STEAMING into Joyful Learning with Teaching Artist Jef Lambdin

Embark on an enlightening voyage through the expressive world of educational performance art with the incredible mime and teaching artist, Jef Lambdin. His captivating tale begins in a mime troupe and unfolds into a nationwide journey, blending his artistry with academic learning standards. As Jef regales us with experiences from his Lincoln Center training, we discover the transformative power of starting with art (the A in STEAM education) to foster deep educational experiences. By integrating performance into English language arts, physical education, and science, he illustrates the profound influence that the arts can wield in shaping student understanding.

Jef and I explore our creative takes on professional development for educators, focusing on strategies and ideas for merging multicultural literature with STEM and STEAM activities. Professional development for teachers and student enrichment programs should be FUN, not boring, and we both subscribe to the belief that we learn best through play. Join the conversation as we explore strategies for cross-curricular engagement and equip educators with innovative ideas to revitalize their classrooms. From embodying scientific concepts to acting out diverse stories, we explore techniques that activate student participation and learning. Discover how mimicking animal movements or diving into ecosystems through play can add an entirely new dimension to subjects traditionally viewed as rigid and academic.

Finally, we turn the pages on how multicultural picture books can support social-emotional learning and executive function, as well as enhance communication and writing skills. We delve into the art of empathy, sharing how students can learn to walk in someone else's shoes through sensitive reenactments and collaborative projects. 

For those inspired by this episode, I invite you to visit drdianadventures.com for full show notes and to discover additional resources that can bring this artistic alchemy into your own educational space.

Transcript

Dr Diane : 0:01

Wonder Curiosity Connection. Where will your adventures take you? I'm Dr Diane, and thank you for joining me on today's episode of Adventures in Learning. Hi, welcome to the Adventures in Learning podcast. I'm your host, dr Diane. Happy New Year. Today we get to talk to an incredible teaching artist who also happens to be a mime. His name is Jeff Lambden and I am so excited for you to get to meet him. I had the privilege of being in his workshop in North Carolina last year and I have to tell you it was one of my favorite workshops at the North Carolina Science Teachers Association. You are in for such a treat, jeff. Welcome to the program.

Jef Lambdin: 0:45

Well, thank you, Doc. It's good to see you and all of your viewers, I am so glad you're with us today.

Dr Diane : 0:52

Happy New Year.

Jef Lambdin: 0:53

Happy New Year. That's the appropriate phrase for right now. It is.

Dr Diane : 0:59

I wanted to start by letting them get a sense of who you are. Can you talk a little bit about your adventures in learning? I know that you're a teaching artist and a mime. How did you get to this point?

Jef Lambdin: 1:12

I started out studying mime. After I studied mime for several years, we started a mime group in North Carolina. We toured throughout the Southeast North Carolina first, then the Southeast, then the nation, and we performed for everybody. We performed for daycare centers, we performed for people at Lincoln Center, we performed at hospitals and prisons and art centers all over, and so by creating our own material we got to see a lot of audiences Along the way.

Jef Lambdin: 1:47

One day when we were doing school shows, the principal came up after the show and said would you guys be interested in teaching a couple of workshops with some of the classes when you were done? We said sure. So we did some mime classes that day and realized that the educational component was something we could add to our work, and so we did. We offered it whenever we did school shows to also do workshops, and that was just performing mime and doing mime. So it was reinforcing what they saw.

Jef Lambdin: 2:17

About 20 years ago, after I left the mime troupe for a while, we closed down the mime troupe in 93. And then about 20 years ago, around the turn of the century, I was still doing school work, still performing and still doing mime workshops, and I also teach circus arts workshops because I perform with a juggle, a balance plates, and so I teach the kids how to do that as well. That's a physical lesson, by the way, and one day I got a call from a school that wanted me to do lengthy residency and to parallel the mime with the English language arts standards. And I said, what's a standard? Of course I had no clue, but they brought me up to speed that standards are important and so I did that workshop and somebody else heard that I had done that and asked for something similar, and so I realized I needed to bone up on this edgy speak. If I was good and I'd do this, and that's how it grew.

Jef Lambdin: 3:23

I started studying the standards and how would I did, matched up with them, and then, as that word got out, I was asked to do a whole lot of residencies that parallel different things. When I do a mask theater residency, the kids make masks and we also I have masks from around the world and we study them and how they are used and where they are used today. These aren't this isn't ancient history, they're all that's being used today and that's I think it's a real good parallel to the book learning. They do, and so the mime. I usually parallel English language arts and the circus arts. I parallel. It fits right in with PE standards and it fits right in with science standards. An object at rest.

