Senior Lecturer in Education and Public Policy at Harvard’s Graduate School of Education, has made some important discoveries about how to measure teacher effectiveness. Traditionally, teachers have been evaluated by their superiors (much like NCOs are) during formal observations. Lately, they have been evaluated according to their students’ performance on tests. Ferguson wanted to know if student evaluations could be used to reliably measure teacher effectiveness. Through his own research and studies commissioned by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, the evaluation tools he created predicted “value added” on student learning quite reliably. In other words, the surveys that students used to evaluate their teachers articulate the variables that indicate teacher effectiveness.

Ferguson’s measure consists of what he calls the “Seven Cs,” and just a quick description of those constructs shows that a good teacher is synonymous with a good NCO. They are the things good trainers must do when delivering instruction; they must: Care, Control, Clarify, Challenge, Captivate, Confer, and Consolidate.

Let's just consider (another C!) the first one.

Caring refers to the lengths to which NCOs will go to ensure that their students learn. It shows investment in the students. It is, as the NCO Creed states, placing the needs of students above his or her own. Ferguson puts it this way: “Caring goes beyond “niceness”; caring teachers work hard and go out of their way to help. They signal to their students, “I want you to be happy and successful, and I will work hard to serve your best interest.”

We understand that leaders need to show compassion and the type of care that servant leadership demands. Retired First Sgt. Cameron Wesson explains that, “Soldiers can sense when their leaders genuinely care about them and this builds trust. This trust forges a bond between all and solidifies the team. That bond is all-encompassing.”

So would a good teacher make a good NCO, or vice versa? Do the other Cs apply to good Soldier leadership? Think about the best NCOs you know, and tell me if I'm right. 

Leading through Communication, Marine Style

It was beautiful in its simplicity.

Yesterday, on a routine training exercise (as routine as anything can be in a combat zone) I watched a young Marine captain direct a handful of aricraft as they delivered dozens of rounds of ordnance on a helpless rock in southern Afghanistan.

It wasn't the explosions that made the greatest impact on me, but the captain's calm and crystal clear style of communication.

Everyone followed his orders-- it was obvious to me that he had complete control of his team, the Georgian troops who were with him to ensure security of the training site, the Army aviation observers, and our small public affairs attachment.

As we marched a few hundred meters from the infill site to our designated training area, Apaches flying protectively overhead, I couldn't help but marvel that I was actually here. Over the past 12 months I have read extensively on the Afghan War, about how men have fought and died doing pretty much what I was doing at that moment. I  wasn't under any delusion that an attack was imminent-- Kandahar is now as secure as any place in Afghanistan. And, well, the Apaches. But it was a moment of mindfulness about how acutely real my situation was.

At any rate, my assignment was to document the mission of this Marine captain. His precise task is less important to the story than how he led.

It is cliche to note the importance of communication in military operations. The tragedy of cliche is that it represents a truism that has lost all meaning. Communication couldn't be more important when you are dropping ordnance from aircraft. Yet to most Soldiers, to communicate well means talking louder and longer.

The Marine captain proved otherwise, doing basic things that resulted in smoother operating.

He repeated things that weren't clear.

He asked those he worked with to restate what he said.

He asked his subordinates to explain to him what they understood their tasks to be.

He asked seniors if they understood the terminology he was using.

All this he did while choreographing some complex airstrikes with pilots he couldn't see and probably never met. Perhaps he did this precisely because of the complexity of his tasks, because he neither saw nor knew the those men who were blasting away at the mountainside.

He was also very calm, and I never saw him so much as sneer at one of his men for saying the wrong thing, for asking a question, or for taking too long to think about how to formulate an aswer.

If he wasn't so busy at fighting the counterinsurgency, I'd ask him to write for "My Public Affairs."

(Photo by Marine Cpl. Joseph Scanlan)

Can Soldiers (or Students) be Trusted to Evaluate Their Superiors?

Those Harvard boys have it all figured out.

