The Real Bones of Learning
By: Heather Kretschmer
Have you ever told your students to study harder for tests? Start studying sooner? Or perhaps you’ve spent valuable class time on activities aimed at helping your students learn vocabulary, grammar, or other features of the target language, only for your students to do poorly on the test afterwards? Maybe your students are like the hyena in this story:
The Hyena and the Moon
One night Hyena saw something shining in the waters of a lake. “It’s a bone!” she thought hungrily, but it was just the moon’s reflection.
She jumped into the water, but she couldn’t reach the bone.
She got out of the water, and again she saw the bone.
She jumped in again, and again, and again.
The water got muddy, and Hyena thought the bone was gone. But then the water cleared, and there was the bone.
At daybreak, Hyena was still there by the lake, jumping and jumping, trying to eat the moonlight that she thought was a bone.
– a Ndau story from Mozambique, retold by Laura Gibbs in 100 words (link)
In the story, Hyena spends hours doing the same thing over and over even though it isn’t working. As a result, she goes hungry. While her tenacity is praiseworthy, she invests all her energy into an action that simply will never bear fruit. Worse, she doesn’t stop to reflect on what’s not working or what she could do differently to achieve her goal.
Hyena reminds us very strongly of those students who thirst for knowledge and really want to learn but go about it the wrong way. These are the students who, for example, wait until the last minute to study for a vocabulary test and stay up far too late into the night cramming for the test. When they sit down to take the test the next day with bleary, exhausted eyes, they find out that those pesky vocabulary items they thought they’d finally learned after their marathon study session have escaped their memory. How long will these students repeat these unproductive behaviors before becoming discouraged and giving up learning altogether? How long until they decide they’re just dumb, even though it’s not their intelligence that’s the problem. It’s their ineffective learning strategy.
Will our students stop trying to learn? Will Hyena weaken and perish? Well, I believe Hyena and our students deserve a better fate. And really, the story hasn’t ended yet, neither our students’ story, nor Hyena’s. Maybe, just maybe, Hyena’s dogged persistence can be redirected down a more productive path. Maybe Hyena just needs a helping hand (or helping hoof as the case may be):
The next night, Hyena was jumping in and out of the lake again. After observing Hyena for a while, Donkey asked her, “What are you doing?”
Hyena pointed at the moon’s reflection and snapped, “I wanna eat that bone, but it keeps disappearing!” Springing into the water, she moaned, “I’m hungry!”
“Hmm,” replied Donkey, “is the bone in the water the only bone you could eat?”
Astonished, Hyena answered, “I don’t know.”
“Let’s see if we can find another one,” suggested Donkey. “Walk with me, and we’ll find some tasty bones together.”
So, Hyena accompanied Donkey away from the lake.
Donkey has skillfully maneuvered Hyena onto a path where she can invest her energy into finding actual food instead of chasing the illusion of food. Likewise, teachers don’t want students to chase the illusion of learning. Instead, when we notice our students are expending energy in useless learning strategies, we can deftly guide them toward strategies that still require time and effort but actually bear fruit.
But it isn’t enough to exhort students to study harder or start studying sooner. Such advice isn’t helpful if students really don’t know how to study. It’s better to devote class time to giving students opportunities to experience effective ways of learning themselves. And in doing so, we should not only have students try out strategies but also reflect on why those particular strategies are effective. Practice combined with metacognition guides students toward the real bones of learning. Bones with filling, nutritious marrow.
So, what are effective ways to learn? Well, dear readers, we invite you to keep reading as this month’s Think Tank authors tell us not only how we learn but also outline practical classroom strategies you can try out with your students. Walk alongside Hyena and Donkey for a delicious repast!
Heather Kretschmer thinks a refreshing swim in Hyena’s moonlit lake would be the perfect way to end a day of teaching.