Teaching and learning really come down to connections and
re-connections, and metaphors are wonderfully apt in creating those
bridges in kindergarten, special education, gifted education, ELL
classes, elementary/middle/high school, and at the university level.
It’s such a commonly occurring yet powerful force in learning, we really
shouldn’t leave it to chance or occasional attention.
NBCT and Disney Teaching Award winner Rick Wormeli began his writing and professional development career more than a decade ago, drawing on his many years of practice as a middle grades teacher in Northern Virginia to produce two “classics” for novice middle school educators, Meet Me in the Middle and Day One and Beyond. Wormeli, a long time member of the Teacher Leaders Network, has gone on to write other books about key aspects of effective teaching, including Differentiation, Fair Isn’t Always Equal (assessment), Summarization in Any Subject, and most recently, Metaphors & Analogies: Power Tools for Teaching Any Subject.
In a recent interview with fellow TLN member Elizabeth Stein, herself an NBCT in special education, Rick explains his own fascination with the power of metaphor and analogy to increase student learning — and extends the discussion with insightful opinions about the need for teachers to take full ownership of their own professional growth and to resist the anti-intellectualism that Wormeli sees as a significant barrier to advancing the teaching profession.
We have to convince teachers that intellectual and professional
explorations are positive things, directly benefiting them. Teachers who
question policies, offer new research to consider, share compelling
professional reading with others — who post regularly on professional
listervs and networks and think critically about teaching and assessment
practices — should be affirmed and supported, not made to feel like the
goody-goody at the front of the room keeping everyone from recess
because they are excited about amphibians and have one more question to
ask about tree frogs in the Amazon.
At the end of the interview, Rick Wormeli invites anyone with an interest in pursuing these ideas to get in touch. We tell you how.
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Elizabeth Stein: Rick, your idea for a book about teaching with metaphors was extraordinary, and I wonder why no one had written such a book before. Did you get any strange looks from your fans, colleagues or publisher when you proposed it? And how has it been received?
Almost everyone wondered how I could make this into a full-length book. Just like a lot of ideas in education, however, once you start going down the path, you see these other branches in the path. Then, suddenly, one path connects to a parallel path, but the two of them lead to an even greater route, and you have an “A-ha!” moment.
My publisher was supportive, but definitely wanted a fleshed out chapter outline just to make sure there was plenty of “meat,” and to make sure the content wasn’t just a re-statement of old ideas in new skin. I agreed with this — I hate to waste educators’ time with things they already know. There are some things in the book that many teachers understand, but I believe there is plenty of new thinking or alternative perspectives that can ignite novel applications.
Today, when most people hear of the book, they nod politely and think they know basically what it is – another tool for teaching metaphors in English or Language Arts class. While there’s plenty in the book that will help English and Language Arts teachers do that teaching, the majority of the book is for teachers of all subjects and grade levels. In fact, one of the nicest and most accurate commentaries I’ve seen about the book came from a technology blogger who applied the ideas to technology education. And Marsha Ratzel, a well-respected math and science teacher, wrote about how she was excited about all the science applications. Yes!
When I explain the book’s premise to teachers and administrators, they get very interested, noticing the same opportunities and connections that I saw when writing. They are curious about the practical applications, especially when so much of the book’s material helps teachers differentiate instruction and integrate many of the 21st century skills so often cited as necessary for students’ success.
When you researched other writing about teaching with metaphors, what did you find?
Before I began, I wondered whether anyone had written a book about this topic, too. When I dove into the research, I found a paragraph, a page, or a chapter in many different books where authors alluded to the possibilities, but nowhere did anyone flesh out metaphor applications across the disciplines to make them doable in daily planning, or to extend the possibilities into differentiated instruction.
There are several terrific books on cognitive linguistics, the larger domain in which metaphorical thinking and writing resides, but these were mostly research and analysis about the nature of the human mind. Not much was practical or inspiring for the educator. When I went back through my old lesson plans and saw all these metaphors in the lessons that were successful, I realized there was a missing bridge between the esoteric thinking about metaphors and real classroom application, and I became excited about the potential for the book.