Dr. Ronald Ferguson, a professor at Harvard, has developed a measurement of teacher effectiveness. Since I generally like teachers, and since I generally like effectiveness (I suppose you could come up with a host of counterexamples to that, such as effectiveness of bacteria growing behind my ear, which I don't like; generally I associate effectiveness with things that are presumed to be good), I gave it a read. Back on track now.

Ferguson asks students to be the arbiters.

If teachers were military leaders, and students their subordinates, would such a concept work to build a better Army? Too easy, a too-enthusiastic NCO might say.

A less enthusiastic but more analytical family member of mine runs a well respected education consulting firm. Big contracts and big stakes. One of the things he does, per requirements under No Child Left Behind, is to help failing schools develop plans for improvement. These plans range from very simple to very elaborate, but the good ones have one thing in common: they begin with an audit of education practices.

And out of all the crazy ways to figure out what was happening in classrooms, the easiest, and probably most accurate, was to ask the students.

Simply ask them.

We know this instinctively in Army operations. We conduct AARs. But if we know how to assess operations, why don't we do it the same way for leadership?

So back to this Ferguson fellow, who has developed a survey for students that he calls Tripod, which measures three things: content knowledge, pedagogical skill, and relationships. These broad ideas are broken down into more specific constructs, and assessed with multiple measures. But I am intensely intrigued by the three broad themes.

First, I need to say that what makes for an effective Soldier-leader tends to be the same things that make for a good teacher. I have always believed that, and maybe its because those things are common to good people. (On the other hand, I think one could be a really good firefighter or an excellent symphonic conductor and still be a bad teacher or Soldier; I recently read of MAJ Jim Gant, whom David Petraeus reportedly called, "the perfect counterinsurgent." Turns out Gant was a pretty bad Soldier, and a jackass of the first order.)

Ferguson's Tripod hones in on three areas of expertise required of teachers.

Content Knowledge. Pedagogical Skill. Relationships.

Aren't those the same things we demand of our military leaders?

The best NCOs, if you ask any Soldier, are those who demonstrate competency in their job and general warrior tasks, skill in training others, and an ability to work with a team of subordinates and seniors-- content knowledge, pedagogical skill, and relationships. The Tripod fits almost perfectly.

As for the crux of Ferguson's measurement system, student surveys-- what if NCOs were assessed in part by subordinate input on those constructs?

Higher education runs on student satisfaction measures. We implicitly trust young men and women to give an honest appraisal of their professors' performance. We even expect as much in our military education system, to some degree, and in AARs. Those closest to the impact of leadership ought to have a say in judging it, no?

Revolutionary soldiers sometimes elected field grade officers, and while the selection process for officers is only tangential, it demonstrates the idea that followers have a vested interests in the type of leadership they get.

Wrapping up, because this post is quickly nearing record-length-- the end.

(Photo by SSG John Etheridge-- In a ceremony held at Kandahar Airfield, Afghanistan, seven NCOs are inducted into the Sergeant Audie Murphy Club May 24, 2014.)

It's Easy if You Know It

What can you learn about academic subjects from training for a two-mile run? I had an epiphany about it while I was doing interval training: one of the biggest benefits from doing intervals is to break the 2-mile run (in the case of the Army Physical Fitness Test) into more manageable parts.

"Too easy" is a common, if maddeningly trite, Army phrase. But as all overused and under pondered phrases, it has a root in truth. Running a good 2-mile is fairly easy when you realize that running 800 meters at a reasonable pace is a piece of cake. Then, all you have to do is string four of those together.

Too easy.

More frequently uttered in a math classroom than the above Army training is, "this is hard!"

When teaching any skill or motivating someone to complete a difficult task, good teachers and leaders will make it seem easy. I used to respond to my math students, "it's easy if you know it."

So true. There are a few things instructors can do to make something seem easy:

1. Disassemble the problem into easy components. This is the essence of teaching math. One step at a time, then move on to more complex variation on one type of problem. Teachers get their students in the zone when they can relate something back to a concept that students have mastered.

