For the teacher in your life

Do you know a teacher? Delight them this Christmas with a unique gift: a present created especially for them.

Barbara Prashnig’s book, “Learning Styles in Action”, is a practical guide to implementing learning styles in the daily teaching practice, thus helping teachers solve any stress and discipline issues.

The newspaper-column-style of the book ensures fast reading. The layout allows the reader to skim and dip into the content at any point, gathering the desired information and enhancing it with the content supplied on the left-hand pages. (These pages partly elaborate the content of the right-hand pages, partly illustrate and explain the concepts discussed on opposite pages.)

The book is full of scenarios and diverse real-life situations. Among others, “Learning Styles in Action” shows you:

• How learning styles can help underachieving or disruptive students
• Multi-sensory teaching and learning in action
• Ways to integrate learning styles and ICT (computer technology)
• How to create a real learning styles classroom
• The do’s and don’ts of using learning styles.

Each chapter gives answers to different areas of teaching. Special care has been given to the application of LS in different age groups because despite the same underlying concept and philosophy, teaching strategies, classroom set-ups, and interaction with students vary profoundly from pre-school to university level.

The book also explains the integration of LS with other pedagogic concepts like learning cycles, Multiple Intelligences (MI) and Information Communication Technology (ICT). Most importantly, it also suggests strategies for dealing with discipline issues and disruptive disrespectful students.

Help a teacher today with “Learning Styles in Action”. 

Robin Williams in Dead Poets Society

This blog post is a tribute not only to Robin Williams, but also to all the great teachers out there. In the movie "Dead Poets Society", Williams played the role of John Keating, an unconventional English Literature teacher. John Keating's teaching style - it involved tearing "boring bits" out of textbooks - would have horrified sequential thinkers and delighted simultaneous ones. (To read more about Learning Styles, please click here.)

Some famous John Keating quotes include:

• When you read, don't just consider what the author thinks, consider what you think.
• No matter what anybody tells you, words and ideas can change the world.
• We don't read and write poetry because it's cute. We read and write poetry because we are members of the human race And the human race is filled with passion. And medicine, law, business, engineering, these are noble pursuits and necessary to sustain life. But poetry, beauty, romance, love, these are what we stay alive for. To quote from Whitman, "O me! O life!... of the questions of these recurring; of the endless trains of the faithless... of cities filled with the foolish; what good amid these, O me, O life?" Answer: that you are here; that life exists, and identity; that the powerful play goes on and you may contribute a verse; that the powerful play goes on and you may contribute a verse. What will your verse be?

John Keating was their inspiration. He made their lives extraordinary. He was a real teacher.

Five Things Successful Teachers Do

There are lots of things highly successful teachers do differently from their colleagues. Here are the top five:

1. Successful teachers have fun in the classroom and make learning fun for their students.
2. Successful teachers communicate with parents, students and fellow teachers.
3. Successful teachers expect and encourage their students to succeed.
4. Successful teachers connect with their students and support them emotionally.
5. Successful teachers know the learning styles of their class.

Quality Education and Learning Style Analysis

What is Quality Education?

Dr. W. Edwards Deming of Total Quality Management (TMF) defines quality as “having characteristics required by customers and having been produced without wasted human or non-human resources”.


Let us consider for a moment what that might mean in a school environment. The customers would almost certainly be the parents, the pupils and the whole society. The human effort that we don’t want to waste would be that of teachers and pupils and parents alike.

What outcomes do we need?

Pupils who understand the syllabus? Yes.

Pupils who are interested in the material, listen in class, do their homework, attend school without resorting to truancy? Yes.

Pupils who do quality work in class and at home? Yes.

Pupils who are self-disciplined and not disruptive? What a bonus!

So, how can we achieve it?

Research shows that while most students know what quality is and are generally capable of delivering it in class, many admit that they’ve never bothered and don’t intend to do so in the future. The most often quoted reason for their lack of commitment is not that the work is too hard, but that it is too boring. And “boring” usually means that the students cannot relate to the class work and the material they are requested to learn.


In other words, the learning task at hand is not satisfying the students’ needs, because it doesn't take into account their learning style.

