Learning students’ names can be a challenging, but important, component of inclusive teaching. In this episode, Michelle Miller joins us to discuss evidence-based strategies for learning students’ names.
Michelle is a Professor of Psychological Sciences and President’s Distinguished Teaching Fellow at Northern Arizona University. She is the author of Minds Online: Teaching Effectively with Technology, and Remembering and Forgetting in the Age of Technology: Teaching, Learning, and the Science of Memory in a Wired World. Her newest book, A Teacher’s Guide to Learning Students’ Names: Why You Should, Why It’s Hard, How You Can will be released in November from the University of Oklahoma Press. Michelle is also a frequent contributor of articles on teaching and learning in higher education to publications such as The Chronicle of Higher Education.
Show Notes
- Miller, Michelle (2024). A Teacher’s Guide to Learning Students’ Names: Why You Should, Why It’s Hard, How You Can. University of Oklahoma Press.
- Foer, J. (2012). Moonwalking with Einstein: The art and science of remembering everything. Penguin.
- Cohen, G. (1990). Why is it difficult to put names to faces?. British Journal of Psychology, 81(3), 287-297.
- Terry, W. S. (1994). On the relative difficulty in recalling names and occupations. The American journal of psychology, 85-94.
- Cooper, K. M., Haney, B., Krieg, A., & Brownell, S. E. (2017). What’s in a name? The importance of students perceiving that an instructor knows their names in a high-enrollment biology classroom. CBE—Life Sciences Education, 16(1), ar8.
Transcript
John: Learning students’ names can be a challenging, but important, component of inclusive teaching. In this episode, we explore evidence-based strategies for learning students’ names.
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John: Thanks for joining us for Tea for Teaching, an informal discussion of innovative and effective practices in teaching and learning.
Rebecca: This podcast series is hosted by John Kane, an economist…
John: …and Rebecca Mushtare, a graphic designer…
Rebecca: …and features guests doing important research and advocacy work to make higher education more inclusive and supportive of all learners.
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John: Our guest today is Michelle Miller. Michelle is a Professor of Psychological Sciences and President’s Distinguished Teaching Fellow at Northern Arizona University. She is the author of Minds Online: Teaching Effectively with Technology and Remembering and Forgetting in the Age of Technology: Teaching, Learning, and the Science of Memory in a Wired World. Her newest book, A Teacher’s Guide to Learning Students’ Names: Why You Should, Why It’s Hard, How You Can will be released in November from the University of Oklahoma Press. Michelle is also a frequent contributor of articles on teaching and learning in higher education to publications such as The Chronicle of Higher Education. Welcome back, Michelle.
Michelle: Thanks. It’s great to be here again.
Rebecca: Today’s teas are:… Michelle, are you drinking some tea?
Michelle: I am drinking water.
Rebecca: I think that’s a good way to be spending the afternoon, for sure. How about you, John?
John: I am drinking an oolong tea today.
Rebecca: That sounds nice. John. I just have a standard English breakfast today John.
John: That sounds exciting. [LAUGHTER]
Rebecca: It’s super exciting in my tea cup today. [LAUGHTER]
John: So we’ve invited you here, Michelle, to talk about your newest book on learning names. Pretty much all professional development workshops and activities emphasize the importance of getting to know your students’ names. Why is learning names and the pronunciation of those names such an important part of inclusive teaching practice.
Michelle: Well, this is something that I think, like you all have probably noticed, as well, you do see this advice over and over again, and it’s especially been prominent and some of the latest, really important works that have been so impactful in inclusive teaching. So there are a lot of facets to that, I think, especially in a diverse society, such as we have here in the United States, names are such a core part of our identity, and it can be such a positive and it’s a little sad, but it’s also unexpected for many of our students that instructors will put forth the effort and attend to things like correct pronunciation. Now the dark side of this is not doing so can be very non-inclusive. So without kind of belaboring it too much, there are lots of unfortunate examples out there where a faculty member decided not to try or say, “Ah, I don’t think I can say that” or repeatedly gets the name or something about the person’s identity wrong over the course of the semester. So that’s a very off putting thing to students. And to me, I also think of this more globally as part of a real shift in mindset or attitude about our teaching in higher education, I know what I came up with was this idea that teaching is so just kind of performative, and it’s almost like there’s this plexiglass wall in between you and the students who are out there, maybe in some dark auditorium. And to the extent that I got any teaching training, that’s really what I was trained in many, many years ago. Now it’s great that we’re seeing more of us in higher education really challenging that and saying, “No, this is a two-way street, teaching is about engaging students and treating them as individuals.” And yet, I think some of those old misconceptions do run deep. So as a way of individuating, really making a compelling way to reach out to students and individually creating a sense of belonging, a great demonstration that you know who I am and that you do care about that when you’re going to use my name and use it correctly, and because of the very real risks we’ve seen when people do get names, unfortunately, quite wrong in their teaching.