2. Articulate to students when they know something. When someone is learning something, they don't know what they don't know.The corollary is that they don't know when they know it. Teachers need to identity that a-ha moment so students can build on the confidence of moving in the right direction. Also, success is partly a mindset, one that has to be developed.

3. Celebrate progress and accomplishment. Praise goes a long way, especially when one is struggling to learn tough stuff.

Now that I have left teaching for the time being, I'll be doing the NCO business to leading and teaching younger Soldiers. We'll probably even be doing a lot of training and assisting of Afghan forces one we get over there.

We'll see how easy that is. 

Celebrate My PA's 100th Post!

I just wrapped up COMM 5610 at the University of Utah. What a ride. I can't tell you too much about the class without violating OpSec (and student privacy), but I can render an overall verdict of...GUILTY! Or innocent. Whichever one means the class was great.

But what does that have to do with "a teacher's education in the Army?" you ask. You can't hold me to that title forever, I say. But in this case, it actually relates.

One of the themes of this blog has been teaching and learning, both in the civilian classroom and in Army training programs, particularly where the two overlap. But if you have read even three Teaching and Learning posts, you'll know that most of my stuff has to do with high school, not college learners. This is a whole new rodeo for me.

So I'm going to be giving it some good thought. But one that can't escape me is the need for clear objectives. When we're talking politics, war, or any subject offered at this fine university, it's imperative to be clear on objectives. What is the intended outcome? I'm sure my students will agree that I need to work on that part.

A few highlights:

• We had a  major general visit the class. There aren't many of those around, so we were pretty fortunate. 
• We also had a retired major and an active major teleconference in. I need to get other branches. 
• My students are writing about some really cool topics for their final papers, including network-centric war, SDI, drones, social media use during conflict, and the greening of the US Navy. More on those topics later. 

So this is the hardest post I have written. I feel a little like Tim Brown at his 99th touchdown reception. Waiting for the Hall of Game guaranteeing 100th must have been nerve racking. Now I know exactly how it feels to finally get there.

Is It Better to Be Reliable or Excellent?

A few weeks ago, I paid homage to Maj. Gen. John Schofield for his insight into what makes Soldiers successful. To be more specific, he referred to battlefield success as "reliability."

I instinctively concluded that reliability was a goal for every organization that required performance from individuals.

Then I was challenged. From a reader:

Interesting that you point out that the goal is "reliability" as opposed to something else like "excellence" or "commitment" or "creativity" or "sheer awesomeness." I think that sometimes in a non-battle situations, I'd actually prefer someone who's a little bit unreliable but capable of flashes of creativity and greatness.

It was a good challenge, but ultimately, the call on the field was upheld.

First, some concessions. Semantically, "excellence" could imply reliability. Some Army types would offer some rigamarole about how excellent means reliable and vice versa. 

But the way the reader framed it makes it clear that it's possible to be excellent inconsistently. We know that there are pro athletes who are capable of excellence, or who can dominate one night, then not show up the next. As a teacher, I had many students with those flashes, or even longer glows, of brilliance, but who were hopelessly uncommitted.

When I coached, I would have loved to have amazingly skilled athletes. I rarely had them. Much more valuable to me were the reliable ones, on whom I could count for dependable performances. Slow and steady wins the race, as the saying goes. 

In battle, General Scholfield knew, dependability and consistency is also more important than brilliance, if leaders don't know when it will show up.

How do Army leaders cultivate consistency, then? Drills and procedures. Their methods offer lessons to teachers who want consistency in the classroom, too. Best practice is rife with drills and procedures (without all the yelling).

That gets to Schofield's point: discipline-- based on drills, I presume-- is best developed by mutual respect. In that regard, the Soldiers can take notes from good teachers. 

Yeah, yeah, we want to cultivate creativity, of course. We want our students to think as individuals. All that, of course, goes without even saying. What does need to be said is that none of those lofty goals are possible without a foundation of consistency, dependability, and yes, reliability.

As a teacher, I believe that all learners are capable of excellence. But just like the coach that needs consistent play from his athletes, I know that they will achieve excellence only if put into the right position. 