Enter Learning Styles Analysis - a tool that can change all that by providing teachers with the awareness awareness of their students’ learning needs:

• do they need tactile tools?
• would they work better in a darker room?
• do they thrive when given a work structure?
• are they more productive when working in groups?
• more

 Especially for schools

We offer new improved group profiles for teachers. See your class's learning needs at a glance and start your journey to stress-free teaching - today.

Prevent Teacher Shortage with Learning Styles

In most parts of the world, including New Zealand, figures show that the birth rate is increasing. This means that in 5 years' time - give or take - we will need more teachers to accommodate the new school entrants. Combined with the aging teacher population, statisticians predict a teacher shortage for as early as 2016.

The trouble is, teaching is often an under-appreciated profession. Apart from Finland, where teachers enjoy the status equivalent to that of USA medical doctors, many developed countries don't recognise the importance of having excellent teachers. No wonder, then, that many university graduates choose career paths other than teaching.

We at Creative Learning would like to help. We have tools to make teachers' jobs easier and as stress-free as teaching can get. Our new improved group profiles let the teacher know at a glance how to plan their lessons and where the hot spots of challenge may lie. Best of all, the group profiles are free: you can get as many as you like when you buy a school package that analyses the students' learning styles.

Do Your Kids Listen?

Whether you're a parent or a teacher, there comes a point (on a very bad day) when you throw your arms upwards to the silent sky and demand: "Why won't they just listen?"

In case your question wasn't rhetorical, here are some possible explanations:

• Because they're children. It's their job to not listen.
• Because they think they know what you're going to say.
• They listen, they just don't want to obey.
• Their learning style has a non-preference in the listening department.

That last point needs a bit explaining. Some people, be it adults or children, are simply not good at absorbing information through their ears. They are the ones who prefer to learn by watching, reading about it or taking part in a real-life experience such as a laboratory experiment or a field trip.

If that's the case, you can still get your children to pay more attention when you're talking - you just have to make sure a few of their other learning style preferences are satisfied. Perhaps your child will listen better in a more informal environment or at a different time of day? Perhaps they'll respond better in a warmer room or if they're allowed to nibble on pieces of fruit?

What are your child's listening preferences? Find out here.

Good Teachers, Great Teachers

In the movie Dead Poets Society, teacher John Keating goes against orthodox education methods. He urges his uptight prep-school students to climb onto their desks to see the world from a different perspective.

What makes a good teacher? Depending on our own school experience as well as on the challenges facing us as parents, we may choose somebody who:


· gets learning results,
· recognises potential in students,
· identifies possible learning issues,
· identifies social problems (bullying, alienation),
· maintains class discipline,
· is aware of each student’s learning style needs, such as the need for details or the need for the big picture,
· teaches in a multi-sensory way,
· is likeable, interesting and fun.

Great teachers are more than that. They are the ones dedicated to their job and committed to their students’ individual success. They respect their class and automatically receive respect in return. Positive and energetic, they guide, nurture and inspire their pupils. While their conduct is adult and responsible, they remember what it’s like to be a child and are able to communicate on the child’s level. Enthusiastic, with a contagious thirst for learning, great teachers love their job. They teach with heart and from the heart, beyond the textbook, passing on universal wisdom and life insights.

Great teachers are born, not made. But you can help you child's good teacher become an even better one by showing him or her your child's LSA report.

 

DO WE REALLY TEACH LITERATURE?

(a guest blog by Nicholas Reid, writer and critic)

A question has been jangling in my head recently and keeping me awake at night. Is the appreciation of literature really being taught?

I know at first glance the question seems self-evidently absurd. Of course the appreciation of literature can be taught. Otherwise why do we have all those English and other language departments and programmes in universities and colleges? And why do high-school teachers force Lord of the Flies, The God Boy, The Color Purple, To Kill a Mockingbird, The Whale Rider, The Old Man and the Sea, Man Alone, The Scarlet Letter into young and unwilling heads?

But think carefully about the question and you’ll see there is a real problem. If the appreciation of literature means responding perceptively to what authors have actually written, then is it really being taught?