Rebecca: I know for me that when I see former students or colleagues out and about, I often recognize them, can remember stories or instances in class, can have a great conversation with them, and often cannot remember their name, [LAUGHTER] but certainly can remember all of this other information about them. Why? Why can I remember their name? [LAUGHTER]
Michelle: Why? Right. And John, I don’t know if you can relate to that. [LAUGHTER] I know that I can. And here’s the funny thing, I love being a cognitive psychologist, because we do deal with these weird, paradoxical things. And I’ll just informally observe, having been in this field for three decades or so, that there really is this tendency to think that it’s just you. We like to compare our insides to other people’s outsides and so on. We don’t see all the mistakes and missteps that go on with other people. But this really does play out in the field of memory, and especially in the area of names. So, I like to say, and I think I observe in this new book, this is something that, if you’re a cognitive psychologist, you will eventually have people come up to you and say, “I have to share something. [LAUGHTER] This is so weird, but I have a hard time with names. I don’t know what it is, but I just can’t do it.” And as cognitive psychologists, we kind of go, “Don’t worry, I can actually really reassure you with that, because this is one of the problems that we have a really good handle on.” So I will say that that the book Moon Walking with Einstein that came out a few years back. He’s not a psychologist, but he does a great job of explaining, among a lot of other things in memory, what you’re describing, of like, “Oh my gosh, once it’s the name, why can’t I remember this? But I have this constellation of other memorable facts that I can tap about the person. What’s going on?” And we call this the Baker-baker effect, like Baker with a capital B and baker with a small b. Just going back to this amazing series of studies that were carried out decades ago showing that really, yes, even when you take the same exact word like Baker, if you say, “Oh, here’s Rebecca, and she’s an avid baker,” I’m gonna remember that next week. I might remember that always when I see you, I might say, “Oh, how’s the sourdough coming?” [LAUGHTER] But if I say this is Rebecca Baker, and she likes to crochet in her spare time, all of a sudden, what happens to that word Baker? And without kind of getting too far into the theory of it here on the podcast today, yeah, all of that other knowledge, basically, there’s a lot of redundancy built into that system. One thing triggers another. Like, if I know that somebody is, say, a potter, I can picture them in the studio. I can ask what sorts of things they like to make, say, “Well, where did you learn to do that?” If your name is Potter, that’s very arbitrary, and there’s not a whole lot else we can back it up or support it once you go to retrieve that information. So this set of studies just made incredible waves when it came out. We just were like, “Wow, we actually have a handle on this problem, and it connects to this everyday experience.” So yes, names are uniquely disadvantaged in the process of encoding, storage and retrieval, which means that for most of us, we really do have a difficult time with them.
John: I know a lot of faculty are hesitant about using names because they worry about making mistakes. Is that a very good approach?
Michelle: Well, let me just reassure folks out there that if they’re worried about making mistakes, you’re going to, that will happen. [LAUGHTER] So just right off the bat, that is one of those arenas of life where we have to go, “Yeah, this is just going to mean some awkwardness,” and it might seem easier on the surface, just not to try, say young man in the gray shirt in the third row for the entire semester and figure that’ll all go away, but that does come at a real cost. So professors are worried about making mistakes. In the book, I do give a lot of techniques, of course, to try to get it right the first time, but a lot of this also comes down to getting out ahead of the problem. And again, as part of the process that I lay out, it really does start with forming that habit of, hey, if a name is coming on the scene, if I’m in a social situation, yeah, a lot is going on. If I’m meeting my class for the first time and students are coming up and introducing themselves, there’s a million things going on in my head, but I need to carve out that space and attention to say, Okay, time to really pay attention to this name. And I joke that you’ll mess up. But of course, socially speaking, it’s a lot easier to mess up and get corrected on the first couple of attempts than when it’s already December, the first in the fall semester, and now you’re trying and you’re going back and saying, wait a minute, I’m not sure if I got that. So mistakes can be anticipated. They can be managed. And I really do want to normalize faculty trying, trying anyway.