So my readers were once again sage: By a 15 to one ratio, they also said that reliability was preferable.

I knew I could count on them. 

Clarity, Part 3: Let's Be Honest

Ever feel like you don't need to know anything?

I sure hope not. It's hard to do your job or move ahead when you're in the dark. As a junior Soldier, I was often frustrated when my leaders wouldn't shed light on what was going on.

There is just nothing so infuriarting as waiting excessively for your table/ appointment/ date to show up, without being explained the delay.

In the military, there's this really annoying phrase that covers all lapses in communication: "need to know."

Leaders who don't feel like spilling the beans will tell others that the situation is on a need to know basis.

Bull.

Well, sometimes it's not bull, of course. There are security concerns in the Army, but it's such an easy phrase to fall back on, and it masks all sorts of communication dysfunctions.

Example, we have to do this paperwork again. We want to know why. The leader just says that we don't need to know why. Come to find out, the leader lost the original documents.

Just be honest, folks! If you lost something, or screwed something up, tell us. We might be grumpy in our compliance, but we will comply for the sake of the mission. We were going to be grumpy anyway.

Another peeve (is every peeve a pet one?) is when the people in charge won't tell us what's coming up. Need to know, and all that. If you haven't planned that far ahead, tell us!

Which finally-- if you're still reading this, you're in the top decile of patience among readers-- brings us to the point of the post: to be clear, one must be honest.

Teaching my class, I often have to admit that I don't know the answer to something. My students usually let these things slide, because I am honest.

And I believe my students need to know just about everything. How I grade their papers, what topics will be covered later, and whether I really want them to read the entire chapter. There's just no benefit to deceiving them.

If I feel the need to mislead about my intentions or practices, then I really ought to rethink my plan.

Honestly.

Four-Star Accolades

I'll cut right to the chase, here. Rewards work!

While I was working several years ago in Hayward, California, students arrived daily to a dilapidated elementary building that had been re-purposed as a high school. The classrooms were hexagonal, and had blackboards low enough to the ground for kindergardeners to use them.

On one wall, a huge display was labeled, "Stowell's 4-Star GENERALS." Names of various students were posted to indicate that they belonged to the exclusive club.

Teaching math, in my opinion, is so hard because it is so immediately apparent whether students are learning the material. When they don't, the frustrations mount quickly on them and their teacher.

The cadre of four-star generals was designed to motivate students to do well on tests.

The old school says that students need to study on their own and do their best because that’s what people are supposed to do.

In the real world, though, people want value out of their work. Young students, particularly, need to be taught how to recognize the value of academic success. They need practice succeeding, and even to learn how to want to succeed.

Four Star Generals helped them do that, in a small way. Our weekly tests were scored on a four-point scale, with the top score being very near perfection. It was very difficult to earn a four, so initiation into an elite group was an effective, yet simple reward. I saw my students work harder and demand more of themselves in order to earn a place on the wall.

Of course, rank has its privileges, so the generals had access to other perks in my class than those of lower rank.

The real power in the system was the mere recognition of hard work, and public acknowledgement of success.

Rewards get the job done.

The Discipline Which Makes Men Reliable

Some of the most inspirational words I have ever read came form a poster on the monochrome walls of the barracks at Fort Sill, Oklahoma.

“The discipline, which makes the soldiers of a free country reliable in battle, is not to be gained by harsh or tyrannical treatment. On the contrary such treatment is far more likely to destroy than make an Army. It is possible to impart instructions and give commands in such a manner and such a tone of voice to inspire in the soldier an intense desire to obey, while the opposite manner and tone of voice cannot fail to excite strong resentment and a desire to disobey…

Attributed to Major General John M. Schofield, they were excerpt from his graduation address to the class of 1879 at the United States Military Academy, where he served as superintendent at the time.

Schofield began his military career as a cadet at West Point, then served for two years as an artillery officer. He went on to teach until the outbreak of the Civil War, when he volunteered with a Missouri regiment. (Missouri, incidentally, sent troops to both sides of the conflict.)

