Sam Harrelson

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!”

New Classroom Setup

My classroom at Wilson Hall is coming along!

Whole Wheat Pita on the Blackstone

We were gifted a Blackstone griddle recently. I love cooking on cast iron, but I was skeptical about the Blackstone for some reason. It turned out I was wrong. I love cooking on this thing. We made dough into whole wheat pitas yesterday, and it was fantastic!

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!

Why Paper Notes Are (Sometimes) Better

I have no papers that I typed at Mullins High School in 1992-1996. I have a nice collection of hand-written ones.

I have very few (very very few to be precise) of my papers or notes that I typed at Wofford College in 1996-2000 unless I printed those out. Even then, the hand-written notes far outweigh the typed papers and that’s not just because of volume.

I have a few of the papers I typed in Graduate School at Yale University from 2000-2003 but they are in terrible formatting shape. I still have all of my paper notes. I still have the paper notes that colleagues and Professors passed on to me and that I made a copy of either in my own hand or by paying $.10 a copy on the printer if I wasn’t at the Yale Art Gallery where I had unlimited printing abilities.

Take notes. Use paper. Your future self will thank you.

The Season

You puzzled me with refraction, your mysterious guise,

(bending your hair in light, like corn under windy skies).

A shimmering illusion, a trick of the dawn’s early gleam,

causing me to look the wrong way, lost in a dream.

Your essence, like an underground stream, flowed unseen,

for your root cause, I plowed the field, yet it remained pristine.

In earth’s quiet wisdom, the truth lay untold,

my furrowed brow mirrored the furrowed fold.

You spoke to me from heaven, from the vast cerulean expanse,

(and I looked down) in the soil, seeking your dance.

Your voice in the wind rustling the autumn leaves,

in the silence of the winter, in the spring that deceives.

In the bounty of summer, under the sun’s searing gaze,

your riddles whispered in the crackle of the maize.

You answered me in riddles and caused me to drive onto the rocks,

like a wayward vessel tossed by the unyielding equinox.

But in the turned earth, in the seed’s silent plea,

I found your truth, in the cycles of a bountiful tree.

Roots deep in the Pee Dee, branches reaching for the light,

You puzzled, spoke and answered, in the day and in the night.

In the seasons’ eternal riddle, in the plow’s steadfast toil,

I found you not in heaven, but in the humble soil.

Happy Aphelion, Earthlings!

I always love working with my students to help them realize the really interesting nature of the Earth’s tilt (and wobble) and how it directly impacts our seasons rather than proximity to the Sun!

When Is Aphelion 2023 and What It Means – The New York Times:

But don’t expect any relief from summer. Seasons on Earth are the product of changes in the amount of direct sunlight as the planet tilts toward and away from the sun — not its orbital path. It would take a much greater swing, so that the amount of received sunlight dropped significantly, in order to notice the difference.

Baby H’s Arrival Date

Merianna and I are excited to let you know that Baby H (name to be disclosed later) will be joining our family on August 1, 2023!

We’re looking forward to meeting this new little human very soon!

Threads and RIP Twitter

Instagram Threads launched today. It’s a slicker and very nice text-based social platform. It’s basically what Twitter should have become.

I’ve used Twitter since it was TWTTR way back and had the original @sam handle in early 2006. I thought it was magical. And it was. So much of what we thought about making content on the web was changing and evolving.

Then Twitter really took off in 2006 with the tech crowd (as you can see here on this blog with all the posts tagged with “twitter”), and it was seriously magical. I remember staying in a Las Vegas hotel during a tech conference with the late great Wayne Porter when Twitter was still text-based, and him threatening to take my phone out into the desert and shoot it because it would not stop giving 40404 alerts (Twitter’s number) in early 2006.

Track was amazing. You could type “track mullins” into Twitter, and any mention of “mullins” (my hometown) would signal an alert. Amazing. I remember driving to the NASCAR race at Richmond in 2007 with my Blackberry and Twitter track set up… I had the best time.

2007 was a year of exploration. The world discovered Twitter along with social media. We elected a President in 2008 who broadcast his inauguration on social media in January 2009. It felt like we were living in the future. Twitter track, social media casts, Skype… it was all so amazing.

I made a video in early 2007 that I hastily uploaded to YouTube titled “How To Use Twitter,” which had over 2.5 million views and made me a good lump of change before I deleted it. It was the top-ranked video for Twitter at the time. Geez, I loved that platform.

Then… the 2010s happened. I won’t speak of those. But social media went in a different direction.

Now here we are with Threads by Instagram. It is clean and vibrant. It’s what Twitter could have been. But it feels empty and hollow in a way that Twitter never did. It will be a fantastic platform. Threads will completely trounce Twitter and make Elon Musk’s endeavor of purchasing and seemingly detaching Twitter from life support seem vainglorious.