Dr Diane : 4:15

I was going to say there's a lot of physics in the circus.

Jef Lambdin: 4:18

That's right. And so along the way in North Carolina we have an education coordinator at the State Arts Council and she was badgering me to get credentials. She said, jeff, you're doing this but you've got to have credentials. I said, why should she? So I can say you have them. So I did work with one organization. That didn't really fit, but then I went to the folks at Lincoln Center and it was a real nice fit. I love the philosophy of Maxine Green and how they base all of their arts ed on that, and so I studied with them about being a teaching artist. So now this is what I do when I'm not performing.

Dr Diane : 5:00

So let's talk a little bit about Lincoln Center. What were some of the takeaways from that? What were the things that made that experience so unique?

Jef Lambdin: 5:09

The thing I liked about the Lincoln Center approaches they start with art. Every educational moment that I create, it refers to or jumps off of a performance that they will see or have seen, and that makes perfect sense to me. It's not amorphous art form, it is an art experience, and that, to me, is what I like the best.

Dr Diane : 5:41

Well, and I love the fact that you use the word experience, because I know for me, when I'm doing professional development with teachers, I really try to shy away from the word activity, because to me, activity is a standalone thing and it's not hooked in and connected to the world around you, to something that you're gonna remember, and so I love that notion of helping to create experiences.

Jef Lambdin: 6:06

Well, I hadn't thought of it that way, but that's great.

Dr Diane : 6:10

So, when you're doing professional development or you're doing your workshops, what are some of the experiences that you're offering or the ways that you set things up?

Jef Lambdin: 6:19

Well, of course it depends on the subject matter. The folks at the conference, the science conference, wanted something about that visual art. They felt like the science teachers will could grok that a lot more clearly, and so I thought about all the ones and I remembered that the Getty Museum had prints that they let you use, and so that's what we did. I started with those and then use that. As you noticed, when we went outside to let the sun do its work, everybody was having such a blast because it was the first time they'd been out of that conference center In three days. Right, and I'm gonna shame the devil. To tell the truth, when you and I, when we met at the pre-conference dinner, that was at hanging no pilot mountain, pilot mountain State park, that was an eye-opener for me to be outdoors, and they didn't know it. They were doing arts integration and not knowing when we were doing the part about the lines looking at the geological formations. Yes, I thought that was fabulous and they didn't even know what they were doing. They were doing science.

Dr Diane : 7:40

Well, and I found myself thinking, especially after I took your workshop, that you could take what they were doing in terms of the lines and the angles of the rocks and then connect it to the poetry and to the art, right, you could, and it's a visual art standard line, right, and that's one of the beautiful things.

Jef Lambdin: 8:01

And then that was a cute thing, and I told them you don't even know what you're doing, but this is what you're doing very well as we, you know, because we had that great time to chat with them. Yes, and that was beautiful. I liked that.

Dr Diane : 8:14

I think more conferences need experiences like that.

Jef Lambdin: 8:18

I agree, I would, and they used to happen. We used to go to an arts conference and we would have an art event as a part of it, either going to a gallery or something, and that's you know, as prices have gotten higher and et cetera, et cetera. And then at COVID we weren't even allowed to be there, we had to do it virtually, but I really liked that, that. I think I lived better with those experiences.

Dr Diane : 8:45

I agree so. I interrupted you. We were talking about experiences.

Jef Lambdin: 8:49

That's right. When I work on MIME and teachers, I get them to understand that the children already know this. We have so many gestures that we use every day and the kids know them flat out, and they also know about expression, because they can do that without thinking they haven't been trod upon to not express anymore. And so one of the beautiful things about teaching MIME is Suzie, who's usually very good at writing and reading, and all of this thing is it's hard for her to move and express. But Zeke, who is not a good writer and he's not a good listener and he's not, but he's a physical learner he jumped and right in and I'm praising him and Suzie's looking at Zeke and going. He's doing that real well and I think it's a leveler that we all can. By experiencing it and seeing it, it becomes a part of the classroom atmosphere, or I'm sure there's a word for it.

Dr Diane : 9:58

It's your classroom culture and you're really you're figuring out, I think, how to highlight people's strengths. Yeah, we all have strengths, and so they may be in different fields, but we can play those up.

