Thank you for joining us for another episode of #vted Reads.<\/h1>\n

This time we will be discussing The Power of Moments: Why Certain Experiences Have Extraordinary Impact.<\/a> We’ll look for ways to make classroom moments more powerful, explore opportunities to raise the stakes for your students, and visit the popsicle hotline.<\/p>\n

Oh, and we’ll talk about the “soul-sucking force of reasonableness.”<\/p>\n

On to the conversation!<\/p>\n\nhttps:\/\/tiie.w3.uvm.edu\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/04\/PowerofMoments_RachelMark.mp3<\/a><\/audio>\n

Jeanie:<\/b>\u00a0 I’m Jeanie Phillips and welcome to #vted Reads. We’re here to talk books for educators, by educators, and with educators. Today. I’m with Rachel Mark, and we’ll be talking about The Power of Moments\u00a0<\/i>by Chip Heath and Dan Heath.<\/i> Thanks for joining me, Rachel. Tell us a little bit about who you are and what you do.<\/p>\n

Rachel:<\/b> I’m Rachel Mark. I live in the southern part of Vermont, and I am in my fourth year of working as a professional development coordinator for the Tarrant Institute for Innovative Education. Prior to that, I was a middle school teacher for 16 years in Manchester at Manchester Elementary Middle School, and I’m also a mom. I’ve got three kids, an 8-year old, a 12-year old and a 15-year old, and we all live in sometimes happiness with our dog and my husband in southern Vermont.<\/p>\n

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Jeanie:<\/b>\u00a0 Excellent. Thanks for joining me.<\/p>\n

We were put on teams, and I was on team Germany, and we had to debate who started the Second World War. Germany’s a tough person to be in that position, but I took that challenge. We had a panel of experts, and we got points, and I don’t want to brag or anything but I kind of won. The Germany kind of won that year, and I still think of that as so memorable, because it was a peak. We worked really hard towards it. We knew that there were these expert historians coming in, and I still remember it. I still know more about the start of World War II than I do about any other point in history.<\/p>\n

Rachel:<\/b>\u00a0 That’s a great example of building peaks in the experience of school. I tried, but I could not think of many moments like that in my own experience in school, which may be why I’m so motivated to cultivate those moments for students now. I thought a lot about how some of the work that you and I do with schools that involves using strategies and approaches around project-based learning, complements this idea of building peaks.<\/p>\n

The nature of project-based learning is that there’s some authenticity to the work, and hopefully some public performance and public product.<\/h3>\n

I have always felt like that’s a really important element of project-based learning. It helped me to think about those aspects of PBL within the context of this book and how it is about building a powerful moment.<\/p>\n

Jeanie:<\/b>\u00a0 Exhibitions are often our powerful moments.<\/h2>\n

This morning I was at Leland and Gray with an engineer and somebody who worked in an architect firm, and we were giving feedback to seventh and eighth-grade students on their designs for projectile launchers for battle physics.<\/p>\n

https:\/\/twitter.com\/innovativeEd\/status\/1083073364019855361<\/p>\n

This was one sort of peak moment on the way to a larger peak, which is when they compete with students from Dorset School and Green Mountain Middle and High School. Their launchers go head to head to see you can hit the targets.<\/p>\n

So, we have many other examples of schools doing really fabulous exhibitions where they build these peaks for students to show off. Do you have others you want to share?<\/p>\n

Rachel:<\/b>\u00a0 I don’t have a specific one I want to share, but what you’re talking about makes me wonder what are the sort of conditions that are at play when we’re building those peaks. It makes me think about a few things. As you and I have worked with some schools in the last year or two, I do think that there is an element of fun with this event and that the peak event.<\/p>\n

We may be in danger of underestimating the importance of fun.<\/h3>\n

Because I think that though we don’t want to put that at the forefront of our educational experiences and our assessments, that is probably what makes some of these things so memorable.<\/p>\n

Jeanie:<\/b>\u00a0 Right, and the Heath brothers talk about two different aspects of peaks.<\/p>\n

One is that they have sensory appeal that makes me think about what you’re saying with fun. They appeal to our senses. The other is that they raise the stakes.<\/h3>\n

Rachel:<\/b>\u00a0 Right. That was the piece that I was just thinking about with your example of the battle physics and students consulting with experts in the field is that there’s accountability and an authenticity to that experience. And so it does, they step up their game, because they raise the stakes.<\/p>\n

So, I definitely think there’s something I almost wonder if we could rewrite the description about exhibitions, and the meaning and purpose for them to acknowledge some of the ingredients from this book about that being a peak moment with sensory experience and raising the stakes. We have, you know, reminds me of the example that came out of the school we both work with at MEMS. Students presented to the select board about their findings for some research.<\/p>\n

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In your videos and your footage from that, I can remember them being dressed up and poised. And students talking about how nervous they were, and I thought about that and thought they are going to\u00a0remember that.<\/p>\n

Jeanie:<\/b>\u00a0 It reminds me that so many of the things that are memorable or important to our students’ lives are extra-curriculars. You mentioned sports earlier. I think in a lot of communities is drama, the school play is a huge deal and the kids who do it year after year. Or musical performance, right.<\/p>\n

You have to perform. You have an audience. The stakes are high.<\/h2>\n

You’re all in. And kids\u00a0really passionately commit to that, and to all the learning. Whether it’s learning lines or choreography or learning whole musical pieces, right? There’s a lot of learning that they have to do in order to show up on performance day.<\/p>\n

Rachel:<\/b>\u00a0 It’s reminding me about a blog post that I wrote about exhibitions, where I wrote about my own experience about exhibitions<\/a>.\u00a0 It wasn’t until I participated in an exhibition that I had some new insights into what is happening when we ask students to publicly exhibit work.<\/p>\n

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Great piece that reinforces the value of exhibition! When students share their work, it deepens the learning – Innovation: Education https:\/\/t.co\/iI8nnIdq8t<\/a> via @innovativeEd<\/a><\/p>\n

— Peter Stratman (@peterstratman) April 24, 2018<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n