When Kelly Gallagher, someone I respect very much, came out with his wonderful book, Deeper Reading, he had a great chapter in there about the power of metaphors in teaching. Though he wrote mostly about literature and character analysis, my mind was making connections to science, law, physical education, technology, religion, foreign language, politics, math, drama, art, music, and much more. I almost couldn’t finish reading his book; I was so excited about the possibilities for metaphors. That week, I wrote the first outline for the book.
You clearly express that it's time to "bust metaphors out of solitary confinement in English classes. Shackles off, metaphors are ready to serve any teacher of any subject in any grade level." In your experiences are there any limitations? Is there a type of teacher, subject, or grade level where the application of metaphors is more successful than another?
Great question. When someone like me speaks in seeming hyperbole, it’s reasonable to start looking for a limitation or catch. But I have yet to find a general exception. From the earliest learning experiences to the most advanced, whenever someone struggles to convey an idea or skill to someone else, they think of something familiar for the intended learner and try to map similarities between the new idea and the familiar frame of reference.
It’s amazing how quickly teachers and non-teachers alike pick up on this technique. I’ve seen sports coaches, CEO’s, dental hygienists, pharmacists, auto mechanics, heater repair personnel, landscapers, lifeguards, and many more professions use analogies and metaphors readily to explain something or to make an emphatic point, and I’ve seen it even more so since doing the intense research for the book
This quick resort to metaphors on our part is probably in our nature to some degree, as humans are consummate learners: The brain is wired for ceaseless learning. We quickly develop tools for making sense of the world, and one of the primary techniques is comparing new concepts to something we know and noting the differences and similarities. We constantly seek meaningful patterns: think of how many people look at the physical geography and shadows on one spot on Mars and see a human face, but it’s really just that geography and shadows, nothing more.
Teaching and learning really come down to connections and re-connections, and metaphors are wonderfully apt in creating those bridges in kindergarten, special education, gifted education, ELL classes, elementary/middle/high school, and at the university level. It’s such a commonly occurring yet powerful force in learning, we really shouldn’t leave it to chance or occasional attention. Hence, the book.
Your book reminds readers that teachers really need to think about the language we use to guide students to learn. It's apparent that our language can propel or suppress the thinking of our students.
You mention that teachers should strategically think about metaphors, not leaving it to chance when it comes to teaching kids to approach learning analytically. Yet there's also a balance that must be struck — a need to align our chosen metaphors with a student's background knowledge. In a class of 30 students it is expected that some students may need guidance to "fill in the blanks" for other students. You mention English Language Learners, for example.
What's your secret to planning effectively for the various levels of readiness and needs?
This alignment of instruction with students’ backgrounds is important. We want the metaphors to be helpful to students. I actually wrote a book on planning for differentiated instruction (Differentiation: From Planning to Practice, Stenhouse Publishers), but here are a couple thoughts (okay, more than a couple) in response:
In your question, you touched on several points. The first was that we should expect some students to need guidance to “fill in the blanks” for students with limited background knowledge. If I’ve interpreted this correctly, you’re saying that we will have to assist some students as they help other students. Yes, this is true, but this should be done respectfully.
Too often we rely on successful students to spend a lot of their extra time working with struggling classmates, but this doesn’t meet the needs of those strugglers; it’s disrespectful to their development. We can do this some of the time, but that’s just it: It should be a minority of the time, not the chronic default for a teacher deciding what to do with the students who finish early or how to meet the needs of struggling students when the teacher isn’t available. In addition, there are clear techniques for one student assisting another that need to be taught overtly, not left to the assumption that all kids know how to teach other kids. I know you’re not advocating for students to become substitute teachers, but it’s something I see in schools quite a bit.
Second, you asked for my secret to planning effectively for varied readiness levels and needs in the classroom. The secret is that there isn’t one. If anyone tells you they have the one solution for planning for diverse classrooms, they’re not thinking about it thoroughly enough, or they are being dishonest.