But I will always hold out hope for the Bird. RIP, Twitter. You did well. You ushered in something so unique.

Now may we all return to our own blogs and our own places of content creation and learn the lessons we needed to learn about trusting in the altruism of large corporations when it comes to our human outputs (and why you shouldn’t).

Life in 2023

“I’ll be on the road in one min, Beautiful. I’m waiting for my Watch to update.”

Me to Merianna just now before I head off to 4th of July festivities. What a time to be alive.

Inside a Genius Mind: Leonardo’s Notebooks

Amazing web app here (bottom link to direct Google Experiment) focused on major themes in Leonardo’s notebooks and connecting them with machine learning. I’m a huge fan of notebooks, and I use the example of Leonardo keeping his thoughts in them all the time with my own students.

If you’re like me and really into Leonardo’s “notebooking” practices and history, I highly suggest you check out the videos Adam Savage has done on his Tested YouTube channel. Wonderful and inspiring videos. May we all find something that moves us in such a way!

Leonardo da Vinci: Inside a genius mind post:

From the stages of his life to dispelling myths, and examining his masterpieces up close, everyone can delve into Leonardo’s mind as we’ve brought together for the first time 1,300 pages from his collections of volumes and notebooks. The codices, brimming sketches, ideas, and observations, offer a window into the boundless imagination of one of history’s greatest polymaths. With the aid of Machine Learning and the curatorial expertise of Professor Martin Kemp, the accompanying experiment also called “Inside a Genius Mind” unravels these intriguing and sometimes mysterious materials.

Full experiment here!

Litter.

Ben: “Emmy, do you know what’s not funny?”

Emmy: “No?”

Ben: “Litter.”

Captain Planet lives on.

Are You a Subtitles Fan Too?

I realized last week while catching up on The Mandalorian that I have been using subtitles so much more recently. I chalked it up to getting older and not being able to hear dialogue as well. Interesting study here…

50% of Americans watch content with subtitles most of the time.

55% say it is harder to hear dialogue in shows and movies than it used to be.

62% of Americans use subtitles more on streaming services than regular TV.

57% watch content in public; 74% of Gen Z do so.

Survey: Why America Is Obsessed with Subtitles

“It’s Like a Choir”

This has no bearing on your life and won’t change how you think about your drive to work.

“It’s like a choir, with all these supermassive black hole pairs chiming in at different frequencies,” Chiara Mingarelli, a NANOGrav scientist who worked on the new findings, said in a press release.

However, this is a HUGE deal. And those of us who follow these things are FREAKING OUT. Science is amazing. Life is amazing. This Creation that we get to participate in briefly is AMAZING!

Scientists Find the Gravitational Wave Background: What It Means:

Well, here it is. And it really is the big one!

Scientists from the North American Nanohertz Observatory for Gravitational Waves (NANOGrav) have officially made the first detections of the gravitational wave background.

They made the first detections of what? Fair question, especially if you haven’t, in fact, been extremely tuned in to physics and astronomy Twitter. So let’s back up…

“What’s next is everything,” she said in a press release. “This is just the beginning.”

From Back in the Day at Google

Just found these in a box! “Ain’t it funny, how Time slips away…” to quote Willie Nelson.

What Happens to the Web Now?

Artificial Intelligence might usher in something like a return to curated web experiences. This article is presented in a very “anti-AI” posture, but it also raises the idea that what happens to the web after AI completely saturates online content (and discovery through search and googling, etc.) is a realization that humans are pretty good at curating stuff for other humans.

Hence, making a Spotify playlist for someone special is still just as engaging as when we used cassette tapes in the 80s and 90s to do the same.

My personal wish is that we all go back to the notion of personal blogging or at least small and niche online communities with things like guestbooks (go sign mine… just set up today!) and Blogrolls to point us in interesting directions rather than relying on TikTok’s algorithms…

AI is killing the old web, and the new web struggles to be born – The Verge:

This is the same complaint identified by Stack Overflow’s mods: that AI-generated misinformation is insidious because it’s often invisible. It’s fluent but not grounded in real-world experience, and so it takes time and expertise to unpick. If machine-generated content supplants human authorship, it would be hard — impossible, even — to fully map the damage. And yes, people are plentiful sources of misinformation, too, but if AI systems also choke out the platforms where human expertise currently thrives, then there will be less opportunity to remedy our collective errors.

Where Did Your Gold Ring Come From?