Jef Lambdin: 10:12

And teachers don't come by this from their education, and my joke with the teachers is if they had taught you these skills in college, I would be out of a job.

Dr Diane : 10:26

I like that. That's a good point.

Jef Lambdin: 10:29

But they didn't. And they don't because those teachers, they have things they have to get done and none of it has to do with how do you get the information across in a way that's appealing, exciting and wonderful for the child. That's what I see as missing in pre-service education, and I said that live.

Dr Diane : 10:53

Nope, and I agree with you that I call it showtime. That's my informal education coming in, but it is the showtime piece. It's the how do you hook your audience, because your students are an audience and they're co-creating the material with you. So how do you hook them and get them involved?

Jef Lambdin: 11:13

Amen. And so I try to model that. And then, when I'm working with teachers and when I teach a lesson well, you experienced it I stop and say what do you want to know? What did I just do? As the teacher in the room right now, your teachers and should be analyzing what I'm doing from all of those perspectives and that, I think, is refreshing to them because most of their professional developments are. You must do it this way. You must learn this now, because we're changing all the text to work this way and this is the way you have to do it. And I've said enough.

Dr Diane : 11:52

No, but I totally get where you're coming from because I know, having traveled the country, one of the things that I'm hearing from teachers is that professional development is boring. You sit there and you're multitasking, just praying for that moment that you get out and I'm on a mission to prove to them that it doesn't have to be. But that comes with what you're talking about. It's teaching the way that we want to be taught as adults, but also the way that kids want to be taught, and so it is finding that way that you can connect and be engaging.

Jef Lambdin: 12:27

Well, and I'll say this Do you know the writings of Eric Booth? Yes, OK, Eric has a new book out and one of the things that I really I hadn't thought about a lot, but I've been thinking about a lot because this stimulated me. He says 80% of your work is you.

Dr Diane : 12:46

Yep.

Jef Lambdin: 12:47

And I'm a performer, right, and so of course it makes sense to me that my classes, you know they have a beginning, middle and end and we have rising action and what I want them to get and what they can get ancillarily on their own and what they might do later. That's all. You know. That's the job of a playwright and a dramaturg and I bring it to the classroom, and so I've been thinking about that a lot because of whatever you know. He's so way smarter than me Talking about all my stuff.

Dr Diane : 13:23

We need people who are way smarter than us. That's how we learn.

Jef Lambdin: 13:25

That's right, that's right. But I've been thinking about that because I'm in the middle of reading his latest book.

Dr Diane : 13:31

Well, and I like that. I like the idea that, as performers, we come to professional development with that idea of beginning, middle and end. And teachers have the capacity to be performers as well. They just need the support and the encouragement to not be afraid to do it.

Jef Lambdin: 13:49

And, if I may, they need to know that it's not another add-on like this language.

Jef Lambdin: 13:56

It is how you do it, it's the basis, it's substantive and if they start to adopt these methods then they will truly see these methods in their planning. Yes, it's got to be intentional and maybe it's just a little at a time, and I understand that because some of these teachers have been teaching since I was born, right, and they have their way and that's good If it works for them. But if we can encourage them to start to make choices so that they utilize, and intentionally utilize, those aspects of teaching, I think we're making it. We're making, we're affecting the teaching practice.

Dr Diane : 14:42

So I like the idea that you just talked about. You know, maybe you start small with a couple of things and you build it into practice. If you were to sit down with a teacher who wants to be more intentional and wants to build more of these connections and the arts and the performance aspect in, where would you tell them to start or how would you help them get started?

Jef Lambdin: 15:02

It'll come as no surprise that I would tell them to start letting the children get up out of their seats. That's the very first thing and many teachers, and young ones especially, are very afraid of that because because of the chaos yeah, I'll say it out loud, yes, it's chaotic. However, if students learn that they are, that they, when they get out of their seat, there are expectations, then over time they accept those you know it's like. So, anyway, to get the kids out of their seats and to act things out whether it's doing a tableau about something you're reading, or trying, or asking them to get up and try to show the difference between a solid, a liquid and a gas with their body.

