On this episode of the Innovative Schools Podcast, we're sitting down with John Almarode, and we're going talk about struggle, the right amount of it, and how we can help your students grow. Come on, let's learn together. Hey, educators. Welcome to this episode of the Innovative Schools Summit. Will's here with me, Jordan.
Will:I am here at the Innovative Schools Podcast, not Summit.
Jordan:Oh my gosh. I did it. I knew it. We're just gonna keep going. I knew eventually it would happen, but we are also at the Summit.
Will:We are in Las Vegas. Yes.
Jordan:Yes. We're in Las Vegas. Still in Las Vegas. Because the last episode with Gary Brooks Yes. We did in Vegas.
Jordan:Still here. But we're just having a great grand time. Before we introduce our guest here who we have with us, who we've had before. So think about that. Maybe you can guess who it might be.
Jordan:I wanna talk to you a little bit about struggle. Yeah. Because that's kind of what we're gonna talk about today. Mhmm. But like when you think of struggle and maybe some of the more challenging things in your life or something that you've struggled with, what was kind of, did you appreciate the struggle?
Jordan:Did you hate it? Do you think it helped you? Do think it made it worse? There's like eight questions here.
Will:Yeah. Think, which is probably for most people is when I was younger, I hated it. I hated struggle. I just, you know, why couldn't it just always be my turn on the slide? Or I want to be able to play the game first.
Will:Like, why do I have to wait, or be forced to do these hard things? But now that I'm older, the second I get to do something a little bit harder, a little bit more challenging, I'm thinking I'm gonna be so grateful for this later. Like, I get to flex the muscle of my brain, and work or whatever I'm doing. So I think I'm a lot more grateful now. Though sometimes I still think, man, why is everything still so hard sometimes?
Will:You know? But for sure, younger, maybe even into high school, I was still very much just like, why are we putting letters in the math? You know? Why do we need to struggle through
Jordan:that? Know? Math is just numbers.
Will:Yeah. It should be. You know?
Jordan:When I'm thinking about struggle, I think of actually there's a I don't State Parkers? I don't know. Grand not not Grand. Red Canyon something Yeah. Is over here.
Jordan:And when we're here in Vegas, we like to go and hike.
Will:Like the Red Rock?
Jordan:Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
Jordan:That's what it's called. Sorry. I just remember the views, not the names. But I think about the struggles of, like, we take a good number of people Yeah. There, and we try and warn them a little bit, like, hey, the trail that we do, like
Will:You mean, like, you tried to warn me the last year?
Jordan:Yeah. It's a little strenuous. Like Yeah. It's a little hard. But once you get to the top and you can look back over Vegas Mhmm.
Jordan:Like, and you've accomplished getting up there, like that struggle to get there is worth it. And I like that's what I think about with like the struggle. Yeah. And that kind of thing. And so we're talking all about the struggle stuff because we have John Almarode over here who's just been sitting.
Jordan:I haven't looked at him this whole time. I don't know if he's been smiling or like, Jordan, you don't this is not Struggle at all. I don't know. But we got John Almarode, dude. I'm sorry.
Jordan:Doctor John Almarode. You worked hard for that doctor. Dude will work. Dude will work. Doctor dude.
Jordan:Yeah. Anyway no. What's going on, man?
Dr. John Almarode:How are you? It's great to be in Vegas. I can't imagine hiking in a 110 degree weather.
Jordan:It is trificult.
Dr. John Almarode:Okay.
Jordan:Yeah. I'll go with that. It's tricky and difficult.
Dr. John Almarode:Yeah. But Vegas nonetheless is a great I cannot think of a better place to spend the hottest time of year for this part of the country than in Las Vegas. It's great to be here. I'm glad to be sitting here and talking about Struggle.
Jordan:I'm really thankful that, we get to do this in person this time. Because you were on the podcast in season one? One. Season one, remote virtually, which was great. Love that.
Jordan:Go back and check that one out. But I love that we can be here together, because I think just being in person is awesome. But so Will was talking to you before about what we can talk about. Yeah. What's the new thing we can kinda talk to educators about?
Jordan:What might they wanna learn about? And we've been talking about struggle and that's something that you're into now? I don't know how to say this. What are you I guess yeah.
Dr. John Almarode:That's a one way of
Jordan:saying research on it? What are
Dr. John Almarode:The struggle's real.
Jordan:Yes. It is. Help me.
Dr. John Almarode:My research team the folks that I work with on a regular basis, we have taken up the struggle of struggle, of understanding what that is. Part of it was out of the narrative that has surfaced, not within the last five years, not within the last ten. It's probably been around for a while. I don't wanna put a year on it, but there's this narrative that you only are successful, you only grow, you only get better, you only learn Mhmm. If you're struggling.
Dr. John Almarode:And so we've created this narrative that says, look, if you don't experience misery and heartbreak and sweat and pain, then it's really not worth it. And that didn't really set well with me, especially as a classroom teacher. So you're telling me that in my algebra one class, the only way I'm gonna make those students successful, the only way they're gonna be successful is if they go through math boot camp. Mhmm. And so I was concerned about that narrative, and so I started digging around in the research literature and realized that the emperor has no clothes.