Rebecca: Are there some particular activities that a faculty member might use in a class to help learn student names and help other students learn each other’s names in class?
Michelle: So fundamentally, I mean, what I like to use to summarize it, it’s maybe not the best mnemonic in the world, but ASAR: attend, say, associate, retrieve. So there’s lots of different ways to take those fundamental aspects of name learning and incorporate them into classrooms. As I was just mentioning, it really does start with attention, like so much in learning, if we’re not immediately alert to and focused on what we’re trying to learn, we’re not going to pick up very much and there’s no tape loop in the head that you can just rewind five minutes back and go, “Oh, yeah, yeah, that’s what she said.” That’s not going to happen. So using students’ names, so saying a name, for lots of psycholinguistic reasons, it’s not enough just to hear the name. And that’s another fallacy that we think that “Oh, she said her name, I’ve got it.” No, you really do need to pronounce it to have the best chance of recall. And association, this is sort of when I always say this, it has parentheses around it, this is sort of the optional step. We learn the little mnemonics like, “Oh, they look like such and such a celebrity with the same name.” And that can work, but it can also be problematic. You don’t have to do that, but definitely retrieving. So that’s part of the saying as well. So say it back immediately. Great comment, Kayla, and then later on, as the individuals walking out, I say, “Have a good weekend, Kayla.” So both of those things, that spaced retrieval, that saying of the name, and immediately having that part switch on, and that habit kick in when she introduces herself for the first time, that can be the basis for a lot of activities. Now I also have a good structured icebreaker that I use, where we go around the room, and I have a way of kind of slowing down the introduction process. There’s a little bit more small talk involved. That gives me time to covertly [LAUGHTER] rehearse, retrieve, and also gives me a nice context to use the names. Then I go back around, and sometimes I can get them all right, and that’s very memorable for students. And I’d like to encourage faculty to think of ways you can use that to then pivot to, say, an early semester or first-day activity. In my research methods class, I might say, “Oh, I actually remembered all your names, or my hypothesis about how I did that. And let’s talk about how to test that.” Look, we’re already designing research in my graduate teaching practicum course. I do it, and then tell them a little bit more about the techniques, and then say, “Okay, let’s introspect about how that made you feel as a student on this first day, versus if I had not done that.” And that gets them in already thinking about the perspective taking that. I think, that is really going to be a good part of their teaching education. Ao lots of different ways, as long as you’ve got those basic building blocks in there.
John: So how could this process scale to larger classes? For those who teach classes that perhaps have hundreds of students in them?
Michelle: And that is an absolutely relevant question, I’ll say, coming from the discipline of psychology, which typically has really high enrollments than others, I can definitely picture faculty saying, “Well, great. This is fabulous if I’m sitting in an eight person seminar, but I teach chemistry, and there’s 200 students out there.” So just kind of arbitrarily saying, well, 75, 100 that’s kind of what I think of when I think big class. This is probably not the place to try a go around the room and I’ll try to memorize everybody’s names at a go. It would just kind of take too long. And I will say that I’ve had a pretty spectacular fail too, and I got a little over my skis and told a class of 70. “I’m going to memorize all your names,” and that was just a bit of overload for me as well. However, there’s some great research out there I reference a lot in the book. Kaitlyn Cooper and colleagues, a fantastic study of name learning and usage in a large stem type foundational course, and there they lean pretty heavily on a technique that I think many of us are familiar with, but maybe haven’t used to its full extent, which is table tents. [LAUGHTER] And I bring in heavy paper card stock, and I dropped a lot of money on some stickers at the Michael’s craft store, just so people can really personalize these, and that makes them more likely to bring them back. And I make it kind of the norm that you’ve got your name and it’s on your desk, and you might think, “Oh, well, that solves the whole issue.” No, you still have to really consciously remember them. And if you’re gonna really go for it, you can be using those tents to, again, kind of mentally rehearse or quiz yourself at any downtime during class. So that research as well, in those large classes, showed that even when less than 100% of the students’ names were actually learned, even a relatively low proportion were learned, that makes an outsized impression on students, so they may have a very positive impression. They may even think that the professor knows their name, when maybe they’re not one of the people who’s known, but it did make a measurable impact. So something is better than nothing. I know as faculty, we don’t always like to go for partial credit or anything less than an A plus, but getting 10%, getting 20%, and maybe upping that percentage with each semester as your skills grow. That’s a really positive trajectory. And in those large classes as well, I try to say, well, the students who I think we all have, who like to come up at the beginning or the end, they’ve got questions. If you’re one of those students, I’m definitely going to know your name. And not exclusively those students, but there too, and this is a big improvement over my very first semesters of teaching, where even those students were hit or miss for me.
