We are literally off to school in this conversation with Lucy Butler. 

Lucy is also a horse owner and a clicker trainer.  She is also a special ed teacher in a high school.  At the start of this year she was assigned all the repeaters for freshman year, that is all the students who had failed ninth grade.  

I met her last summer via my virtual clinics. In the clinic and then in Science Camp Lucy was introduced to the constructional approach to training.  She has taken the concepts and run with them - both with her horse and with her students.  She describes her classroom as a bubble of joy.  Her students are seeing themselves as individuals who can do well, more than that - they want to do well.

There are so many stories in the news these days about the problems in schools.  It’s a bleak picture, so it’s a refreshing change to be able to talk to a teacher who is excited to be in school.

What Lucy is learning is definitely relevant to our horses. So bringing her work from the classroom back to horses via this podcast is a fun loop to explore.  I suspect there will be many ripples going out from this conversation.  

Enjoy!

Episode 172: Lucy Butler Part 1: Off To School

This week we continue our conversation with Dr. Claire St Peter.  Claire received her PhD in Psychology with an emphasis in Behavior Analysis from the University of Florida in 2006. She is currently a Professor of Psychology, the Director of Graduate Training, and the Coordinator of the Behavior Analysis program area at West Virginia University.  She is also a horse enthusiast so in this conversation we get to explore all her interests.

In Part 1 we began with mastery-based learning and then Claire introduced us to the concept of super resurgence.  In Part 2 we begin with the reasons why behavior relapses.  That will take us to quadratic equations, philosophical answers contrasted with ethical ones, loopy training and the constructional approach, variable and continuous reinforcement schedules, and collaborations between trainers and researchers.  It’s a fun, wide-ranging conversation that takes us down some unexpected but fun rabbit holes.

Episode 176 Dr Claire St Peter Part 2 What Causes Behavior To Relapse?

Lucy Butler is a special ed teacher who at the start of the 2021-2022 school year was given the assignment of working with all the students in her high school who had failed ninth grade the previous year.  Lucy had been attending my on-line clinics through the summer and over Labor Day weekend she attended our Science Camp, so she was very excited to apply the concepts of constructional training to her classroom students.  With the help of Dr Claire St Peter and two of Claire’s former graduate students, Lucy began the process of changing the lives of her students.  

In Part 1 Lucy reviewed some of the major lessons from the first half of the year.  In Part Two we move into the second half of the year with a discussion of SMART goals.  The students were learning that felt good to improve, so now they were further empowered by being asked to develop their own goals.  What did they want to improve?  Learn about SMART goals and how to use a Ruleg matrix to teach complex concepts.

Episode 195: Lucy Butler Part 2: SMART Goals And Ruleg Matrices

Lucy Butler is a special education teacher in a high school.  In the 2021-2022 school year Lucy was given the task of working with all the students who were repeating their freshmen year of high school.  Lucy has been a guest on our podcast several times before.  She’s been sharing her classroom experiences with us.  This year Lucy has another cohort of freshman class repeaters and she’s also co-teaching math classes.  During the Christmas break she gave us a progress report. 
 
In the math class she has opportunities to work with all the students, not just the ones are struggling with math.  She describes how she uses thin slicing, loopy training and the constructional design principles to help all the students succeed in math class.  

She is looking at the basics of how new skills are taught.  This is universal.  Whether you are working with human students or horses, teaching skills using a mastery-based structure leads to successful learners.

In this episode we talk about how to teach and also how to spread ideas to create system-wide change.

Episode 220 Lucy Butler Pt 1 Skill - Based Teaching In A School Environment

Welcome to the first ever episode of 'The Classroom Chat' by Kirsty Hall and Jonny Ross-Tatam, two teachers in their second year of the Teach First programme. This is where we talk about the big issues in education and gather  top tips for your classroom, from the research and fellow teachers. 

In this episode, we will be talking about why there are fewer girls pursuing STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Maths) subjects. This is both a moral and economic issue, particularly with the rise of well-paid technology jobs in the future. We'll be breaking down the research behind why girls are being discouraged in STEM subjects, while gathering tips from the research and fellow teachers for what we can do about it in the classroom. 

Music credits to: Audio Jungle - MorningLightMusic - Upbeat Inspiring Corportate Uplifting (AJ Preview)

For more on the research behind this podcast, see the articles below:

Suzanne Choney (March, 2018), ‘Why do girls lose interest in STEM? New research has some answers – and what we can do about it’, Microsoft;  https://news.microsoft.com/features/why-do-girls-lose-interest-in-stem-new-research-has-some-answers-and-what-we-can-do-about-it/ 

Nathalia Gjersoe (March, 2018), ‘Bridging the gender gap: why do so few girls study Stem subjects?’, The Guardian https://www.theguardian.com/science/head-quarters/2018/mar/08/bridging-the-gender-gap-why-do-so-few-girls-study-stem-subjects. 

Catherine Hill, Ph.D. (2010), ‘Why So Few? Women in Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM)’, American Association of University Women (AAUW); https://www.aauw.org/research/why-so-few/ 

For a summary of the Manchester Metropolitan University research see this article; Amy Packham (March, 2018), ‘7 Practical Ways Parents Can Inspire Girls To Get Into STEM’, The Huffington Post, https://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/entry/inspiring-girls-into-stem_uk_5aa7b5a7e4b03c9edfaf8584?guccounter=1&guce_referrer_us=aHR0cHM6Ly93d3cuZ29vZ2xlLmNvLnVrLw&guce_referrer_cs=fzpgFS6YhkwWZgVt66ipsA. 
Anni REINKING, Barbara Martin, ‘The Gender Gap in STEM Fields: Theories, Movements, and Ideas to Engage Girls in STEM’, Journal of New Approaches in Educational Research, [S.l.], v. 7, n. 2, p. 148-153, july 2018. ISSN 2254-7339. Available at: <https://naerjournal.ua.es/article/view/271>

The Classroom Chat - Girls in STEM - Episode 1

Equiosity is the podcast about all things equine with a special emphasis on the horse-human bond.

Welcome to 'The Classroom Chat', where we talk about the big issues in education, the research behind them and gather practical tips for our classroom. We hope you enjoy listening!

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