Dr Diane : 16:00

Are you tired of same old, same old professional development experiences? Check out what recent workshop participants have to say about doing a workshop with Dr Diane's Adventures in Learning Great hands-on session that included real ideas to incorporate in the classroom. Wonderful, lots of great ideas and fun science experiments. It was great to be able to see how to make connections between the stories and science. If you are looking to raise your game and have a professional development experience that will leave your educators feeling rejuvenated and ready to directly apply ideas into their classrooms, reach out to Dr Diane's Adventures in Learning. We offer half-and-full-day workshops that examine ways to build connections between multicultural picture books and STEM STEAM experiences for gains across the curriculum. All programs can be tailored to your specific needs, so find out what audiences across the country have been experiencing. Check out Dr Diane's Adventures in Learning at wwwdrdianadventurescom. We hope to be in your school soon, but there are so many cool science demonstrations we can do that. Involve the kids and their hands-on and so find a few of those. Build those into what you're doing.

Dr Diane : 17:30

I love with the five senses with kids. This is a super simple thing. Teachers can start with Pick a page in your favorite picture book. If you're reading the picture book to the kids. Share the picture book, stop and then have them act out, sound story, a particular page. What sounds do you hear? You'll see those different things. You're the bird, you're the worm, you're the tree, you're the wind. Don't be afraid of a little controlled chaos.

Jef Lambdin: 17:58

Right. Also, talking about sounds, I advocate, as you saw, going outside, leading the classroom. One of the things that children I've found love to do is called a simple exercise, a sound map, where you sit and you make a circle in the middle and that's you. Every time you hear something, you have to make a visual representation on your piece of paper in the direction it was so with the front over side, and so the children are making these, and it can be a truck, it can be a bird, it can be the wind in the tree, it can be a cowbell, six fields over that they can hear, but they end up with this little map of little figures and then we turn that map into a piece of visual art using visual art standards. Now they've got marks, anyway, but it's about listening, because that's another simple thing that the kids need to relearn, because they're not trained to listen, they're told to listen.

Dr Diane : 19:03

Observing is another one of those Yep, and what I would do with small, like really small children, preschoolers, is we would take a hula hoop and we would go outside and put the hula hoop down on the grass and they'd have a microscope and they were observing what they could see within the realm of that hula hoop and we were making a list of all the things and able to create our own interactive writing based on what they saw.

Jef Lambdin: 19:33

Perfect, perfect. And in observation, whether it's visual, auditory, tactile, any all that using we would. How would I say it? An archivist would say that you were using documents that were first person. Yes, right, and we forget that sometimes because a lot of the teaching techniques that teachers are taught in colleges are, especially now, with keyboarding Don't get me started. It's already transposed Right, other than first person.

Dr Diane : 20:14

And I do think we need that first person observation. You need the ability to see, to know, to connect.

Jef Lambdin: 20:23

Right, well, you've got to be able to observe before you can analyze.

Dr Diane : 20:28

Yes.

Jef Lambdin: 20:29

And you know that, that whole pyramid, you know all the, all the things you should be able to do and when you should be able to do them, until you can observe you can't, can't, do anything.

Dr Diane : 20:44

And I love the fact you've referenced this a few times that you're able to take the arts and connect them into steam to the science, technology, engineering, arts and math. Can you give an example of some of the ways that you like to do that?

Jef Lambdin: 21:04

Okay, one that I do when I'm asked in science class just physicalizing things, and that's my what's one of my favorites. Like I said, physicalize a solid becoming liquid and a liquid becoming a gas, and doing that, that's one that I really like Anytime I have the kids physicalize the water cycle. How do you show the evaporation? I mean, show it to me, don't tell me about it, you know, show it to me. What does it look like, what does it feel like, what does it taste like when they're doing it? Also, having them actually observe an animal moving, yes, and then describing it and then taking it on rather than move like a monkey, and they have these classic things that they would do. I said, well, wait a second, let's let's look at a monkey and I'll have videos of them. And they go oh, I said, see if you can copy the way the monkey is moving. And then their vocabulary broadens and it starts with their physical, because physical movement is a vocabulary that they can then translate into words, and then their verbal vocabulary is expanded. So that's another thing I like to do. I one of my very favorite exercises, and this one was when I did early on and it really got me hooked in trying to invent things that were rigorous.

Jef Lambdin: 22:36

I, that's called monkeys in the rainforest and I teach them about five different kinds of monkeys that are in the rainforest and they each choose their own which one they're going to be in there and they're little tribes right that?