While there isn’t one clear way to plan for readiness levels, there are a collection of principles we can employ as necessary to help us approximate the goal of success for all students. We will never achieve it perfectly for all students, despite what the federal government declares for 2014, but we can come close. Humans are too varying, learning is too uneven, and our classroom and school structures are too limited to make this real or desirable. We recognize, too, that human variance is actually a good thing for humanity, not an impediment.
As they are currently set up, most schools are not meant to meet the needs of anyone who deviates from the exact center, or who “gets it” first. Anyone who needs more, less, or different approaches in the classroom better hope they have a teacher with a big repertoire of strategies and a responsive nature that makes her inclined to use that repertoire.
Every time teachers read a book on differentiated instruction and seriously contemplate its content or they participate in an in-service training on differentiated instruction, they are taking part in an act subversive to the status quo. Most schools, classrooms, and policies rally around the factory method of schooling: “This week we learn this, next week we learn that,” and, “You’re 10 so you learn this. You’re now 11, so you learn that.”
We are overwhelmed with the abundant evidence that this is not the way most humans learn, yet we continue to set up our schools in this manner. Anyone working in most schools today who also knows how young minds best learn, negotiates with himself every day for what level of hypocrisy he will tolerate that day, and sometimes he’s more tolerant than he should be.
Rick: So in that context, let me ask myself a question — In the midst of this messy enterprise, what are those actions/elements necessary for good instructional planning for diverse student populations? Here’s a partial list of mindsets that work well:
Build teacher creativity. As I travel across the U.S. and abroad, this seems to be one of the biggest hurdles to classroom instruction. Teachers don’t have a lot of experience in cultivating their own imaginations, and as a consequence, they are hesitant about their problem-solving (or the perceived autonomy to pursue it). Simply put, we often don’t have the tools for the innovation required when working in a system that conspires against it.
To counter this, we should take up a new musical instrument, hobby, or learn a foreign language or three. We should experience Ropes Initiative Courses similar to Project Adventure and Outward Bound. We should be asked to maintain a professional portfolio that best represents all that we are in the classroom, not just a basic paper trail.
We should be taught logic and reasoning skills – deduction, induction, divergence, convergence, analysis, synthesis, rhetoric, and formal debate skills, so we can apply these concepts and skills in our planning. We should ceaselessly build our instructional versatility, such as learning five new learning models or five more uses of an I-Pad or I-Touch each year. We improve creativity when we have a variety of skills and content on which to draw; we can’t be creative with what we don’t have.
Open classrooms to professional critique. Hopefully, someone cares enough about us and our students to correct us when we make mistakes. You should worry if no one corrects you. If we expect to become really good teachers, we better come across as accessible and teachable to our colleagues and inviting to those in position to know good pedagogy from bad.
In a teaching culture where everyone invites critique from colleagues, parents, and students instead of closing the classroom door and rationalizing that they must be okay because no one complained about a lesson, we can develop our teaching senses more quickly, and as a result, plan better for students whose needs deviate from the norm. In critique there is a constant interaction between the teacher and the “critiquer,” and that’s where the transformation occurs — not in the information offered by the one critiquing, but in the back-and-forth between the two people involved as the teacher being observed considers the message.
I know this hard. In order to accept a new idea we have to first admit what we are doing is ineffective or wrong, but wow, revising our thinking in light of new evidence is one of the strongest indicators of a true professional. What goes unlearned by students because we weren’t open to critique?
Spend more time than we think is necessary coming to know our students. Teachers who’ve taught the same subject for more than a few years tend to assume they know all they need to know about students in the very first week. I did for a while, too. Students change, however, and early impressions often fail as sole guideposts. Heck, many kids don’t even know who they are month to month, so it’s hard for them to tell us who they are, if they even have the tools to do that successfully.