Dr. John Almarode:And so I got my colleagues together and I said, hey, think we have something happening here because when you talk to teachers, it turns out they were having trouble finding the right level of challenge for their students, and they were being bombarded with this narrative of you gotta make it difficult. You gotta make it difficult. You got and so they were seeing disengagement. They were seeing frustrated learners. They were frustrated.
Dr. John Almarode:They began to disengage. And so we decided to tackle it. And our first step was to go talk to teachers and students and get to the bottom of this idea of struggle and then pull in the neuroscientists, the cognitive scientists, the educational psychologists and say, actually happens in the human brain? What does cognitive science say about our learning architecture? What studies are out there that show the impact of struggle, doing hard things?
Dr. John Almarode:And off we go. And we're in the midst of the study as we speak.
Jordan:That's great. So what's a good beginning point for kind of, I guess, understanding struggle in that? Like, I don't know. Just what's a good like, where are we gonna start? I'll let you pick.
Jordan:Your hike.
Dr. John Almarode:Let's go with your hike. Okay. So we're analyzing data now, and we're gonna move into the second phase of this study, and it'll be something that goes on for a while. But let's go with your hike. Okay.
Dr. John Almarode:You called it I can't remember the word. Tricky and difficult.
Jordan:Yeah. Tricky and I'm gonna be honest. It's from Bluey, and that's the age of my kids. Got it. I got it.
Dr. John Almarode:Say no more.
Jordan:I when I said it, was like, oh, no one else is gonna get this. This is a, like, a Jordan family inside thing. So
Will:Yeah. No one else watches Bluey in the entire
Jordan:do do watch it, but I wasn't sure if anyone would get it. So Trick Cult. It's from Bluey. Go look up the episode. It's great.
Jordan:Anyway I love it. Tricky and difficult.
Dr. John Almarode:Tricky and difficult. My children are 14 and 12, and Sesame Street was still the thing, and so we have tap dancing with Elmo.
Jordan:Got
Dr. John Almarode:it. Or doing the pigeon with Bert. So it just depends on I I get it. I would argue that that's not exactly struggle.
Jordan:Okay.
Dr. John Almarode:Here's what we found when we talk to folks about struggle. Let's go we're gonna come back to your hike. When you talk to individuals about hard things let me ask you some questions about your hike. Did you know how to accomplish the hike?
Jordan:Yes. I guess like, I knew the trail. Yep. I had done it before. So You had the tools?
Jordan:I had the tools.
Dr. John Almarode:You had the skills. Mhmm. It was hard, but you had everything you needed to complete it. Sure. It turns out when you talk to individuals about hard things, there's a difference in individuals that are like, wow.
Dr. John Almarode:That was really hard. I had to put in a lot of effort, a lot of time. That versus I don't have any idea what to do next. And so when we talk to teachers and we talk to students and when we even talk to folks outside of education, we are able to sort it into two piles. It turns out there's a difference between hard and difficult and something that's actually a struggle.
Dr. John Almarode:And so a struggle, in our research, what we're finding is when an individual is moving along, they're doing something, completing an assignment, reading a passage, completing a task, and all of a sudden their skills, their understanding, and their knowledge hits a barrier. What they did in the past, what they were used to doing, and what they had in their toolkit no longer worked at this moment.
Jordan:So it's more right. Okay. So it's more like, hey, I cannot go any further with what I currently know or have access to.
Dr. John Almarode:Exactly. Got it. And that's difficult to sort out because you when things get hard, we tend to slap struggle on it.
Jordan:Got it.
Dr. John Almarode:But really what's happening there is you you're just in a challenging situation. You knew how to get out of that hike. You knew how to complete you had all the skills you needed. It just was challenging. Sure.
Dr. John Almarode:That, in our findings, is not struggle. Okay. That's just hard. And so if you choose not to do it, it's a motivational issue. It's a an engagement issue.
Dr. John Almarode:It's, a persistence issue, but it's not struggle. Struggle is when I can't do this with my current skill set.
Jordan:Can't go any further. Correct. So maybe a little bit more like, Will, you said something about, like, there's now letters in my math. Yeah. I don't know what to do.
Jordan:You didn't have the skills Yeah. To know how to move forward.
Dr. John Almarode:Absolutely. And so all of this coming from the interviews and the classroom observations and and and our work in schools and classrooms across the country. So this is not just philosophy according to John. This is what we're seeing. Where it really started to show up was when he would have conversations with athletes.
Jordan:Mhmm.
Dr. John Almarode:And and the athletes would talk about a workout. Mhmm. Man, that workout was hard. That workout kicked my butt. That workout alright?
Dr. John Almarode:And we would say, wait a second. Did you struggle through it? No. I got through it, but it was just hard. And that's when we started to think, wait a second.
Dr. John Almarode:Yeah. You're differentiating these two situations. So then when you go in and talk to learners, when a learner is engaged in, say, solving a math problem, there's a difference in, wow. This is a difficult calculus problem. This is a difficult, word problem.
Dr. John Almarode:I just need to sit down and get it done. I've got to think a little harder. I have to work a little longer. I have to pull and make connections I'm not used to making, but I have the tool kit. Versus a child who sits down and says, wait, I don't even have the background knowledge to make sense of this poem or make sense of this passage.