Jef Lambdin: 22:47

All the five little tribes are monkey. And we start and what I do is I take all the desks and all the tables in the room and I push them together and that's where they go to sleep every night, and so they actually are climbing up and they all go to sleep and then when they're out during the day, they're out around the room and they're with their little tribes and they're eating and they know what they're supposed to be finding, and so they're doing their research visually and I take away some of the chairs and tables. So when they go back at night, there's less each time and by the fourth or fifth time there's not enough room for everybody. So what did them? How do you help your tribe you have? How do you help each other? And it, and it really is emotional for the children when they see a child that there's no room for and what do they have to do? And then we talk about. You know what's happening to the rainforest, but we don't talk about it until we've done it.

Dr Diane : 23:43

So you're internalizing it. First You're developing that emotional connection and then you add in the layers of content, exactly.

Jef Lambdin: 23:51

And they see it and feel it. It's not. I mean, it's not rhetorical, it's not, you know, it's not imaginary, it's not fantastic they're. You know, Sam can't get up here until we reach home. We're going to grab and we're going to hold him on on the death Because we want our whole family to be here. Right, Love that and by adding the emotional content of acting to the exercise, which is which is what I've done, it really brings home what we're talking about when we lose an acre of rainforest.

Dr Diane : 24:27

And that's a hard concept, without adding that in.

Jef Lambdin: 24:31

Yeah, and running water is another one. And you I mean a lot of people do this, I assume, but I have them. You know, we talk about turning on the water and brushing our teeth and turn on the water and washing our hands, and do they ever just leave the water on? And and you know, the water's running. So I have, I, I I'm brushing my teeth and I say you have to run anytime. I turn the faucets on, so the whole class is running right, and I turn on the faucets and I get my toothpaste and they're running, and I open up the tube and they're running and they're saying Mr Janet, you know we're still running, I go, oh really, I'm brushing my teeth, and so by the end of the go, I go. So how was it to be running water While I was doing? I said, well, you were wasting us. And they're telling me I love it, you know, and it's just physicalizing it and that's the way I look at it.

Dr Diane : 25:23

But it does again by acting it out, you bring the point home and I was thinking, as you were talking, that you could do that with polar bears and the disappearing sea ice. That might be a really powerful way to help kids understand what the Arctic is going through right now and you know there's a.

Jef Lambdin: 25:41

There's a book that I use Dog on Ice. I think it's called and it's about. It was a true story that there was. It happened in Finland or Sweden, up in up in Scandinavia somewhere where a dog ended up on an ice flow by accident and the kids on this watch the dog floating by and and how they mobilize the people to save the dog. They had a ship that they directed a ship to go and and get the dog and then the dog was the mascot of the ship and I use that for them. You know they have them. Imagine that they are dog on the ice and I give them writing prompts. I wish, I feel I would really like, and you know, once, once we've read through the story and they and then I have them acted out, then they're, then they're writing in the first person, you know, being the dog and and it would just be another leap to be a polar bear. I love that.

Dr Diane : 26:45

Are there other books that you like to use? I?

Jef Lambdin: 26:49

like my passion. I like to use frog and toad books because they are always so wonderful. I like there's a book called Elberch Bad Word. I know that one. Okay, I like that one. Stragonona with the with the pasta pot making pasta and pasta and pasta. I love that one. That. Tommy DePaolo, those off the top of my head, those are the ones that I that come right up to the top.

Dr Diane : 27:21

You know, because that's one of the things that I love to do with teachers is to help them find, you know, multicultural picture books, picture books that you can connect to these things. Yeah, you're doing, and so I love the fact that you're also tying in literature as you're doing your work. I think it's really cool.

Jef Lambdin: 27:37

Well, the Ruby Bridges I have. I had. I had teachers. I got an excerpt from one of the stories about Ruby Bridges and they acted it out and and there were. You know, some of them were using harsh words, yelling them at Ruby as she went by, and so that was a real Internally difficult for them because they were playing out of type and with anybody do professional developments. I need them to know that that's a good thing. That's how you know with. I know not all schools can talk about social emotional learning anymore, but there are whole curricula that we're supposed to be teaching about. You've got to call it something else Exactly, but walking in someone else's shoes is a big part of empathy.

Dr Diane : 28:25

Absolutely, and empathy, to me, is one of the biggest things that we as a country need to work on Right, whether it's with a frog, or with Ruby Bridges, or you know, or, or anything but but yeah. Yeah, I had noticed that you are doing work with social, emotional learning or character development or building, whatever we want to call it. At this point, it's all the same stuff. How do you work that into your, into the work that you do?