We might have some generalizations from experience that we can make regarding the current group of students, but in 25 years in the classroom, I never had a year when I didn’t have multiple Homer Simpson, “Doh!” moments (fist hitting my forehead) when I realized there was something about a student that was affecting his learning, but I didn’t take the time to find out about it until half way through the year or more, and by then, I had wasted all that learning time.
We can’t possibly know everything about each student, of course, but gosh, we need to make information-gathering a clear pursuit, not just an occasional accident, and we need to make it easy for teachers to do that gathering. If we accept differentiated approaches as responsive teaching, it becomes even more important that we know our students so we know how to respond. Most teachers are conscientious people and want to do right by the students they serve. When they find out more information about students, they make better decisions.
In chapters 6 and 7, you explain the value of using the senses as we implement metaphors and analogies within lessons. This seems like the perfect way to differentiate instruction. Is it safe to say that teachers should plan multi-modal ways to represent concepts to reach a larger percentage of students’ attention and deeper levels of understanding?
The more access points a mind has to a concept, the better the mind understands and retains the concept. Comprehension and retention of information are two big goals of teachers and students. If as a student I have both the sound and the visual of my teacher describing the Treaty of Versailles, I can recall the information more vividly than receiving the information through only one of these modalities.
We can’t stop at access, however. Students have to process the information for meaning as well. As a student, if I get the chance to re-enact the debate that went on between Germany and the Allies as they drew up their declarations of peace at the end of World War I, I’m even more engaged, and the knowledge even more retained in memory – and most probably, remembered more accurately.
The brain looks for patterns and connections at every turn. If something is meaningful, it is better remembered. Meaningful learning most often happens when students “re-code” learning for themselves (metaphor construction is a form of personal re-coding, by the way). A great technique for helping students do this is simulation, which, of course, is multi-sensory: As I try to convince Germany to accept responsibility for the war, to disarm, and to make reparations in a public debate, or I try to protect Germany from these concessions in that debate, my mind is on fire as I argue and learn. I won’t forget the content for a long time.
As I mentioned above, metaphors and analogies are one of the easiest tools to help students not only access the information (“I understand this”), but to also process the information for meaning (“I can use this and I see how it affects my life”). Simulations can often be forms of metaphors, such as when we construct a model of a structure or process using our bodies, or when we express a complex concept from science, math, technology, or government class in fine or performing arts.
Having said this, I agree with those who declare that we don’t need to respond to student differences all the time. Students can learn very well doing what everyone else is doing. Teachers don’t need to burn themselves out trying to be multi-modal in every lesson. It’s physically impossible to do this, in fact.
Instead, we can try to be multi-modal over the course of a week or unit, and we can focus on multiple modalities, in particular, if a student is failing to understand or achieve something. For example, I can explain a math algorithm on the front wipeboard, Smartboard, or chalkboard, but only some of the students need to work with manipulatives at their desks to fully comprehend what I’m talking about. They may need it in this one lesson, but then not again for five more lessons. Do I do enough assessment to know when it’s appropriate and when it’s not? I hope so.
The wise teacher gets really good at formative assessment and lets it inform his teaching rather than automatically assuming it’s multi-modal teaching for everyone every day.
You mention the possibilities that emerge when using visual metaphors. You connect with the fact that "we've become a primarily visual and graphic-oriented society." From your experiences, what are the benefits in including visual metaphors while preparing your students for the future?
Almost every new book about future professions and businesses that comes out these days talks about students being able to manipulate and perceive data, not just store it. If we look at data one way, we see one solution, but manipulate it another way, we can open our minds to a completely different perspective.
In their seminars and keynote speeches, Bob Marzano, Daniel Pink, Stephen Pinker, Tony Wagner, Doug Reeves, John Hattie, and many others all use graphic portrayals of information to communicate major principles — and we respond positively. It’s the way we are. We’ve discovered so many abstract and intangible yet very real elements in our daily lives, we’ve had to resort to virtual reality (visuals and our interaction with them) to communicate and understand those elements.