Rebecca: So I know that earlier you mentioned some covert rehearsal [LAUGHTER] that you were doing in class. Tell us a little bit more about what you’re doing. What does your process look like in class when you have your classes?
Michelle: Well, I’m definitely using anything that’s what most of us would consider, nice, strong, active learning types of practices. So things like small groups. Well, I’m already circulating, as I think most of us do, to talk to folks, and in that small group too, if I haven’t gotten their name down, I can say, “Oh, and that’s a great point. And what was your name again?” It’s an appropriate area where I can do that, and I’ve got sort of a small, manageable chunk right there. I’ve got maybe three to five students, and maybe when I’m done talking to that one group, like, “oh, okay,” covertly, or maybe I’ll just say, “Okay, let me make sure that I got everybody’s names while I’m over here.” So that’s sort of piggybacking. Classroom assessment techniques… I love to have folks write down a question on the index card at the end of class, and hand it in, for example. And here you go. Here’s a ready made opportunity to look at the card, put the card away, then look up and say, “Oh, thanks, John. Have a great day.” So all those things. Now, I do have a pretty structured icebreaker type of activity as well, as I was kind of referencing. It does involve, what I think is already a very good way of having students introduce each other. This can be too time consuming if it’s more than about 40 people, I find. So students are tasked with groups of two or three. We’re going to go around and introduce not yourself, but your partner. Because if I’m introducing myself, I’m just worrying about what I’m going to say, and then I’m rehashing what I said, instead of paying any attention to anybody else. And so there’s maybe about five minutes where they have a little exchange to get just enough information from their conversation partner to be able to, when their turn comes around, say, “Hey, this is Jean, and she’s a skier, and she’s majoring in sociology.” And then Jean gets to do that for me. And that’s all great, but that gives me just enough time to do that rehearsal where I’m kind of looking around the room, I’m starting at the beginning, okay, whose name was this, whose name was this, and doing that covert rehearsal, and I do some overt rehearsal too, because again, just like with any other small groups, once let’s say a table’s worth of folks have all had their turn. Now’s my time to go around and say, “Thank you so much Jean, thanks so much. Michelle. Hey. Great to hear from you, John,” and so on. So there’s a little bit of overt retrieval and rehearsal, and also that’s how I’m using my few seconds of time [LAUGHTER] in between people and while folks are talking to each other. So yeah, that’s how that can look. And you can either set it up, if you’re really daring, you can say, “I’m going to try to remember everybody’s names.” But here again, you don’t have to do that, even if you just have that introduction. And you think, “Oh, man, I got a little bit lost about midway through the class. I think I maybe only got about two thirds.” Then you don’t go around and try to show off with the whole group. You say, “that was wonderful.” And then you go on to whatever you were going to do. So yeah, that’s how that can look and again, if you’re already doing an icebreaker, you’re already got introductions, why not leverage that to learn names?
John: And while in a large class, you couldn’t do that for the whole class and have everyone introduce themself to the class, one thing that I was just thinking as you said that, is perhaps it could be done where people pair off and then they introduce themselves to another group after that. So at least students get to know the students around them, because in my experience with large classes is that, in general, once students pick a seat that first day, they’re going to be sitting in that same seat for the rest of the semester. So if at least they get to know the people around them, it’s forming a bit of a local community at least. And I think getting them to know each other’s names is kind of helpful, too, in addition to us learning their names,
Michelle: I love that idea of like your little neighborhood, your street, [LAUGHTER] within a larger class and students. I think, would respond to that. It’s a relatable thing, we can kind of laugh about and say, “Yeah, these are your people who you’ll probably be around,” but yeah, here too, they don’t have to memorize 99 names in order to really get a head start on whoever is around them. And that way they can, if they choose to, they can use the names in discussion you’re modeling that. And so I think it takes us in a positive direction.
Rebecca: I know one strategy that I’ve used for pronunciation was to have students record their name slowly… I asked them to do it slowly… and then to provide some sort of way to help with pronunciation. So I provide my own name, and I suggested the way to pronounce my last name with a rhyme with another word, so that people could figure out how to pronounce my name, and then had them do the same thing, and then I could go back to the recordings for the names I was struggling with and that really helped.