Let me illuminate the problem by telling you what I know about a specific writer.

I’m quite knowledgeable about Elizabeth Gaskell and her novels. I know that she was not quite up there with classics like Dickens, George Eliot and Thackeray, but that she was an esteemed Victorian writer who has retained a considerable readership. I know that she is now much lauded by feminist academics because she gave a distinctly female account of early industrialised England. I know she wrote Mary Barton, Cranford, North and South, Wives and Daughters and other novels and short stories of small town, industrial town and domestic life; and I know that some of her work first appeared as serials in periodicals like Household Words and All the Year Round.

If you sat me down in front of a school exam question on Elizabeth Gaskell, or confronted me with an undergraduate essay topic on her, I’d be able to concoct a creditable answer. I could sagely discuss her themes – the circumscribed lives of women; the power of gossip; the clash of older village ways with industrialisation in England’s “railway age”; the beginnings of wage slavery; class divisions between the squirearchy and the middle classes; the ties that bind small communities together and so forth. I could name her main characters, write accounts of them, and neatly précis her plots. I could even make some apt comments on her style and her tendency to focus on the minutiae of life. All this would be off the top of my head from what I already know. Give me spend and hour or two to look some reference material, and I’d do even better.

But here’s the rub. Although it pains me to admit it, and although I should be performing ritualised penance, I have never read a single word of Elizabeth Gaskell’s works, even though three of her books sit on my shelves as I write this.

Having never got around to her, I have simply accumulated knowledge of her from other sources. These include passing references in general histories of literature; what I have heard other people say about her; enthusiastic recommendations from an Elizabeth Gaskell fan whom I knew some years back; and my having seen two BBC TV serial adaptations of her work – North and South and Cranford.

Everything I know about Elizabeth Gaskell is second-hand. My eyes have never travelled across the words she actually wrote and I’ve never experienced or assessed how she wrote.


Which brings me back to my original question – is the appreciation of literature really being taught?

After all, if the study of literature is supposed to be training our responses to the process of reading itself, to a particular writer’s style, and to the impact of the words on the page, then plot summaries, character studies, background sociological or biographical detail, what eminent critics have thought and the neat corralling of themes all have very little to do with it. Those things can be acquired without ever bothering to read whatever is supposedly being studied. They are a form of knowledge, but they are not an appreciation of literature.

I’m not exposing any obscure trade secret in noting this. The world is filled with high school students and perhaps a majority of BA students who have negotiated literature courses not by reading the set texts, but only by reading “study guides” on the model of the old Cole’s Notes or Monarch Notes, or by accessing whatever Wikipedia and the ‘net have to say. Conning lecturer’s notes always helps, too. (Our Humanities departments are so constituted that it is always wise to flatter your lecturer’s opinions when you formulate your answers.)

Regrettably, these methods will often be the very ones that earn an A+. Real literature for adults is allusive, can be read on many levels, and does not often lend itself to simple interpretations of the sort that one dashes off against the clock in exam or term-paper conditions. The student who has dutifully ploughed through, puzzled over and personally responded to something compendious like Bleak House may well be at a disadvantage in comparison with the student who has memorised by heart ready-made phrases about style, plot, character, themes, historical significance and so forth. I have often enough been on the other side of the fence as a (secondary- and tertiary-level) marker, and I know that a forthright, organised, clearly-expressed, information-packed answer will usually trump a sincere but more tortuous answer. Clarity and a genuine personal response to a text are not mutually-exclusive. Yet the organised, clearly-expressed answer is more likely to be the parroted answer.


I am reminded of a true story Solzhenitsyn once reported. An official Soviet-era manual advised students not to bother reading Tolstoy or Dostoievsky, but just to read the summaries of their novels given in the manual. The books themselves would be too “confusing”. Soviet officials may well have had ideological objections to undiluted Tolstoy and Dostoievsky, with all their religious and non-materialist concerns. But the manual’s advice was a frank admission of the same process that is encouraged by our own pedagogy. I’m further reminded of how often, over the years, I have heard blowhards boasting that they won high grades in school and university courses just by memorising bits of a “study guide”. Usually this has been said to me as if it were a sign of the speaker’s extreme cleverness. In fact it merely references a game whose rules all teachers and academics fully understand.