This really exploded in the 1950’s and the decades that followed because so many ideas and technologies were advancing so quickly. We needed a new frame of reference for describing them because there was little in the everyday world that was effective as a frame of reference. We elevated depicting relationships and ideas visually, just to get our points across, and we were doing it much more commonly.
This is not to say this was the genesis for using graphics to explain something – look at Egypt, Phoenicia, Assyria, Aztecs, at Aboriginal peoples in all early cultures who did it brilliantly. But the rapid advancement of technology and the public’s demand to understand it (“What’s a bit and a byte?” “Show me the flow chart” “How is that computer machine like a human mind?” “Fractals are like branching rivers?” “DNA is a twisted ladder?” “There are strings in the universe?”) created the biggest impetus for the modern era of visual metaphors.
To prepare students for their futures, we need to make sure they are visually literate. This means they can interpret data, symbols, and metaphors presented in many ways, and they can recognize bias within them. What’s included and not included in the depiction, and why? Is there an underlying message or conceptual metaphor that shapes this ideology, and if so, what do we make of it?
It is to our peril to have a generation of citizens inarticulate in how they are being manipulated to accept a message on its own terms. From politics to medicine to religion and education, 21st century visual literacy is a non-negotiable skillset for participatory democracy.
In chapter 8 you provide great strategies with potential to "move metaphorical thinking to the forefront of teaching and learning." You describe the value of getting in a "metaphorical mood" with students. This sounds like the perfect scenario for stretching the thinking for all learners. How would you advise teachers who are new to setting this mood?
One of the biggest liberators for my own thinking was to recognize that some of the greatest teaching tools of all time are all around us. I didn’t need to put all my hopes for effective teaching into getting the latest techno-toy simulator from Carolina Biological Supply. I needed to think creatively about everyday objects as my teaching tools. Can I get the idea of homeostasis across to students using only elements found in our cafeteria or library? How about communicating the definition of “gestalt” when comparing different linoleum patterns on the floor and ceiling tiles of our building? And how cool is it that an item seen every day will be there to remind students of the analogous concept every time they see it? It’s like a constant study guide and reinforcer.
Someone who lives near the Mississippi River delta whose teacher compared that delta to the branching bronchial tubes leading to the alveoli in the lungs will see the Mississippi as one big trachea leading to the shipping ports (alveoli) where one good (product) is exchanged for another (carbon dioxide-oxygen exchange).
Building this into our lessons, then revealing this experience to students, and asking them to do it themselves sets a great mood for metaphor incorporation. Students are very, very good at this as long as we give them time, and get out of their way, not limiting them to our generation’s imagination.
My best advice is to practice. I love that old phrase, “The best geologist in the world is the one who has seen the most rocks.” We get better at incorporating effective metaphors in our instruction and assessment the more we do it, so do it a lot. Get students to do it a lot, so much so, that they come to you with unsolicited metaphors and analogies as they think through a problem or while reading text. While the genesis of metaphors is fun and even inspiring, it’s defending how they fit and don’t fit the target comparison and how we can extend them in different directions that leads to the most learning.
To get in the mood, compare this interview, professional discourse, or metaphors themselves to something else in your life. What would it be, and why that?
Another effective way to get in the mood is to list the interesting, clever, articulate, refreshing metaphors we hear and see every day. I did this for one week as I was writing the book, and was shocked by how many there were – I mean, really good ones in newspapers, on-line articles/blogs, airport conversations, family e-mails, teacher conversations, children’s descriptions of their sports games, advertisements, political speeches, in comic books and comic strips, in movies and t.v., and on radio.
On and on it went. When we tune our mind to metaphors, we start seeing them everywhere. It was a little creepy at one point to realize that they were there all along, and we were happily accepting them -- unidentified and unquestioned. Honestly, I didn’t have the eyes and ears to fully perceive them until I began investing in their study. It was this beautiful new world hidden in full view.
