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My 12 Problems

Here are the “12 Problems” I’ve built my current life around. These are non-negotiables, and they are also the focus of everything I do. If a situation doesn’t fit into one of these problems, I’ll generally relegate it, delegate it, or ignore it. 

I don’t generally recommend this practice for everyone. It’s a very difficult ethical standard to hold, and it can be cumbersome to run the mental math of “which problem am I trying to solve?” at any given time.

However, this approach’s clarity and focus far outweigh the negatives.

Here are my 12 Problems. I highly urge you to come up with your own:

  1. How can I have a positive impact on this world?

  2. How can I thrive while operating contrary to the dominant social or cultural trends?

  3. How can I inspire young people to appreciate learning as a practice?

  4. How do I provide for my family while remaining true to my calling?

  5. How can I live with the most ethical sustainability while not sacrificing my enrichment in balance with the Creation?

  6. How can I be the best role model for my espoused ideals and ethics as presented to my children and students?

  7. How can I live according to nature (kata phusin in Stoicism)?

  8. What does it mean to really be an effective teacher who can make connections and expand the worldview of my students?

  9. How can I be a good Dad, and what does that mean?

  10. How can I be a good partner, and what does that mean?

  11. How can I explore my own self and brain and express that in my life?

  12. How do I always maintain my own curiosity despite the challenges that the outside world might present?

Dangers of the Common-Knowledge Effect

Fascinating research here on the usefulness of team decision-making versus independent decision-making based on similar variables:

As counterintuitive as it seems, increasing the number of people involved in a difficult decision will likely decrease decision-making quality. Whatever unique knowledge individuals could offer to deliberations often goes unshared or disregarded. When decision-making stakes are high, don’t let your valuable UX insights fall victim to the common-knowledge effect. Be a vigilant team facilitator to ensure that all of us are at least as smart as each of us.

Common-Knowledge Effect: A Harmful Bias in Team Decision Making:

Podcast: Zane’s Ice Dragon

It’s Monday, and we’re not together in class (weird), but we’ll fix that tomorrow on Optimistic Day. Get some rest, take your vitamins, and drink water… big week ahead! Here’s what is happening in Life Science, Environmental Science, and AP Physics!

Paper Airplanes

I love incorporating paper airplanes into my classroom lessons on dynamics, flight, movement, gravity… the list goes on and on. They’re so applicable to so many scientific principles but also appeal to the curious nature inside all of us that loves to fold and learn…

History of the Paper Airplane: Paper Flight Technology Inspires Drones:

“The magic of a paper airplane is that all of these little flight corrections are happening continuously throughout its flight,” Ristroph says. “The plane is hanging under a vortex that is constantly swelling and shrinking in just the right ways to keep a smooth and level glide.”

Emotions as Constructions

Emotions are not reactions to the world. You are not a passive receiver of sensory input but an active constructor of your emotions.

How Emotions are Made – Lisa Feldman Barrett

Every teacher (and parent) should read this book. It’s transformative on many levels regarding our own personal development and how we should think about the emotional health and support of young people!

Thinking About Screentime

I’ve become much more of a book person as I’ve gotten older. Also, notebooks. That would seem quizzical to my younger self that reveled in every new productivity and reading app released on iOS or Android as I combed through blogs, subreddits, and Twitter lists, looking for the latest and greatest note-taking app.

Alas, getting old is interesting.

Screentime is definitely something that’s been on the front of my mind for the last few decades as I’ve welcomed children into this world (including Lily as of August 1!) and young people ranging from 12 to 18 into my classrooms. 

I plan to read this book, so I’m using this as a space-saver for myself to return to when I’m done (and in the middle of the school year).

Screentime is a fascinating cultural concept. The amount of “screentime” we actually consume is lower than it’s ever been (no, really). But is the measurement of “time” really what we should be focused on or worried about?

Regardless, my students will still have their devices in the “off” mode, and we’ll focus on the great ideas with our brains, pen/cil, paper, and each other’s voices like we’ll continue to not have devices on during dinners or downstairs time here in our home…

A Different Way to Think About Screentime:

Parents have a hard time when they don’t know something. I’ve written this elsewhere, but I think one of the basic things that underlies a lot of the book bannings and pronoun panics from parent-activists on the far-right is the very simple fact that parents don’t know what their kids do all day. My daughter Maeve is 7, and I volunteered this spring to help with a field trip for her first-grade class. The bus was late, and so I ended up just sitting in her classroom for about 45 minutes while the day went on as usual. Maeve is very talkative, and she loves telling us stories about her day, but it wasn’t until I sat in that classroom that I realized how little I actually knew about what the ordinary beats of that day were like, what the social dynamics were, what kind of job her wonderful teacher — hello, Mr. Diego Fernandez — is tasked with doing.

Are highlights worth it?

One of the biggest revelations I’ve had this summer doing in-depth research on Mind Body Education (thanks to the Center for Transformative Teaching and Learning and Wilson Hall for introducing me to current educational psychology research these past few months) is the value of retrieval practices in classroom learning.

A particular eye-opening part of that summer learning for me is how we process information as learners immediately and in the long-term. This quote from Willingham’s Outsmart Your Brain hit me particularly hard as someone who has been a highlighter for the last 20 or so odd years! I’ll be writing more about these topics in the next few days. Thanks to Readwise for resurfacing this quote from my readings earlier this summer!

Mr. Harrelson (Again)!

Got my classroom name plate for my new classroom and teaching position at Wilson Hall today. I’m teaching 7th grade science, Environmental Science, and Physics. All three subjects should be a blast.