There are some fairly obvious responses to what I am saying.

One would be to ask whether any of it matters. After all, if high school or tertiary students of literature are gaining credits in NCEA courses, or passing their examinations, then what does it matter how they acquired the relevant knowledge? This approach appeals to principals whose chief concern is making their schools look good in a competitive market (between schools, NCEA is just as competitive as older national examination systems were). It appeals equally to supervisors of tertiary academic programmes, whose funding relies on a successful through-put of as many students as possible. But it implicitly negates the whole reason for studying literature in the first place. It says that a real encounter with an author’s written words is less important than knowledge about those written words. Literature is reduced to useless data, encouraging many students to regard the whole concept with contempt and to avoid ever reading anything challenging again, once they have their degree or certificate.

Another response would be to point out that I am really talking about means of assessment rather the study of literature itself. What about those teachers who ask students to compile reading journals, or to compose personal and subjective responses to what they are set to read? What about those who devise tests and exercises that require recall of a text’s actual wording? What about seminars which challenge students’ understanding and discuss specific given passages of a text?


I concede that assessment of students is one of the main things that concerns me. I acknowledge, too, that the more advanced the level of study, the less easy it becomes to hide behind ready-made packages of other peoples’ summaries. Generally, high-school students and undergraduates can get away with it, but at the postgraduate level it is much harder. (Not that it is impossible, mind. And a little creative re-wording can usually circumvent the electronic guards that most universities now use to prevent outright plagiarism in students’ work.).


But I am still on firm ground when I note the prevalence of pretending to teach literature itself, while actually encouraging students to value facts and opinions about literature. Some years ago, as a conscientious high-school teacher, I used to read the “model” essays that were sent out to us as examples of the best students’ work in the old Bursary and Scholarship English exams. I became rapidly disillusioned as I noted how many of them could have been written without even opening the works that were supposedly being analysed. One such “model” essay, earning top marks, was a collection of well-ordered, clearly-expressed current clichés about the role of women in literature. It had only a peripheral relationship with the Virginia Woolf novel that it was ostensibly discussing. Doubtless the student who wrote it was a very intelligent 17-year-old (or Year 13) student. Doubtless, too, she had carefully memorised everything her teacher had told her. But she was not responding to literature. She was repeating something that had been squeezed out of literature before she got to it.

I could pile up the depressing anecdotes along these lines. I once met a high-school teacher at a training day who proudly circulated materials he gave his senior classes, telling them that “there are two ways to study a novel”. One was to read the novel. The other, which he recommended to his students as less laborious, was to watch a good film or television adaptation of the novel and then read a study guide. So much for encountering the words on the page. Then there was the lecturer who claimed that it was unimportant for him to read the works on which he lectured. All that mattered was that he knew the work’s cultural significance, its place in literary history and the chief critical arguments and controversies it had aroused. In effect, the lecturer gave second-hand opinions to his students who (unless they took the unusual expedient of doing their own reading) would eventually give him back third-hand answers.


And so on and so on.

In our senior national high-school Bursary and Scholarship English exams, there used to be a compulsory “unseen” question, in which students had to interpret a poem or piece of prose they were seeing for the first time. It was the one part of the paper that challenged them to demonstrate their own reading skills and perception, as opposed to regurgitating what they had been told. Of course it was eventually judged to be too hard for too many students, and ceased to be compulsory. So it was back to a paper which encouraged students to write what they had been told about literature, rather than what they had personally experienced of it. I am, however, encouraged that a similar “unseen” interpretation question is now part of NCEA exams.

As a teacher, one of my preferred forms of torture was to photocopy extracts from the novel my class was studying, and then make the students, under test conditions, identify where it came from, what it meant and what the passage displayed that was typical of the author’s style. Perhaps one day I will get around to reading Elizabeth Gaskell. I might then be able to answer such contextual quizzing about her. In the meantime, having not read single word of hers, I am fully equipped to pass whatever standard test a standard literature course on her could throw at me.