While his career with the Army is not without blemish, he is remembered for his high-minded words to his students in 1879. As a professor and a warrior, he understood well the need for mutual respect between commander and troop, teacher and learner.

Too often in the Army, leaders want unqualified loyalty. Schofield knew that such loyalty had to be earned. He knew that harsh treatment-- the kind too frequently mistaken for authoritative expertise-- comes at the expense of performance.

He knew that hard-earned respect-- the kind that comes from compassion, empathy, and a commander's genuine interest in his subordinates-- makes men reliable in battle.

The General may have understood that because he was a teacher. In fact, he found his way into Nine Weeks precisely because he gave me hope in Army training when the NCOs drained it.

An interesting exercise is to substitute the descriptors of war with words that connote learning. The quote thus reads:

“The discipline, which makes the students of a free society reliable, is not to be gained by harsh or tyrannical treatment. On the contrary such treatment is far more likely to destroy than make a society. It is possible to impart instructions and give lessons in such a manner and such a tone of voice to inspire in the student an intense desire to learn, while the opposite manner and tone of voice cannot fail to excite strong resentment and a desire to disengage…

Isn't reliability what we're after? Commanders want reliability in battle. In the business of warfare, nothing else matters. In school, we want reliable students. Put another way, we want students to engage in the curriculum, take an active part in their learning, and perform the tasks that the instruction demands so that they learn material. Reliable students are creative, adaptive, and smart.

Reliability men are discovered and developed by truly great teachers and leaders.

That's what the poster said. And the poster was right.

AARs and Nickelodeon

DJ Lance would make a nifty Soldier. If you don't know who he is, you are missing out on one of the most captivating and entertaining characters on all of Nick Jr.

I was watching "Yo Gabba Gabba!" with my brother in law the other day when...what's that? Why was I watching? Oh, my little boy was really the one watching it and we just happened to be in the room.

Anyway, I don't need to rationalize it, the show is hilarious, in a psychedelic, creepy sort of way.

The one we saw featured guest Jack Black, who rode into the diorama set on a talking, flying motorcycle. He made friends with the Gabba creatures who defy all logic with their fraternal powers and ability to talk without moving their mouths.

At the end of show, the human host, DJ Lance (who is 1000 times bigger than guest Jack Black), asked the friends to remember what they did that day. A brief montage of the episode's highlights ensued.

My brother in law, by the way, was even more entranced than my son. But he's an officer, so he's easily mesmerized by bright colors and loud noises. He said he liked the AAR.

The AAR, or After Action Review, is one thing the Army gets right. After each mission, Soldiers at every level conduct a review of all its phases.

According to the Army, an AAR is to be open, honest, inclusive, positive, and should relate to learning and training standards. It has four main components:

1. A review of what was supposed to happen
2. An explanation of what did happen
3. A description of what went well
4. A critique of what could be done better

The AAR, done properly, is elegant in its simplicity. It is also a very powerful component of learning. In effective classrooms, teachers who spend just a few minutes on the four steps will see noticeable achievement gains over those who merely assume that what was intended to happen did, in fact happen.

Leaders see things from an entirely different perspective from their subordinates. The latter need to explain it from their point of view in order to grasp what they need to do and know. Leaders need to improve as well; to become better at their tasks and to make training more effective for their underlings.

I love the AAR.

Even more than my brother in law loves "Yo Gabba Gabba!"

Let Me Have Your Attention

When two Soldiers appeared in my high school math classroom last year, every student came to attention.

It was a reflex thing. When those two men strode in, upright, full of confidence, and perfectly dressed in Army Combat Uniforms, the kids were in awe.

The reason they were there had to do with a course I was teaching. It has been documented in this blog before, so it suffices to say that I was teaching my students about the Warrior Ethos and how the Army can teach them skills for life.

My fellow teachers said they would love to have those Soldiers in their classes. There's just something about that uniform and what people in the biz call, "military bearing."

It's also that important to get students' attention. Perhaps the most important thing.

So, outside of dressing up in a combat uniform, what can teachers do to gain their learners' attention?