Dr. John Almarode:I can't go any further with my current skill set, content, knowledge, and understanding. And so that's the moment of struggle. That exact moment in time when what you're used to doing, the the strategies you've used in the past, the interventions or approaches you've pulled from no longer work right now, and you've gotta do something different. That point in time, that moment in your cognitive processing, that struggle.
Jordan:Okay. So it that's that's the difference. So that's good to know. I'm glad. Because I think that changes a lot of my perception of, like, the difficult and and struggle that, like, kind of difference.
Jordan:Because you're right now that you say all that. I think about the hike and I think, oh, that was difficult. But I did know everything to do there. But then translating that into schoolwork or even work work here, There's things that, oh, that was difficult, but I knew how to get there. But sometimes I hit those walls, and I don't know Mhmm.
Jordan:What to do next. And that's that's where struggle comes in. So then now that we've kinda defined Mhmm. What struggle is, great starting point. It's like you're an educator or something.
Jordan:We've defined it. How does it well, I guess in that moment, a teacher hopefully would recognize that moment in that student. We're gonna I guess we can make an assumption that the teacher recognizes that. How does that struggle moment end up helping students? Or how does a teacher start to turn that into something that is beneficial to learning?
Dr. John Almarode:So a couple of things to unpack there, before we answer that question is your question and this and I love this banter. So we're making the assumption at this moment that you have to have struggle to learn.
Jordan:Okay. Yeah.
Dr. John Almarode:There's an underlying and am I am I right? There's some under there's an undertone there that kind of makes this am I right on that with the way say something?
Jordan:I'm kind of assuming that. That there has to be some amount of challenge. I mean, I guess we hear that a lot. We hear that a lot. Like and maybe I'm relating a lot of things to, like working out or something.
Jordan:Like you're not building muscle if you don't feel the pain or if you're not struggling a little bit. Right? Like, I feel that's a fairly cultural thing. Do you feel that way? Like absolutely.
Will:Yeah, for sure. I think, I guess kinda keeping in that same realm, like, I know if I'm at the gym and I personal thing for me, if I go workout and I'm not sweating at the you know, if I'm not starting to sweat even a little bit in, I'm like, I I need to be increasing the weight. I need to be running longer. I need to be whatever is going on. Like, I You
Jordan:feel like you haven't done enough. Exactly.
Will:Yeah. Even if my arm already hurts, I'll be like, well, I'm not really sweating. You know, sometimes.
Jordan:So but in an academic sense, I think to take that is I feel like I'm not I don't necessarily feel feel that I'm learning if I don't I guess I put it in more like I don't have the questions or I don't
Dr. John Almarode:Yeah.
Jordan:Feel that challenge of like, I don't actually know this answer or that kind of thing. So
Dr. John Almarode:So again, we're switching out challenge and struggle. Right? So again We're working
Jordan:on it.
Dr. John Almarode:Challenging in the weight room, in an athletic event, in a a game, versus struggle. So I I wanna shelf it because we're gonna come back to that. Now I I do wanna answer your question, but I wanna come back to this underlying assumption
Jordan:Yeah.
Dr. John Almarode:That that actually was one of the triggers behind us diving into this research. But to answer your question, when we see this happen in our classroom, how does a teacher leverage it? Your first point was right on the money. The teacher we have to recognize it, which means as a classroom teacher, and I do this with my students at James Madison University, I have to make sure that I'm generating evidence and that I'm making their thinking and learning visible so I can see it. I can see that it's a struggle or I can see that it's a challenge.
Dr. John Almarode:So as a teacher, the first question is, does my classroom operate in a way that makes thinking and learning visible Yeah. So that I can recognize that something's up. Mhmm. Maybe not struggle, but something's up.
Jordan:Visible in the sense of being able that helps you see where the students are. You got it. That's what you mean by the So the tasks
Dr. John Almarode:require writing or talking or
Jordan:Yeah.
Dr. John Almarode:Yeah. Engagement. There it can't be a silent classroom. Right. Once I recognize it, now I have to make that decision in the moment.
Dr. John Almarode:Researchers call it expert noticing. So I have to expertly notice something's going on over there with little Leroy, where I live. We name our children Leroy.
Jordan:Yes. But but I think Leroy was in the first podcast episode. Leroy and Lilibelle have tough lives.
Dr. John Almarode:Right? So once I recognize it, have to then decide, is is this individual challenged and just needs more time? Are they experiencing challenge and they're trying to sort out where to go next? Or are they truly struggling and now they have to make a decision about where to go next? And so in child development, this research was done on infants, what I'm about to say was done on infants, then I've got to decide whether to take over, be a guide on the side, or leave them be.
Dr. John Almarode:And there's been a large amount of research in child development on takeover behaviors. When when young babies, experience struggle or challenge, if we rush in and take over, we send a very bad message. As a classroom teacher, I have to make that same decision whether they're six, 16, or 26 in my world. I have to recognize it and then respond. And my response is really gonna matter a lot.
Dr. John Almarode:Do I provide support and scaffolds? Do I provide feedback? Or do I need to provide some instruction to help them maneuver? And by the way, my decisions may not all be around cognitive variables. It could be affective.