I know at least as much as an A+ student would.

(to read more of Nicholas Reid, have a look here)

Parent-Teacher Interview Tips

To a teacher in the first year on the job, few things are as scary as speaking to The Parents. Some will tell you their child is not stimulated enough in class. Some will say the work is too hard. There should be less homework. More homework. Some want to know whether Johnny behaves at school, others whether he's made friends, surprisingly few ask about the actual learning.

It all depends on the type of parents you're dealing with. Here are some useful definitions to help you make sense of it all:

• Helicopter Parents are over-involved parents who hover over their children offering to help you with every aspect of teaching their offspring.
• Lawnmower Parents run ahead of the children, smoothing away obstacles in their path and sometimes even doing their homework.
• Tiger Parents pressure their children into overachieving, sometimes at the expense of social and physical development.
• Grasshopper Parents think there are things more important than working hard at school: sports, parties, holidays, family reunions, watching TV....
• Vacation Parents steer away from the responsibility of parenting trusting somebody else will do it for them.
• Groupie Parents treat their children like rock stars.
• iParents try too hard to be cool.

Determine the parents' priorities and address their concerns according to the type of parents they represent. Even if you're a holistic thinker, add a few details to demonstrate how well you know the child. If you're an analytic, it may help your confidence to compose a list of salient points about each child, something the parents can take away with them from the interview.

Best of all, you can impress the parents - as well as help the student - by mentioning their learning style. "Annie benefits from doing her homework in the lounge on the floor," or "Ben needs to chew on something, physically, in order to chew on a complex homework problem" is exactly the type of thing most parents need to hear.

Teaching The Non-Conforming Student

In last week's blog, we discussed the issues arising from parenting a non-conformist. Teaching a non-conforming student is even trickier, because you have a whole classroom of students, not only Johnny Non-Compliant.

There is no single magic solution. However, research suggests that the following techniques have a good chance of achieving positive results:

• be respectful towards the student
• be a person worthy of the student's respect
• give the student attention and positive reinforcement
• offer the student a face-saving "out" from any dispute they may be involved in
• try to satisfy as many Learning Style needs of theirs as you practically can, with the help of our LSA tools. 

Gifted students are often non-conforming, often due to their attitude of "I'm so smart I don't need to do this worksheet" or due to their history of being bored at school. If Johnny Non-Compliant is a bright child, you can overcome his frame of mind by stimulating his interests and creativity. Get him on your side by admitting that sometimes the tasks you ask him to do will be way below his capability, but you have a good reason for wanting him to do it anyway (to memorise something, to increase the speed of his performance, to teach him perseverance, to keep him busy). Ask him to help you tutor one of his peers - teaching something is often a good way of really understanding the concept on a deeper level.

Secrets of successful teaching: flexibility and matching styles

(excerpt from "The Power of Diversity" by Barbara Prashnig)

1. Matching students’ learning styles with the appropriate teaching styles will always lead to successful interaction between teachers and their students, and result in improved learning outcomes as we have seen in this chapter.

2. High flexibility for achieving genuine style matches is maybe more important, and teachers need to be confident in choosing their methods and strategies, and must be prepared to try something else when the usual methods don’t work. This ‘something else’ should not be trial and error, but based on a sound knowledge of students’ learning style needs. But isn’t that what teachers are supposed to do anyway, you might ask. Supposed maybe, but very few teachers are actually flexible enough to change their methods according to their students’ learning needs because most teachers have a very limited repertoire of teaching methods - remember, they have all been trained by the same analytical system - and when the few well-known strategies don’t work, they are soon at their wits’ end, blaming everyone and everything else for their students’ failure and finally give up on them.

Another reason for this unfortunate situation is the fact (again based on research findings and our own

experiences in data collection) that teachers are among the least flexible people of all professional groups. The majority have very strong preferences based on analytic, left-brain dominance, paired with very strong beliefs about what’s right and wrong in learning. They find it very hard to flex and adjust, prefer to stay with what they know, even when this knowledge is outdated, and generally resist change.