In a high school classroom, teachers do things like ringing a bell, flicking the lights, and offering up nifty sayings. My favorite was "one, two, three-- eyes on me!" Students (yes, my eager high school students) would reply with "one, two-- eyes on you!"

They are gimmicks, sure. You need a gimmick sometimes. Isn't a uniform a gimmick?

"At ease" is a good way of announcing a senior NCO. Most Soldiers respond pretty well to that. It's the military version of, "one, two, three-- eyes on me."

The worst thing a presenter can do is yell louder than the students. In the long run, however, yelling rarely works, devolving into a competition of volume. A classroom of 30 students will usually win that one.

Soldiers do that all the time, though. Yelling is stupid. It betrays a lack of confidence and authority.

The epitome of authority is high rank, and those with rank who rely exclusively on it are no better than the yellers. All presenters, whether a teach giving one of 180 lessons, or a commander briefing her troops, should demand attention from her listeners based on genuine authority-- the authority that comes from having something valuable to share.

When two Soldiers show up in a public school classroom, they probably have something interesting to share.

Teachers should work just as hard to make their stuff interesting.

Not Differentiating Kills

When I went to Basic, I assumed that they would put me with a bunch of older recruits.

I was, after all, 30 at the time. By the time I left boot camp nine weeks later, I was 31, but aged the equivalent of seven years.

I wish they had differentiated.

Not only was it hard to keep up physically with some of the younger guys, but it was near torture listening them argue over which one had the skankiest girlfriend.

Having gone from managing a classroom of high school students to living in the barracks with them, I can’t say that I was surprised. But I did get exhausted.

It reminded me of the need to differentiate, and taught me something new about one of the reasons teachers should do it more often.

First is the obvious: learners can hone in on those parts of the task that trouble them most. When I was learning to fire an M16, I was in the class of Soldier that didn’t know a lick about anything. Novice. Beginner. Idiot. Whatever the term was. I needed remediation, and so did a few others. We could have spent more time on the basics in our own differentiated small group.

Second is complementary to the first: teachers can spend more time teaching or re-teaching smaller constituent tasks or concepts, spending the overall time more efficiently.

The third reason—the one I learned at Basic—was one of motivation. When students are placed with skill level peers, they are less likely to get discouraged.

Now I wasn’t contemplating suicide over my incompetence. In fact, I eventually became quite a good marksman. But it is much more powerful—especially for younger learners—to have the confidence that comes with working alongside skill-level peers and progressing with them.

I learned the power of differentiation in the classroom. Trying to teach 35 kids some very complex and discrete things can be overwhelming. They all came in at different levels of understanding and skill.

Differentiating learning needs, then grouping accordingly, made tasks much more manageable.

Moving on to teaching college students, I have found that the best way to differentiate is to let them learn on their own or in small groups. Ultimately, it’s a metaphor for life. We tend to become very good at things we like to do, because we choose to spend more of our efforts in those areas.

By the time you’re 30, you will have figured that out. Hopefully, you won’t have had to live with a platoon of teenagers to get the lesson to stick.

The Big Picture: Clarity, Part 2

Let's be clear, folks. Clarity is a two-way street.

By that I mean that in order for communicators to be clear, messages need to have sufficient detail. But getting lost in specifics doesn't clarify. One also needs to paint a the big picture.

In other words, for learners and workers to understand their tasks and objectives, they need to see where it leads.

Too often I see people-- usually older ones who have never been managers-- complain that subordinates just don't do their job. That they ask too many questions, or "step outside their lane." Those subordinates likely want to do the job well, they just might not know quite what the task is.

That's because leaders sometimes zero in on only the specifics of the pertinent task. We're not Charlie Chaplin assembly line workers, here. Our jobs, whether as students, Soldiers, or really anything else, for that matter, are a bit more complex.

It helps, then, to know the context from which the task derived.

When looking at a single brush stroke, it is impossible to say whether it is good, or what it means. Only when it is considered in relation to the thousands of other strokes is its meaning made clear.