Writing this makes me think: I’m definitely not the big revolutionary thinker so many others are, but this strategic use of metaphor construction and deconstruction was a mini-epiphany for me. What will be the next thing someone perceives as integral to student success that is figuratively and literally all around us — ready to use if only asked for it, yet today we are completely oblivious to it? Wow, I can’t wait to hear it or read about it, and wow, again, think of the students of the teacher that uses the new perception!
As a powerful learning tool, metaphors and analogies require higher order thinking skills that may not come as easy for some teachers. We all know those teachers who get stuck at the literal level on the thinking treadmill. What advice would you give to these teachers?
Most of my response to this question can be found in the responses above, and since I’ve already taken up too much real estate in my responses thus far, I won’t repeat that information here.
The only thing I would add is a concern about a general sense of anti-intellectualism on the part of some teachers and principals around the country and abroad. In some places, it comes across as “uncool” to be known as someone who contemplates cognitive neuroscience, pedagogy, assessment, instructional practice, critical analysis, learning theories, or to promote serious contemplation of ideas. It isn’t everywhere, but it’s a bit scary how prevalent it is in schools.
Some of this is survival: We don’t like to do what we are not good at doing. This isn’t a sign that teachers are intellectually bereft, it’s a sign that they haven’t been given the tools/resources and autonomy to develop their intellectual side. They shoot down new ideas and research analysis because they aren’t sure how to do it, and it takes less energy to dismiss it than it does to think carefully. They are tired and just trying to survive.
It’s a real problem though. Think about this: Someone at a department, team, or faculty meeting says, “Did anyone read Kovecses’ research on cognitive linguistics in last month’s Kappan magazine? There were three points he made that really changed my thinking about how students learn vocabulary.” Already there are some faculty members who are rolling their eyes and hoping the curious reader will quiet down so they can move on to other business, like whether or not school is closing early on the last day before the holiday.
Think of all the great concepts, tips, skills, and new research that no one passes on to others because they are afraid as coming across as too Joe or Jane Professional Know-it-all in the faculty lounge. With this attitude and an occasional sense of semi-bullying and faculty cliques, it makes me think: What are we, eight years old?
The problem is that these unwilling teachers are actually thoughtful people, and if they heard the ideas, they would enjoy the conversation. They would think seriously about trying the ideas in their own classes. Without administrative and collegial encouragement, a risk-taking, contemplative school culture, PLC’s, Critical Friends Networks, Teacher Action Research Teams, and similar tools, we don’t have the skills or motivation to think intellectually about what we do — but that kind of thinking is vital to student success and evolving our profession.
We have to convince teachers that intellectual and professional explorations are positive things, directly benefiting them. Teachers who question policies, offer new research to consider, share compelling professional reading with others — who post regularly on professional listervs and networks and think critically about teaching and assessment practices — should be affirmed and supported, not made to feel like the goody-goody at the front of the room keeping everyone from recess because they are excited about amphibians and have one more question to ask about tree frogs in the Amazon.
In some places, however, colleagues are suspicious of these individuals, wondering at their motives, irritated by the inquiry, and privately declaring them unrealistic and blaming them for making the rest of the faculty look bad for not reading and discussing those ideas.
There’s no one solution to this, but it starts with affirmation of those who explore professional ideas and report their findings. Teachers who participate in listservs and professional communities on the Web, who maintain blogs, subscribe to at least one professional journal, mentor others, and/or attend professional conferences can be a big part of establishing such a constructive culture. We do well to follow their lead.
Thank you, Rick, for talking some about your book and even more for offering some of your insight about how teachers can improve our practice and advance our profession. You’ve given us a lot to think about.
Thanks, Elizabeth, for letting me talk about all this. I’m up for conversation any time with anyone, if he or she wants to explore these ideas further.
It’s wonderful to stop skimming the surface once in a while, dive deep into a topic, and explore its riches. I hope readers accept the invitation to join the dive, especially since no has to worry about running out of Oxygen; we breathe this stuff every day.
If you’d like to get in touch with Rick Wormeli, send a note to TLN Teacher Voices editor John Norton and mention this interview.