Dr. John Almarode:So the learner may be challenging or be challenged by something, but emotionally, they're struggling, so they melt down. Oh, that's a different kind of support. So now I need to help you emotionally manage what happens. So the decisions a teacher has to make in these moments, it's just fascinating to watch and to talk to teachers about because there's a lot happening. And expert teachers know how to read that room, quickly make that decision, and support those learners.
Dr. John Almarode:And by the way, we get it wrong sometimes. We take over when we should have stood back, we stand back, and the next thing you know, Leroy has thrown his Chromebook, is hanging from the rafters, and that is not a gender unique reaction. It's just Leroy is the example. Yeah. And so that's what happens.
Dr. John Almarode:The teacher has to leverage it by making the decision about what to do next and be intentional about those decisions.
Jordan:Okay. You said something really interesting there that I hadn't thought about before is separating the academic struggle from the emotional struggle. And I that really hit me specifically because my daughter, I feel like, has all the tools she needs for academically, but not she struggles on the emotional side. And I think I think I'm getting the definitions down right now. Like, sometimes I feel like, you know, that kind of thing.
Jordan:So that's really interesting. I didn't I didn't think about that side of the struggle. So that's something else that you guys are kind of, like, looking at and seeing in all your research and stuff that you're doing.
Dr. John Almarode:Absolutely. If you take all the and not to geek it up too much, because we are in Vegas.
Jordan:If talk about it in betting odds? Yes. Yeah. Yeah. So statistically, if
Dr. John Almarode:you look at all the different domains of learning, cognitive, affective, social, psychomotor, Struggle occurs in all of them. So you can even have, say, in a physical education classroom, a learner that understands the cognitive cues for overhand throwing, the struggle occurs in the physical execution of those. You can have a learner that can execute the physical movements but cannot apply them to a game situation. And so in the gymnasium, in physical education, it really sorts itself out. In mathematics, and and certainly reading, you see the emotional side show up.
Dr. John Almarode:They get frustrated. They they melt down. Where cognitively, they were good to go, emotionally, it was out of out of whack. Now I don't wanna give the impression that those systems are separate.
Jordan:Mhmm.
Dr. John Almarode:The research on that is fascinating. Mary Helen Imadine Yang out of USC is one of the leading neuroscientists that studies how it's all embedded into what makes us a human. So I don't mean to silo the different domains, but understand you can be overly developed in one and maybe struggle in another. My son Jackson cognitively is the smartest one in the house. But sometimes when he was he was little, he used to say, daddy, I feel something.
Dr. John Almarode:I just don't know my words. Very different type of struggle than I don't know what four times three is.
Jordan:Right. Gotcha. Okay. Cool. I had I'm just thinking about all the things that you're saying.
Jordan:And I was like, I had like 17 questions and then they all left immediately. But this is really it I love we have that phrase at the beginning of every episode where we say, come on, let's learn together. And I feel I'm truly, like, learn like like, I think I love that I talked about the hike and that was used because I I I feel that I kinda struggled there. I didn't I don't know. We said we were gonna talk about struggle, but I didn't really know what we were know what we were talking about, I guess, is the way to put that.
Jordan:And so I feel like I've been able to struggle a little bit. Not in a bad way.
Dr. John Almarode:Yeah. Right?
Jordan:I'm not looking
Dr. John Almarode:at it
Jordan:as a bad way, but as, like, as I've learned Yeah. These different things because it makes a lot of sense of, you know, challenging, difficult is is separate from that struggling. So what are, I guess, tools or ways, things how does a teacher you talked about maybe a little bit, but let's go in a little bit deeper of differentiate when they're looking at Leroy Mhmm. To tell, they're they're just challenged versus they're really struggling. And I guess an additional question to that is, kind of going back, I asked this a little bit, but is the moment of struggle, like, as soon as they are able to define and say that struggle, jump in there?
Jordan:Or is there you know, what tactics or things do we should be kind of used to get into that? And what do we do after we see that moment of struggle? I feel like we've been able to kind of come back to that point now.
Dr. John Almarode:That's a great question. So as we continue to analyze the data we have, I may have a better answer for you in six months or nine months. Okay.
Jordan:So part two in one year. Part two in one year.
Dr. John Almarode:So one of the things that that we have to sort through is, okay, at the moment of struggle, what we do next, and what the learner does next or any individual does next determines whether that becomes productive or unproductive. Now those are buzzwords. Mhmm. Those are jargony words. Oh, productive struggle.
Dr. John Almarode:Productive struggle.
Jordan:Mhmm.
Dr. John Almarode:My goodness. Pause for a minute. That's a mess. Because what what I say when I say productive struggle means something to because we've turned it into this jargon catchphrase.
Jordan:Mhmm.
Dr. John Almarode:We even have phrases productive and unproductive failure. Now I'm not saying that those aren't real concepts, but we throw them around Yeah. So quickly and so easily now that we've kinda lost what's happening. So when you hit that moment of struggle, what you do next determines whether it's productive or unproductive. Let me give you an example.