It's part of the phenomenon called, "executive control," a term coined by pioneers in the field of instructional design. It refers to learners' ability to better perform tasks when they know what will be required of them.

You're probably yawning by now. Hang in there.

Showing people a broader perspective seems simple, yet it's something that leaders easily neglect, because they think that subordinates shouldn't be bothered with things outside their control.

News flash: the world is outside anybody's control, but we should still understand it. Even the lowliest Soldier can handle the big picture.

Some pictures are bigger than others. My students don't need to know calculus while I'm teaching them algebra. But they might benefit from me telling them when they would be eligible for calculus, and which algebraic concepts are going to be most important down the road.

Soldiers, by the same token, don't need to know strategic plans. But they ought to realize how their task helps the company's, battalion's, and brigade's mission.

Okay, we're done. I hope that was clear.

Students Just Don't Understand

Remember that Will Smith...er, I mean, Fresh Prince song, "Parents Just Don't Understand."?

Classic. The funniest thing about that video is that the Prince's parents ended up being right about most things. The youngin's' clothes, after all, were hideous.

The rappers just couldn't fathom that their parents had a strategy, and some sense. It was really Will and Jeff who lacked understanding.

All this has something to do with teaching and the Army. Looking through some old notes I found a reference to "the difference between training and teaching."

The Army loves to talk about training, whereas in schools we talk about teaching. The former implies behaviors, while the latter connotes understanding. And we have come back to our friend, the Fresh Prince.

I'll keep going, though.

Students need to really understand. I would argue that Soldiers need to understand, too. If we were wearing red coats and toting muskets, and victory depended on our ability to stand in ranks under fire long enough to deliver another volley, then I would concede that training alone would suffice.

Today's warfare encompasses so much more than battlefield maneuvers. It is dynamic and chaotic. Besides, there are so many more activities to warfare than what occurs on the battlefield. In fact, leaders often speak of "battlespace," because they know it is so much bigger than the geography of engagement.

The difference between training and teaching, then, comes down to how much the learners really understand about the behaviors they must perform. A dog can be trained, but a Soldier and a student must be able to comprehend the rationale behind actions in order to predict and adapt when stimuli change.

Students, in turn, are expected to understand and use higher order thinking to demonstrate it. Analysis, evaluation, creativity, and application are all required skills in almost any academic pursuit.

The pursuits of Soldiers should be no different. Yes, many situations demand uncompromising discipline and obedience to prescribed methods. But such automaticity is better achieved when it is built upon a foundation of understanding.

Teachers too often make the mistake of assuming they taught something. Unless their learner can see it from many angles and apply higher order thinking to it, nothing was taught.

When Army trainers say that they trained, they are probably right. They need to go to the next step and start teaching.

I think Will Smith would be proud. 

Still Trying to Be Professional

I am guilty of often promising another post on this or that, without delivering much.

Consider that faux pas corrected herewith.

Referring to a post 18 months old, I now present a more detailed argument that the core function of an NCO is to educate.

An Army full of teachers? you ask. Why, soon we'll be having those much celebrated and often dreamed about bake sales to buy our weapons of war, and schools will have all the money they need, as promised by thousands of sarcastic, yet prophetic, bumper stickers.

Hold onto your brownies, we're not there yet, thank goodness.

Soldiers still exist to fight, no doubt. Yet, doing so effectively may prevent fighting. Force projection is a safeguard against needless bloodshed, and at the core of our national security strategy. Yes, it may be condescending and paternalistic-- we are Soldiers, after all-- but if other countries are afraid to engage the might of the United States Army in a head to head, then we have really done our job without really doing it, right?

That should establish Axiom #1: The more powerful an Army is, the less is will need to go into battle.

Thus, if we (our national defense forces and policy makers) do things right, we will spend more of our time training and less of it fighting.

Additionally, very few of all Army troops are part of direct combat operations. Most are on the support end: supply, logistics, training, etc. For them, fighting skill can hardly be the first concern, so something else must be. Naturally, if there is one function common across all branches, it is teaching junior Soldiers how to be effective.