Jef Lambdin: 28:58

Okay, I actually taught a workshop and people would ask me to teach it and I did it a lot in South Carolina and North Carolina. I worked with the drama teachers in North Carolina but saying you cannot do an art lesson without touching on social more, you can't.

Dr Diane : 29:16

Right.

Jef Lambdin: 29:17

You can't, it just it can't be done. And the way that I did it was I took the social and social emotional, a lot of the ideas that they list on a lot of the websites about. These are things that show this. These are things that show this. And I made, you know, two pages front and back. And so we would do an exercise. Say, we did an exercise about using a sculptural work created by an African American artist and they take the pose of the sculpture and then come up with lines for it and make a script. Okay, that's a playwriting exercise. And then I say, okay, look at your sheets. What part of what, what social emotional axioms did we touch upon? They go, oh, this one and this one.

Jef Lambdin: 30:04

And you know, I said you can't, so you can't do it, you can't and I, so I do another exercise where they're collaborating it's called the Giants House, and where they're in a group. Each, each gang is it? Each team is in a group and they're walking in a circle. I say stop and I tell them an item in the Giants House that they must create with their bodies, and it's everything from a chair to a harp, to a bed, to a bowl of cereal, and they have to with their bodies and they have to work on stillness. So there's a lot of collaboration involved and and when I do it with children, they I do it before I have them collaborate, creating a mind piece I say these are the skills that you need and have them tell me what skills did you bring to this to achieve this?

Dr Diane : 30:55

And and that's important, I think- and what a great way to sort of start with something concrete. Yes, they're creating and then out because they're going to take responsibility for creating an entire skin.

Jef Lambdin: 31:07

Exactly, exactly. And we have to remember that we cannot assess what we don't teach. So I I get a little heebie jeebie when a teacher says make a tableau and you know it's a French word, it's short for tableau vivant. It really is. I mean theater companies that used to do it used to spend weeks creating them and then they would perform them and and and. So when I teach children about tableau, I never use the word. I talk about stillness, and then pictures and being a part of a picture, and then, maybe, after we've done it for a couple of days, I say you know, this has an official name Because, again, by naming it with societies named for it, it removes it from from first person and you want it to start as a first person experience.

Dr Diane : 32:03

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Jef Lambdin: 33:11

Right, right.

Dr Diane : 33:14

So you've had a chance to see education from many different vantage points over over the last 25, 30 years or so, maybe a little bit longer than that. What are some of the biggest changes you've seen? And second with that is, what are some of your hopes for education based on what you see as you travel and you teach?

Jef Lambdin: 33:38

Okay If I was king and I got to say class size. The size of the group that you're teaching must be smaller. The size of the schools must be to scale for the size of those classes. I'm sorry when I go into a warehouse high school and there are 5000 kids and each hallway is its own school or learning environment. I'm not so sure that the young people in that atmosphere come away with what I did. There are 800 people in my high school Total.

Dr Diane : 34:23

Right.

Jef Lambdin: 34:24

Total and I knew their mothers. You know I knew their parents and we've gone away from that and I understand the California model and why we do it and this and that sometimes they do it just to have a good football team. I'm sorry, and if I was king I would stop that and I would go back to smaller, Well, well appointed, with a, with wasting all the space to have an auditorium and science and science labs, actual labs with sinks and faucets and you know, so that you didn't worry about burning down the bookshelf with the Bunsen burner. I know that I know that they consider that a waste of space now, but I don't think so. I think that that having appropriate learning environments is really important. Multi purpose rooms. I mean you're going to eat there and then they're going to open up a sliding panel and you're going to watch a show.

Dr Diane : 35:25

Sorry, and it also limits the opportunities to bring in the arts because you're having to basically build that around lunch periods.

Jef Lambdin: 35:36

Correct, correct Anyway. But if I was king of the universe, it'd be small class size, small school size and appropriate learning environments. That's the way I'd say it. And we're building a school here in Robinson County, where I live, and it's not going to have any of that. It's a brand new middle school and they're going to have thousands of kids and the stage is going to be at the end of the gym and, and that's okay, at least it's there.

Dr Diane : 36:04

At least they have a stage.

Jef Lambdin: 36:06

But I don't want to say at least it's no.

Dr Diane : 36:09

I agree with you.

Jef Lambdin: 36:10

I'm in.