Dr. John Almarode:And I don't mean to make this negative, but this is one of the best examples I can think of. Any cheating scandal that exists, whether it was, the college admissions Mhmm. Cheating scandal that involved the Hollywood folks, whether it was, the testing scandal that occurred in Atlanta years back, or even Deflategate.
Jordan:Exactly. Right. Exactly. Deflategate. And
Dr. John Almarode:given the current context we're in now, there may have been another controversial cheating moment, although it didn't play itself out in the World Cup game
Jordan:the way it could have.
Dr. John Almarode:Why do we choose to cheat? If you look at individuals that engage in cheating scandals, it's because they've encountered a struggle, and they've chosen to unproductively respond to it. I cannot do well in this class on my own. The tools, the skills, the strategies, they do not work here. And so what happens then, they make a decision to unproductively get around that struggle.
Dr. John Almarode:They cheat. They look off their neighbor's paper. They, chat GPT it. And so what they do is they, they shift the lift, they hand the cognitive work off, and they cheat. Versus productive strugglers who decide, wait, I'm going to seek help, I'm going to research more, I'm gonna go and ask the tutor, I'm going to meet with so they choose to do things that productively close the gap that keep them cognitively, emotionally, and behaviorally engaged in a way that moves their learning forward versus, cognitive abandonment, cognitive I mean, you can come up with all kinds of cool catch phrases where they just shift the lift away from them.
Dr. John Almarode:And so at the moment of struggle as a classroom teacher, what I'm looking for is, okay, is it challenging or is it truly a struggle? And then how do I make sure that I don't remove the burden from the student completely, but also don't leave them feeling so desperate that they choose to do it on their own? So that's where scaffolding, feedback, prompts and cues, collaborative learning, all of those, coaching, instructional coaching, cognitive all the techniques that we have in our toolkit to support that learner. It could be that they go into some skill building tasks. They go into some but that's where the magic happens.
Dr. John Almarode:What happens after the struggle? That's the moment of success or failure, and it really plays itself out when we decide to either take over or leave them to their own defenses. Mhmm. And then we can't be shocked at the findings or what they choose to do. Right.
Jordan:And so different what I kinda took from that was it sounds like some of it is on the student themselves on which path they choose. Like, the educator has probably has a certain amount of influence or it can kinda potentially stop the use of unproductive Mhmm. Struggle or choices or things like that. But, it's kind of the individual to choose how they get out of that that struggle. And that can be a whole a whole another conversation, I suppose.
Dr. John Almarode:Because we can teach that. In fact, that's the motto that I use when I talk about it and when I work with my colleagues and then with classroom teachers and even students. Stop worrying about, whether you've created productive struggle or not. Stop. All you can do is provide the right level of challenge for learners, and when they struggle, are you building better strugglers?
Dr. John Almarode:In other words, are we spending time teaching students how they learn strategies for learning? Are we teaching students metacognitive skills? Are we teaching students social emotional regulation skills? In other words, our focus should be not avoiding struggle. Our focus should not be on, designing for productive struggle.
Dr. John Almarode:That phrase drives me bonkers. Instead, create the right level of challenge. And when they struggle, are we building better strugglers so that we're building the capacity of the learner to then self regulate and self drive their learning when they get into struggle in the future. Because we want them to know what to do when they don't know what to do, and we're no longer their teachers. Right.
Dr. John Almarode:Yeah. So you're doing that alongside the content. Even at the university and in my child development classes, I tell them, you will likely encounter something in here that is going to throw you for a loop. I'm also going to talk you through how you might get out of that struggle. So even with 20 year olds, we're working on, okay.
Dr. John Almarode:So what do you do when you're in the middle of a case study or you're working with a child in the child development lab and something goes astray? Do you have this let's build those skills as well as the learning in the class so they run parallel.
Jordan:Got it. I you kinda answered my next question, but just to bring some clarity to it, should should teachers be lesson planning to produce a moment of struggle? No. No. No.
Dr. John Almarode:It's so funny to me. You know? And I don't mean to be nasty and hateful about it, but what we've done is we've put an extra burden on teachers.
Jordan:Mhmm.
Dr. John Almarode:And it's an unnecessary burden, and it's not supported by research that exists now. Now in ten years from now, will there be studies that contradict what I'm gonna say? Maybe. But to tell a teacher, you know, you need to plan for productive struggle. No.
Dr. John Almarode:You need to plan for challenging, rigorous tasks that engage learners in high difficult, high complex situations. Whether they struggle or not, you wait and see. To purposefully create struggle is just crazy to me. Welcome to algebra one. We're gonna make, you know, warriors out of you.
Dr. John Almarode:That's ridiculous. Welcome this is man.
Jordan:Felt like. We're gonna yeah.
Dr. John Almarode:And and to to be a little snarky about it, we even brag about it. We go down the hallway and say, you know, I I'm a rigorous teacher. I I had, you know, three a's last semester, you know, six b's, and the rest were c's because I you know, if you have an entire year with a room full of students and you only had two a's, you're a bad teacher.
Jordan:Right? If I have
Dr. John Almarode:a whole year with a room full of kids
Jordan:Yeah.
Dr. John Almarode:I'm gonna get more than two across the finish line. Yeah. So so we're we're bragging about it's just ridiculous. It's this it and it's this cultural narrative. Right?