I look forward to this being the last classroom name plate I collect to finish out my career here at Wilson Hall in the next few decades (I still have my others from previous schools)! So exciting!

Reconnecting with Voyager 2

Voyager 1 and 2 were launched in 1977 and have, by all expectations, exceeded their missions and then some. I was born in 1978, so I share some sentimental affinity with these two marvels of human engineering. Glad to see we reconnected with Voyager 2 after a few scary days there as it continues its incredible journey outside our solar system.

We’ll be in touch with the two Voyagers until they run out of their power reserves sometime in the 2030s. That will be a sad day. May we all contribute a verse to humanity’s story and the cosmos, much as these robots have done during their time!

I don’t think it’s a coincidence that my daughter was born on August 1, either 😉

NASA reestablishes full communications with Voyager 2:

Voyager 2 resumed communications with Earth after remaining silent for two weeks. At 12:29 a.m. EDT on Aug. 4, the spacecraft began returning science and telemetry data, indicating it is operating normally and remains on its expected trajectory, stated NASA.

Live in Your Moments Instead of Immediately Sharing

I decided to take agency and move on from social media this month after the birth of our daughter. It has been a humbling experience to live in these moments of new life made tangible by her awakening. To walk beside Merianna and be present there with her in these moments is something I never want to forget. 

Moving on from social media has already been an epiphany for me in so many ways. I’m sure I’ll be reflecting on that in the coming months here.

This post is worthy of your time to read and reflect as you contemplate your next IG Story or TikTok video…

The difference between creative & uncreative people:

When we satisfy our desire to certify the moment with a Tweet, or a Story, or a text to a friend, or a TikTok video, we sell it short. We reduce the experience to a single, throwaway-able moment, swiped by in a second, and we set the moment free. Even worse, we leave our experience (just born, fragile and fresh) in the hands of others who may not treat it with respect. They might perceive it differently than we do, mock it, minimize it, skew it in our memories, compare it to their own experience, taint it, steal it, rob it of the feelings it initially gave to us in that first, pure moment.

Significant Benefits of social and Emotional Learning for Students in Yale Research

If you ask almost any of us teachers what sort of skills or attitudes we’d love to see more developed in our students, you’d hear responses such as “resiliency” and “less anxiety.” In this first large-scale study of social and emotional learning approaches in k-12 education, Yale School of Medicine lays out some great findings (emphasis mine):

Research Finds Social and Emotional Learning Produces Significant Benefits for Students < Yale School of Medicine:

Students also showed improved social and emotional skills, attitudes, and behaviors, such as student self-efficacy, self-esteem, mindset, perseverance, and optimism, among others. Furthermore, the report confirmed that students who participate in SEL programs also feel better in school, reporting less anxiety, stress, depression, and suicidal thoughts. Students were also more connected and included and had better relationships with peers and teachers.

Welcome, Elizabeth Hope Harrelson

Elizabeth (Lily) was born this afternoon at 2:30 PM in Columbia, SC. She is 7lbs 6oz (I called it exactly) and 50cm (19.7 inches). She and Merianna are doing great and excited for walking this journey of life together with our family, friends, colleagues, and community!

As I always tell my students on Tuesdays, “It’s the Optimistic Day!”

Education Innovation and Cognitive Artifacts

Must read from Mr. Brent Kaneft (our Head of School at Wilson Hall, where I am a teacher)…

Wise Integration: Sea Squirts, Tech Bans, and Cognitive Artifacts (Summer Series) | Brent Kaneft – Intrepid ED News:

So the strange paradox of innovation is that every innovation has the potential to be an existential threat to the physical, social, spiritual, and cognitive development of humans. The allure is the convenience (our brains are always looking to save energy!) and the potentiality innovation offers, but the human cost can be staggering, either immediately or slowly, like the impact of mold secretly growing behind an attractive wallpaper. To return to Tristan Harris’s point: machines are improving as humans downgrade in various ways. As professional educators, we have to ask whether innovation will prove detrimental to the fundamental qualities we want to develop in our students.

The Digital Dark Age

Another reason you should be writing in your own space on your blog and notebooks…

Shining a Light on the Digital Dark Age – Long Now:

A false sense of security persists surrounding digitized documents: because an infinite number of identical copies can be made of any original, most of us believe that our electronic files have an indefinite shelf life and unlimited retrieval opportunities. In fact, preserving the world’s online content is an increasing concern, particularly as file formats (and the hardware and software used to run them) become scarce, inaccessible, or antiquated, technologies evolve, and data decays. Without constant maintenance and management, most digital information will be lost in just a few decades. Our modern records are far from permanent.

Arc 1.0

I’m excited to see the “1.0” launch of the browser Arc. I’ve been using Arc as my main browser (along with Safari and some Chrome sparingly) on my MacBook, and I have to say… it’s impressive.

Browsers seemingly slipped from the “wow” factor of the internet about 15 years ago after Google finally launched Chrome despite the best efforts of Firefox, Brave, Opera etc to get the mainstream about browsing again. Apps took their place as the way to access the web for most people, and as our main screen sizes shrunk, so did our attention for interesting browser features. 

However, I do think we’re at an inflection point and we’ll see interest around concepts such as Arc that will move us away from a centralized app-based future of the web towards further democratization and decentralization of what the internet should mean. 

Way to go, Browser Company!

Arc from The Browser Company:

A browser that doesn’t just meet your needs — it anticipates them.

Also, if you head over to the credits page, you can find me there as a long-time tester in the pre-launch phases!