Axiom #2 is: Training and teaching must and do occur at all times, at all levels, and across all occupations in the military.

Moreover, the organization of the Army is in constant flux. New Soldiers join at astounding rates, and many exit the service after only a few years. For those who stay in, their battlefield responsibilities tend to get bequeathed to younger troops.

For that reason, Axiom #3 is: The speed and effectiveness with which the organization can train its new personnel correlates positively to its overall health and strength.

The proof of my theorem will be easy to prove with the above axioms. So easy, in fact, that I will not even do it.

NCOs, in the meantime, focus on how to be good educators. Teachers, in the meantime, keep baking those yummy brownies.

Questions Anyone? Too Bad!

Raise your hand if you have kids.

Wow, that's a lot of kids.

I promise this won't be a post about my toddler, suffice it to say that he is only two... a little young to be asking questions. Yet as a teacher I can't wait until he starts.

The great thing about kids, and the reason they learn so quickly, is that they are able to take risks. Asking questions, which proves you don't know something, is risky business. Yet kids want to learn more than they don't want to look ignorant.

Looking ignorant in the Army is dangerous. So questions are out of order.

In my classroom, on the other hand, I regularly sustain a barrage of queries. Early in my career, I might have gotten a little defensive in the face of so many questions. You see, there are two ways to interpret them:

One might think they pose a challenge to whatever he has taught. If there are questions, after all, it means that a student didn't understand something, which proves some degree of ineffectiveness in the instruction.

The other way to look at questions in general is to see them as a sign of curiosity, inquisitiveness, and insistence on excellence.

I love questions now. Too often, Army leaders hate them. Guys with rank, ironically, are among the most defensive of all. Poor leaders don't appreciate being challenged, and they certainly don't want anyone to insinuate they are ineffective instructors.

More than that, the Army hates exceptions, and a question represents an exception to what the institution expects everyone to know.

Sure, Soldier leaders will all say they encourage questions. But in practice, they don't reward them. Asking a question, especially in a testosterone-driven atmosphere, such as a large group of Soldiers, is a risky proposition.

The risk-reward equation is much different in the Army than it is in my classroom. I can't even count the number of times that a Soldier leader has asked for questions, only to berate the guy brave enough to raise his hand and ask for clarification on the 20,000-slide lecture that was breezed through.

"I already explained that! Weren't you listening?"

Tends to stifle the spirit of curiosity.

Who doesn't believe me? Raise your hand.

(Photo by Army Sgt. Jacob H. Smith)

Get ’Em Doing

Classes are starting soon.

For those of you still in high school, yes, I know they started yesterday. My apologies and condolences.

I'm in university mode. Most people, I suppose, are wondering what I'm talking about.

I'm talking about teaching and learning...again. There are infinite reminders of how important it is to teach effectively, and every time I think about how the Army teaches, I get slightly disappointed.

The Army teaches really important stuff. And it is uber-important, at least in the near term, for Soldiers to learn those lessons really well. Another post may speculate on the long term consequences of poor training.

For now, let's think about how to teach properly. Or at least better than the folks at TRADOC realize can be done. If one thing can be the difference maker for students, it is the notion of active learning.

I watch my two year-old mess around with the dental floss dispenser, or fold and tear a plastic bag, or stack blocks in a container, and I am amazed at how much fun he is having-- and how rapidly he is learning.

Doing is the best way to learn.

There are a number of reasons for this:

First, active learning is more engaging. When learners do stuff, they are more interested and invested in it than they would be looking at slides or reading a book.

Second, it is more memorable. Your mind will retain information better if you practice it with motor skills and by using different parts of your brain.

Third, it is customized to the student. When a learner does something, he makes choices along the way about how to process, repeat, or practice it. The task becomes his.

Finally, it is a great time saver, because the student actually prepares for real work, and gains confidence in his skills.

In short, active learning rocks. If you are an Army trainer, get your Soldier doing.

It is a blast to watch my son learn actively about his world. I can only hope that my upcoming classes are a fraction as interesting.

(Note on photo: not my son.)