Dr. John Almarode:And and it started with with children. You know? Well, the reason they're successful is they had a difficult difficult, challenging, ridiculous childhoods should not be a rite of passage. And that's a little philosophical. I'll come back
Jordan:to to I'll come back
Dr. John Almarode:to but what I'm saying is, no, we should not plan for struggle. Instead, we should plan for the right level of challenge. Make it challenging enough to where they're having to put in effort, put in time, and cognitively engage in the work, but not purposefully creating these barriers, these moments of pure struggle. They're gonna happen on their own if we're making it rigorous and as we find that right level of challenge. Mhmm.
Dr. John Almarode:Because you're gonna constantly be adjusting. Well, I think you're ready for this. Oh, I gave it to you and it oh, then let me dial it back. Oh, now let me ramp it up. Oh, let me make an adjustment here.
Dr. John Almarode:So we're constantly adjusting the rigor, the diff difficulty and complexity. But you there doesn't seem to be any evidence to support this mentality of we have to design for struggle. Yeah. It just isn't in the literature. We cannot find it.
Jordan:Can't yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I think about it I get let me see if I can get this analogy kinda right the way that my brain is working right now visually of thinking of like lifting weights. If there's too much weight, that's the struggle.
Jordan:I cannot lift that weight and it's not helping me build any strength.
Will:Correct. If throw your back out.
Jordan:Yeah. Yeah. If there's not enough weight, sure, I can move it all day long. But I'm not there's not the challenge, and there's no building of the muscle. That's right.
Jordan:It's finding the the right way to be, whoo, I am getting that sweat. I'm feeling that burn. Mhmm. But I can complete the task.
Dr. John Almarode:A 100%. So if I'm reading Hamlet, I don't want to avoid reading Hamlet or give it to him in a cartoon form where they don't have to engage in the particular syntax Mhmm. And grammar of Shakespeare, but also don't wanna hand them Hamlet and say, you know what? If you try harder and pull yourself up by your bootstraps, you'll do it too. We're gonna get through it.
Dr. John Almarode:No. No. No. No. Instead, how do I scaffold and support them based on what that learner's ready for?
Dr. John Almarode:So lots of things. I can reduce the amount that they're gonna read. I can provide, summaries. I can read it with them, have them work with partners. I can use metaphors and analogies.
Dr. John Almarode:For example, I use this joke all the time. The Lion King is nothing but Disney's version of Hamlet. Yeah. So there are lots of ways that I can still have learners engage in Shakespeare, but manageable. The way to think about it is John Hattie often says this.
Dr. John Almarode:It's called the Goldilocks effect.
Jordan:Mhmm.
Dr. John Almarode:It's the right level of challenge. It has an effect size of about point six, point yeah. Point six zero, which is a really high effect size in education. It's called the right level of the Goldilocks effect. Not too hard, not too easy, but just right.
Dr. John Almarode:Mhmm. We should be planning for just Yeah. We shouldn't purposely go in and say, I'm gonna ramp up the temperature of the porridge so high, it burns the inside of your mouth, and then you're gonna remember it, and it's gonna make you a gritty person. No. The right level of challenge.
Dr. John Almarode:That's what our target should be. Now I'm not saying that's easy. Let me be very clear
Jordan:Yeah.
Dr. John Almarode:To those listening and those watching. I'm not saying this is easy. This is where formative assessment checks for understanding, knowing your students, looking at student evidence from the previous. Finding that right level of, level of challenge is hard, which is why when struggle happens, it's not a bad thing. How we respond to it determines whether it's productive or unproductive.
Dr. John Almarode:Right.
Jordan:Mhmm. Because you have 25, 30 kids classroom Got it. And their Goldilocks zones can be all over the place.
Dr. John Almarode:That's right.
Jordan:And so if you plan for that, it may be you may have hit I don't know if there's 20 kids in the class, of them or 10 of them. Maybe five of them. Right? I don't know. I don't know.
Jordan:But then those handful that it ends up being out of their zone towards the struggle, that's what need to know how to handle that Right. To get them into the productive side.
Dr. John Almarode:That's exactly right. And it's not easy. There are days at with my students at JMU where, in fact, it happened this past semester, and I had to fess up. I didn't I don't mean that I struggled with the fessing, confessing. I knew I knew I knew it
Jordan:would happen. How to do it, you had the tools to confess. I did. You just so it was a challenge. It was a challenge.
Jordan:I gave them a task that
Dr. John Almarode:I thought was good. And then once it started coming in and once they started to ask questions, I realized, woah. Think I missed the mark because there were there was this pattern of student responses, and there was this pattern of student reactions that told me they had moved outside of their zone. And then I noticed a couple of them were going to sources outside of the set of sources that I gave them. And that told me, oh, they're moving into desperate mode.
Dr. John Almarode:They're reaching for these things over here. So stop. I've missed it. So they come into class, and I said, need you to stop for a second. I said, I gave you something, and I misjudged your comfort zone.
Dr. John Almarode:And it's my it's my mistake. I'm not removing the assignment. I'm not changing it, but I'm gonna scaffold it differently in class now and have you go back after it. So I didn't remove it. But what I did was I addressed the struggle and started to build the tools for what they were gonna do next.