Michelle: Yeah, the technology tools are there. And here’s another thing that we can leverage with sometimes not a massive investment of effort, and so that fits into the idea, too, that you have to kind of get it right from the beginning. It’s not the sort of thing where, after the fact, you can go home and fix it. And so new apps and new avenues come along all the time, and I think we do settle on our own favorites and the recording your own name, I think also can help fill in for some of the shortcomings of what are still really useful tools. I mean, there are other tools out there that are databases of the typical pronunciations of names globally. So I’ve leaned on those and found them very helpful. But it always helps to go back to the source, and if the student is pronouncing it themselves, that’s great. So if this can become part of our beginning of semester kind of routine, as it sounds like it has been for you, again, this is going to set us off on a really great path, and will reap benefits for when things get a lot busier later in the semester.
John: You also talk in your book about having students learn pronouns. Is this process for learning pronouns similar or different from the process of learning names?
Michelle: And pretty soon after I got with my editorial team on this book, they made a really compelling case that this was something to cover as well. And I’m being transparent about that, not because I don’t think it’s an important issue, it tremendously is, but again, as the psycholinguistics of memory person, I go, “Oh no, no, that’s a different process,” which in theory, it really, really is. And again, without breaking down the theory in too much detail, here, basically when we use a pronoun that’s the result of sort of an algorithm that our brain is running just really, really quickly. I mean, we’re talking a language production and comprehension operate on a thousandths of a second time frames. It’s incredibly mind blowingly fast, and we’re usually quite accurate at it. So this program is running when you’re putting your sentences together to make sure that all the pieces and parts go together. So instead of retrieving something like “this is Mary Potter” from my long term memory, I’m doing this matching job before that sentence comes out of my vocal track to make sure it all hangs together, verbs and the number agreement and all that, and pronouns are part of that. Now the complication is that those algorithms, which do operate largely out of our conscious awareness and control, they are tapping into long- term memory representations, and in the case of pronouns and gendered pronouns, it’s tapping into my concept of that person’s gender. So it’s not the sort of thing we reflect on every day, but I have to have all of that set up appropriately in my long-term memory. If I don’t have that person’s gender really correctly encoded, whatever that means for me, then those algorithms are going to misfire. That is what’s going to happen. So you’re not set up for failure the way that you are in retrieving proper names. The problems tend to happen at a different point in the process, but the end result is very, very similar. If I’m not correctly gendering an individual in my classes, that is a real affront to their identity, their belonging, and I’m off to a very bad start as far as including them, which is not to say folks who talk about pronouns in other contexts, healthcare and so on, as far as we can tell the available surveys of say, LGBTQ+ youth, there’s some surveys out there and they say trying and correcting yourself is better than just sort of checking out of the whole issue altogether. So you can apologize, you can move on. It’s not the end of the world, but it is a big red flag that something is off about your understanding of that person’s gender identity. So that’s a little bit of what’s going on behind the scenes, challenging, but in a different way, and also something that we can take positive steps to do better, in slightly different ways, but in ways that we can put an effort into it and come up with a better result.
Rebecca: We’ve focused a lot of our conversation around names on verbal communication, but of course, there’s a lot of written communication that we have with students, sometimes in emails, but also we have learning management systems where there’s the ability to do bulk emails, where there’s sometimes the ability to have some personalization and things in those bulk emails as well. I can imagine, maybe, that having some personalization in those bulk emails and things could also be equally as important in creating a sense of inclusion. Can you talk a little bit about that as well?
Michelle: Wow, this is such a good idea. I mean, I’m kind of going, I wish I thought of that before I put the book to press, because that’s another variation on this theme. No, it’s not cognitively the same as standing at a cocktail party and going, “Oh no, what’s this guy’s name?” but that proactive spirit of, I want to make this seem as personal as possible. Now, if it’s done with, say, a bulk emailing program, I mean, here’s the thing, I think that there’s sort of a big group of techniques and usual outcomes that sort of hang together. And it strikes me that this is sort of a part and parcel of that, of these personalization and belongingness interventions that I’ve kind of seen and occasionally tried myself over the years. So I would predict pretty good results with that. I would predict that that is going to be better than an email with no such personalization. And the reasons are because in these other, again, very similar of a piece, kind of interventions where say I send emails saying, “Oh, I noticed your test score improved. Hey, congratulations. And if you need anything, come approach me” or “I noticed that your test score was maybe not all you’d hoped it would be, and here’s some resources.” Students typically report that they know that you didn’t sit down and personally pen that missive to every single person. They know that you did it some kind of batching, or maybe your TA did it, and at the same time they appreciate it. So something does not have to be a handwritten, engraved personal invitation in order to trigger some of those same positive sort of belongingness. So I would say absolutely, and folks out there who might be trying that do some SOTL on it, see what students thought, see what the impacts were, [LAUGHTER] flip a coin and randomly decide. I’d love to read more work on that.