Dr Diane : 36:11

Winchester, virginia, and they're doing renovations at the high school my girls went to and, as they've done the renovations, the arts department, yet again, wasn't also thought they weren't considered part of the primary scope of things, and so a lot of the emphasis went to athletics and surprise. But and there's nothing wrong with athletics Athletics can be a great thing, but you need to be able to embrace all of these intelligences, and not every kid is going to go through their high school experience as a football player.

Jef Lambdin: 36:47

Amen, Amen. And so if I was King of the universe, those are the educational reforms that I would insist upon.

Dr Diane : 36:54

I like that. So last question for you for today what brings you hope?

Jef Lambdin: 37:01

the kids, the kids Through COVID. I mean, I tried what I did on Zoom with kids and I didn't like it but they were juiced. But trying to assess 34 little boxes on my screen here was beyond me. I realized really early on if I can't assess the class, I can't be teaching it. I know I disappointed a lot of people because I just said I can't do it, but the young people have come back from that. Yes, we have all of the data showing that.

Jef Lambdin: 37:40

My brother, for instance, teaches at a university. He teaches remedial English for entering freshmen. He said, jeff, our classes quintupled at the end of COVID because kids couldn't write at college level, coming out of high school having their diploma in their hand. But they're still crying, they're not discouraged. That's my point. The kids give me hope. When I walk into a classroom and even before, when I'm walking down the hall and the kids don't know I'm watching and one of them is going like this from the day before, practicing their mind, then I have hope. They're listening, they're being encouraged, they're playing. That's the other part of the educational question that we forget sometimes and you've said this yourself in so many words. It's got to be playful, because if it's tedious and boring. It's not going to be absorbed.

Dr Diane : 38:49

Well, and that's my hope for the new year for so many of our teachers and students is that get the tools they need to be able to have playful and enjoyable learning.

Jef Lambdin: 39:00

Right, right. So it's the kids. And I know, you know, and okay, I can say all this because I'm a gypsy killer I come into your school for X number of weeks and I do my work and I leave. I am not a day to day, 180 days of the year, with a certain things that I have to get done. Yes, I have certain things I have to get done, but not over the scope of, you know, 56 weeks, 52 weeks, how many weeks are there?

Dr Diane : 39:27

52.

Jef Lambdin: 39:28

Yeah, and I really respect them. I mean, it takes different kinds of people to do different things and I really respect and love those teachers that I see in their day in and day out trying to find a way to make all this happen, with all the gobbledygook that they have to do. I mean when teachers today have so much paperwork that they don't give homework.

Dr Diane : 39:56

Right, well, they're being given so many outside tasks, exactly. They are on to teaching, exactly, and so we can help them If we can help make it simpler, help them make it fun again. I think that's where the kind of professional development, the kind of work that we do, Well, I bet you do that with your professional development work.

Jef Lambdin: 40:20

You try to show them.

Dr Diane : 40:21

Yes, look for ways to make it fun and enjoyable and accomplish all of these different things so that we make it efficient. You can do all of these things. You can connect literature and steam and you can still cover your standards.

Jef Lambdin: 40:37

Right Both at and everybody's everybody's happier and learning more. Now, okay, there was one more thing I just remembered. I would remove electronic learning from anybody younger than high school, and that's because of all the studies. The studies show that two-dimensional learning and keyboarding is uses so much less of our brain, and that would be the I'll be your ass. I was thinking. That just came cascading on me. Using a stylus, a pencil or a pen uses 400% more of your brain than using your fingers on a keypad. So why don't we write?

Dr Diane : 41:26

Well, we need to write, we need to be able to get our hands dirty and be able to actually shape and mold and experiment as we're built.

Jef Lambdin: 41:35

Yes, yes Amen.

Dr Diane : 41:38

Well, I think you and I should just become the new king and queen of the universe.

Jef Lambdin: 41:41

Okay, okay, yeah, so then. So then, what do we do with all those politicians? In our way, right.

Dr Diane : 41:48

Exactly, we'll figure it out, okay. Well, thanks for having me.

Dr Diane : 41:52

Well, thank you so much for being a guest on the Adventures in Learning podcast. I'm going to include your contact information in the show notes so that people can follow you and hopefully bring you to their school. You've been listening to the Adventures in Learning podcast with your host, dr Diane. If you like what you're hearing, please subscribe, download and let us know what you think, and please tell a friend. If you want the full show notes and the pictures, please go to drdianadventurescom. We look forward to you joining us on our next adventure.