Dr. John Almarode:So I didn't take over, but I did hit the brakes and say, stop. Yeah. This is on me. I misread the situation. I did not mean for this to come out this way.
Dr. John Almarode:Let's fix it. The same thing can happen if I hand a kindergartner a task and realize, wait, they're struggling with cardinality, one to one correspondence. Right? I'm not saying remove the task, keep the task, provide the support, and teach the skills along the way.
Jordan:Yeah. You struggling with this? You gotta No.
Will:I actually really love that that we've talked about this, because I remember just emailing you, John, like, about what we should talk about, what's new in your mind. And the second I read the word struggle, I was like, I want to talk about this and I want to be on this episode. I just I feel like, personally for me, I think the definitions that you've given, in the beginning of the episode have like, I've been able to go through myself in my own life and kind of apply, okay, what was actually just a challenge and what is actually me struggling. And I think that this is going to continue to help me as I'm facing things now that I'm going through in my life that I'm able to really assess the situation and stop myself and go, okay, am I really struggling with this, or do I really have the tools? And I think that's maybe a question I do actually have is I'm not sure if you're how, at what point your research is in, but do you think I guess I'm trying to figure out how asking this.
Will:But have you run into people who are saying that, no, this is a struggle because they just don't know that they already have the tools?
Jordan:Yeah. Kind of I was thinking about that as you're talking about that. I was like, oh, I hadn't thought about kind of the other way
Will:of Yeah.
Jordan:Someone labeling something a struggle. That's really just a challenge.
Will:It's really just a challenge for them. Is is that something you've run into, or do you have any thoughts about that?
Dr. John Almarode:Yes. Yes to we've run into this. What is fascinating with learners in particular, teachers teachers are fascinating, Kate. We're we're just different as human beings when we choose to spend our entire life in school. So I'll come back
Jordan:to the teacher response.
Dr. John Almarode:From the student the student response, so student experiences some some challenge, whether it's in, social studies and they're analyzing historical document, whether it's in literacy and they're working through elements of poetry, whatever whatever the context is. It could even be, say an art and they're doing still life drawings and they're working on shading. And they're like, I can't do this. I don't understand. Right?
Dr. John Almarode:But as a teacher, I have evidence that they do. What's happening is this transfer issue. They're not able yet to grab from what's over here. And for those of you that are listening and not watching, I reach up with my one hand and grab it and connect it to the other hand. They can't make they're like, oh, so that's where this applies.
Dr. John Almarode:So then that's where we use a different technique as teachers. Cues and prompts, where we cue them or prompt them to go look in their interactive notebooks, or we ask them a question that has them recall something that they didn't previously recall. So in that case, it's the teacher's response that's gonna matter. We may have to stop and model and say, alright. Pause.
Dr. John Almarode:I notice all of you are struggling at this moment. Actually, you've just run into a challenge. I'm gonna help you get around it. And so we model the thought process, or we give them a worked example, or we show them an exemplar that shows them that they get it and that they have that tool or that they possess those skills. And so, again, it's the teacher response and what the student does that determines its productivity or its lack of productivity.
Dr. John Almarode:So to answer your question, when we encounter that and when we've seen that happen, if the teacher just says, oh, well, here, do it this way and does it for him, that's a takeover behavior. Yeah. Versus, actually, you do know this. Let me prompt you. Let me cue you.
Dr. John Almarode:Let me ask you questions. Let me model something. Let me show you an example and see if you can connect the dots.
Will:I feel like that's easier for, at least for someone being in that situation. I feel like it's easiest for, in my experience, athletes to do that. Because my brain thinks of okay. Like, I play a lot of volleyball. And my thought is, okay, I've gotten this ball, you know, like super out of system.
Will:So, you know, it's really not where we want it to be. And I need to hit it as hard as I can and make it go a certain distance. I've done it before. So I've I know I can just try to go for it even if I'm not totally there for it or not. I think it's easier when it at least for in my experience, it's easier to run into the situations and pull it pull it from the past when it's a physical thing,
Jordan:Mhmm.
Will:But not nearly as much when it's a mental, when it's it's something that I've had to work through when it's cognitive. You know?
Dr. John Almarode:So it turns out, as as different as those two situations feel, it's the same underlying process.
Will:Yeah.
Jordan:Right? Okay.
Dr. John Almarode:Different areas of our cognitive architecture, but still the same. What you're pointing out, though, is something really, really fascinating. Two points on that. Number one is that, competence leads to confidence, not the other way around. Mhmm.
Dr. John Almarode:So it's some of the new research now out on success. How do you get students to engage in more challenging problems? Well, there's a study on that. I mean, it came out in Ed Psych. I have it in my on my computer, but it's been within the last year and a half.
Dr. John Almarode:They've looked at how do you get students to engage in more challenging problems or challenging tasks? Well, they checked out different ways of setting up learning sequences. What they found was, look. If I want you to engage in this really hard task or problem, then what I'm gonna do is I'm gonna start with something that's difficult, but you've done it before, and you've been good at it. Then I'm gonna squeeze in something that you haven't done before
Jordan:that's difficult. And then I'm gonna
Dr. John Almarode:end with something you've done before that's difficult. It's called remembered success. And so that's one of the ways we can bring students along. We remember success. And so by embedding those moments, because competence leads to to confidence, not the other way around.