Rebecca: I think the one bummer about some of our LMS’s is that there’s not the ability to insert in a nickname that you know that the student likes to be called, because that would allow us to make those mail merge like things a little more accurate.
Michelle: Right. And I mean, in all serious it’s true. It’s easy to look and say, “Well, I’m teaching in an LMS. There’s a standard picture. Here’s their name.” But yes, we don’t always go by the name that’s with the Registrar and consider the effect on inclusion for a student who’s been repeatedly called one thing when they go by their middle name or a different name altogether. People don’t always look like they’re photographs. So technology is a huge help when we use it to shore up what we’re not good at, but it’s not the answer in and of itself.
John: In terms of names and the connection of names to identity, there’s this thing called a “cocktail party effect” that we talked about actually on an earlier podcast.
Michelle: Yeah.
John: Could you tell us a little bit about the cocktail party effect and why it has that sort of an impact?
Michelle: Oh, gosh, yes. This is one that was discovered so many years ago, and it’s still incredibly relevant in cognitive psychology, we’re still sitting back and going, “Whoa. It’s amazing your brain does this.” So the name itself is kind of a giveaway that it was discovered a long time ago, back when people had things called cocktail parties and got together in person. But really, any time that you’re sitting there and there could be all kinds of background noise, you’re focused on one thing, or maybe your conversation partner, but if your name gets said anywhere in your hearing range, you notice it… which is wild, just sort of on a philosophical level… because it really does mean that we’re processing what we call a pre-attentional level. So there’s like somebody listening in all the time to go, “Oh, hey, is your name mentioned?” And others explain it by saying that your name is at this incredibly low kind of threshold. So it’s sort of on this hair trigger, that it doesn’t need much input to immediately burst through and make it into your conscious awareness. So it absolutely demonstrates the incredible power that your own name acquires. Babies in their first couple months of life, I believe, they start preferentially attending to their own names, and so there is that. You can even duplicate this, as I’ve done in some of my classroom demonstrations, you can duplicate this in vision as well. So it’s also been found that if you’re focused on one area of a visual array, reading one thing or looking for one thing, you filter out everything else. But if I drop your name somewhere on the screen, you’re gonna see it. So yes, your brain treats your name like it’s just gold. It is definitely very, very privileged. And it also shows, I think, the role of attention here. So I’m always banging the drum for attention and the importance for learning and problem solving and just about everything else interesting that we do with our minds and our brains. And so your retentional systems, too, are in on the act going, “Okay, I’m monitoring for this one thing,” so no wonder it makes such a tremendous impact when this faculty member who I just met five minutes ago is actually saying this to me, either in class or on my way out the door. I’m hardwired to notice that, and it’s hardwired to make that impact.
Rebecca: Well, as you know, Michelle, we always wrap up by asking, what’s next?
Michelle: Well, what’s next is I’m completing a much anticipated sabbatical year, which I’m very, very grateful for having, and what am I going to be working on next? I currently have another book length project out there. I’m a little coy about saying a lot about it, since it’s still at that early stage, but I will say that it’s about attention, and perhaps a little bit of a broader audience that I’ve written for in the past. So stay tuned. Seems like every week somebody publishes a book about attention, but this one has been a long time in the making, and I think I do have a unique perspective, which I think will appeal to perhaps a lot of folks who listen to this podcast. So I’ve got that… running a few other research studies on everything from flash cards to metacognition, and as we do on sabbatical, hoping to get a few of those wrapped up and out the door.
Rebecca: Well, I know we’ll be paying attention, [LAUGHTER] Michelle.
John: Yes, we will focus our attention, and we’re hoping to talk to you about this new project whenever you’re ready to discuss it.
Michelle: Ah, thanks so much.
Rebecca: Thanks, Michelle,
John: Thank you. Michelle, it’s great talking to you always.
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John: If you’ve enjoyed this podcast, please subscribe and leave a review on iTunes or your favorite podcast service. To continue the conversation, join us on our Tea for Teaching Facebook page.
Rebecca: You can find show notes, transcripts and other materials on teaforteaching.com. Music by Michael Gary Brewer.
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