Death

“This is our big mistake: to think we look forward to death. Most of death is already gone. Whatever time has passed is owned by death.” – Seneca

I’m sure there’s a fantastic and enthusiastic following around a certain brand of index cards. I’ve been taking notes on index cards for 30 (?) years now going back to high school and most definitely since the early ’00s in my professional career. I’d love to know the best brand of index cards. Random thought.

A Stoic Teacher? Lessons from Marcus Aurelius and Epictetus

Recently, I’ve been delving into a philosophy that’s been around for centuries but feels incredibly relevant to our modern times: Stoicism. In particular, I’ve been engrossed in the works of Marcus Aurelius, his ‘Meditations,’ (there are free versions out there on the web, but this Gregory Hayes version is my favorite), and Epictetus with his ‘Discourses (again, there are free versions available on the web that are easy to find, but this is a great version that I use personally).’ It’s been a transformative experience, which I am compelled to share, as it’s begun to significantly shape my perspective on parenting and teaching.

For those unfamiliar, Stoicism is a philosophy founded in Athens in the 3rd century BC but became especially popular in the first couple centuries of the Roman Empire. It teaches the development of self-control and fortitude as a means to overcome destructive emotions. The Stoic does not seek to extinguish feelings but instead transform them with a resolute ‘askēsis‘ that enables a person to develop clear judgment and inner calm.

Marcus Aurelius, a Stoic philosopher and Roman Emperor wrote ‘Meditations’ as a source of personal guidance and self-improvement. It’s a collection of thoughts, musings, and reminders to himself about the virtues he strived to cultivate—patience, humility, and understanding.

One of my favorite quotes from Aurelius is: “The impediment to action advances action. What stands in the way becomes the way.” This concept, often summarized as “the obstacle is the way,” has profoundly reframed challenges in my life. As a parent and a teacher, numerous unforeseen obstacles arise. Rather than viewing these as setbacks, I now see them as opportunities for growth and learning—for myself and the young minds I’m shaping.

Epictetus, a formerly enslaved person turned philosopher, taught that our reactions are the only things within our control. He said, “We cannot choose our external circumstances, but we can always choose how we respond to them.” This insight has shifted my approach to parenting. When my child gets upset, I can’t always control the situation causing the distress, but I can control my reaction. I can choose patience, understanding, and compassion.

In the classroom, the Discourses of Epictetus have also inspired me to shift my focus from the outcomes of my students to their effort and growth. This approach aligns perfectly with the Stoic emphasis on controlling what’s within our power. I can’t control the grades my students receive, but I can encourage their resilience, their determination, and their love of learning.

Stoicism, focusing on inner strength, self-control, and accepting what we cannot change, provides a robust framework for navigating life’s challenges. As I continue to study and incorporate these principles into my life, I’m better equipped to respond to the demands of parenting and teaching.

My journey into Stoicism is ongoing, and I’m excited to share more insights as they come. If you’re interested in exploring this philosophy, I recommend starting with ‘Meditations’ by Marcus Aurelius and ‘The Discourses by Epictetus (and pick up Pierre Hadot’s The Inner Citadel if you want a deep-dive). Their wisdom is timeless and, as I’ve found, profoundly applicable to our modern lives.

Rubik’s Cubes

I always keep a few Rubik’s Cubes in my classroom (and here on my desk at home). My son and daughters think they are fascinating and are constantly “borrowing” them. My students think they are equally entertaining and use them to stay awake during my otherwise boring lessons on Newton’s Laws or the Periodic Table.

Something about Rubik’s Cubes stimulate us and cause us to stop and think, “Hey, I could solve that!” in a way that perhaps no other trinket could do. We love magic with playing cards or juggling, but those require skill and practice.

Rubik’s Cubes, it seems, is a human puzzle that at least seems solvable. That is precisely why I love them in my classroom and on my desk… here at home. Humans love to solve puzzles when pondering the wider world around them. Go and do likewise.

Also, go watch this if you want to be blown away…

The New Rubik’s Cube World Record Is Just 3.13 Seconds:

In roughly the time it took you to read this sentence, Max Park solved a Rubik’s Cube. With his time of 3.13 seconds, Park bested Yusheng Du’s 2018 mark of 3.47 seconds. Just watch the video above…it’s ridiculous. I love how the judge comes in to preserve the scene as everyone goes bananas.

How To Remember Anything (Forever?)

I highly recommend you give this a try…

How To Remember Anything Forever-ish

I’ve long been a fan of reviewing the notecards that I take daily each night. Whether you’re running a company, teaching a subject, learning a subject, learning the guitar, or finding your way through life… you should be scribbling down notecards daily. Then review them at night. Then index and archive them repeatedly.

It’s a beautiful, easy (mostly) free system that will change you and help you change the world.