Dr. John Almarode:And so often in schools, at least in my classroom, I had that reversed for years. Mhmm. I gave the pep talk and then the challenging assignment. Not good. Give them something that's challenging, have them experience success, and then slide in the next, and the success from the first part, the competence Mhmm.
Dr. John Almarode:Leads to confidence into the second part, and they're more likely to engage in the harder part. Okay. Now that's part one of your question. Part two is the next area of research, and that is transfer. I have friends of mine who are coaches, at the collegiate level as well as the the high school level.
Dr. John Almarode:And we talk about this research, and one of them says, I just don't get it. We practice this in practice every day. And then when it comes game time Yeah. They can't execute.
Jordan:Mhmm.
Dr. John Almarode:That's a different monster.
Jordan:Mhmm.
Dr. John Almarode:That's a whole different situation around effective practice and transfer, but you often see that show up as a struggle. Yeah. Because they didn't bring their practice session into the practical setting that it's supposed to be used. Yeah. That's a different monster, and it's a different, way of thinking about recall and retrieval.
Dr. John Almarode:And that could happen on the volleyball court. Yeah. But what you said was, I know I could do this because I've done it before, so I can do it here. That's the competence leads to confidence
Jordan:Yeah.
Dr. John Almarode:Versus I practice it, take them out on the volleyball court, and they act like they've never practiced in their lifetime. That's a Totally different. Yeah. And and if you're listening to this, if you're watching this, it's when you have them do guided practice in your classroom, and then the next day on the entrance ticket, they act like they were never in the classroom the day before. Yeah.
Dr. John Almarode:That's maddening. Something else is going on there. That's that's a whole different area of research.
Will:Because I'm thinking in my own life too. I remember, I played basketball in high school, and I was practicing just like some different, I mean, like, different moves, you know, like dribbling and stuff. And And I just remember telling someone, like, I can do it myself. I can do it with my eyes closed. Yet in a game, it doesn't even come to my mind.
Will:And my friend Clint at the time just looked at me and was like, it's not in your arsenal. Like, your brain knows how to, I guess, do it. But for some reason, you just have to force yourself to do it. And it worked for me. I, like, looked at someone in a game and I thought, I'm gonna do this one move in my head over and over.
Will:And I did it. But I I don't know what really happened in my brain there. But it did transfer somehow eventually. Yeah.
Jordan:Yeah. You got there. You got there. Well, the listen. I struggled through this, and it was great.
Jordan:No. It wasn't a struggle. I really enjoyed this conversation about struggle and difficulty and what the difference is and how to leverage both to enhance learning and to help students along the way. I'm really looking forward to when you guys complete all of your research and everything, because you're still in the middle of it. Yeah?
Jordan:That's what you said?
Dr. John Almarode:We, we've analyzed the first round of data, and we're moving into the sec because the first round tells us the big picture and where to look. Now we're gonna go look closer.
Jordan:Yeah.
Dr. John Almarode:We've we've answered some of our initial questions. What is struggle? What happens? What do teachers think about? What do students think about?
Dr. John Almarode:Those types of big questions. Now we're getting into some of the nitty gritty, and that is, what are the nuances of individuals when they struggle, and how can we break this down so that a classroom teacher those of us that are on the study all teach. Mhmm. What can I do now in my class on Monday to put this to use? And that's really what we're after.
Dr. John Almarode:Yeah. It is research that we can turn around and say, okay. That's what's happening there versus research that is up in the clouds. We've gotta bring productive struggle, unproductive struggle, failure, all those jargony words. We've gotta make it so that we can use it to make sense of what's happening in our classrooms and have it change teachers' thinking and decision making.
Dr. John Almarode:That's when we see the impact in classrooms.
Jordan:Great. We're definitely we need to write it down. When you're done with all of this, have you back. Like, seriously, like, you back and go through it all because, I mean, just the little bit that we've gotten so far, at least for me, has just opened up so much. And I know so many of our listeners are probably kinda, you know, getting that same feeling of like, oh, how like, I've seen this.
Jordan:I understand. I get it. Like, that's
Will:mean, and personal, you know, for sure.
Jordan:For all of it. But We'll have you
Will:back, doctor dude, episode three.
Jordan:Episode three. Got it. No. But, John, thank you for joining us today and sharing your new research and everything on Struggle. Will, thanks for being here too.
Jordan:Of course. We appreciate it. I set it up. Yeah. You did.
Jordan:You made it happen, and we really appreciate that. I wanna thank all of our listeners for joining us on this episode. I hope you're not struggling. I hope though that maybe there's a little challenge to help you grow. But this podcast, like I say all the time, is to help you guys as much as possible.
Jordan:So if you learned something in this episode, which I'm sure you did because brand new cutting edge research, please share it with a colleague or a friend. We're not doing this just to become big famous podcast people, but we wanna give as many tools to as many educators as possible. We know it's a hard job. So thank you for joining us. Thanks again, John.
Jordan:Thanks, Will. And we'll see everybody on the next episode. See you.