(...) It is quite obvious that educators need to become more flexible, and teachers who are now working

with learning styles realise that it is they who have to be the most flexible person in class. Highly flexible people usually get on well with others and you probably remember one or the other teacher who was well-liked by everyone, who always found a way to get on with others and were a great inspiration for the young ones.

(Purchase link: "The Power of Diversity" by Barbara Prashnig)

More provocations for better classroom management

(excerpt from The Power of Diversity by Barbara Prashnig)

Fallacy 6: Eating should not be permitted in classrooms during lessons.

Many students concentrate better when they can concentrate better when have something to eat, nibble, chew or drink while learning, and many teachers will have observed that a number of students chew on whatever they can get hold of during classes, particularly when they have to listen for a while, when they are bored or nervous. It seems that mouth stimulation helps them concentrate, and as the brain dehydrates during thinking processes, it is essential that students are allowed to have drinks of water whenever needed.

Students with a high need for intake should be allowed to have healthy snacks, and with good management techniques there will be no mess in class. Thousands of teachers who have successfully introduced a ‘healthy nibbles policy’ are proof that it works, and discipline, together with student performance, improves significantly.

Fallacy 7: Effective teaching requires clearly stated objectives followed by detailed, step-by-step, sequential explanations until students understand what’s being taught.

While holistic, right-brain dominant learners tend to grasp large concepts first and then deal with the related facts and details, analytic, left-brain dominant learners pay attention to the facts first and use them for building up the whole concept. Only these are the ones who work well with step-by-step teaching. Many, probably most, teachers use analytic styles and a few teach only holistically, using a lot of creativity. Every teacher should (and successful teachers always do) include elements of both styles in their teaching.

("The New Look of Learning and Teaching", excerpt from The Power of Diversity by Barbara Prashnig)

Wondering what the learning needs are in your classroom? Start here.

Stressed Out Teachers

It’s the end of another long day. Your head is pounding, your teeth are clamped and there are a thousand and one knots in your shoulders, each with a different story of obstacles you had to overcome today.

Stressed? You bet. Teaching is a wonderful and worthy profession, but unfortunately stress is the price you have to pay for it.

Or is it?

Research shows that stress is caused - in part - by our work environment as well as by the way in which we approach our tasks.

For example, if your natural inclination is to work in a darker area with soft lighting, it is incredibly stressful to have to function in a brightly lit classroom. You may not even realise it, but every time you walk into that dazzling room with its blinding fluorescent tubes, your blood pressure begins to climb: up, up, up and up, all the way to the dangerous limit.

Similarly, if you prefer to work in a relatively quiet environment, a noisy classroom will contribute to your stress levels. If you are tidy, it’s annoying having to work in a chaotic environment. If you don’t enjoy teamwork... you get the idea.

So what can you do about it? The first step is to become aware of all the factors that contribute to your unique Working Style. Would you believe it, there are more than 40 such factors, and if just a few of them are impeded, stress is sure to follow? To find out about your Working Style and what to do about reducing your stress levels, please click here.

School Discipline and Learning Styles

Q: What do Learning Styles have to do with discipline at school?

A: EVERYTHING

 

Everybody has their own unique way of learning new and difficult information. A student whose learning style is not matched, is a student under stress. A student whose learning style is not matched, is a frustrated, discouraged and bored student. A student whose learning style is not matched will misbehave, either by playing the class fool or switching off and staring out the window. And that’s the best-case scenario!

 

Have you heard of incidents such as the following?

·        Children running around in class, not listening to the teacher?

·        Children not caring about consequences?

·        Children being violent in the playground?

 

That’s because their learning styles needs have not been met for such a long time, those children have actually lost their respect for the education system and their in-born drive to learn. Research around the world has shown a massive improvement in both behaviour and academic results following the implementation of learning styles.

 

Check out our free group profile tool to see what easy changes you could make in your classroom (such as flicking off the lights or moving a few desks) to ease your students’ stress... not to mention yours!

 

Learning Styles and Teaching Science

Question: Can you hammer in a nail using a banana?

Answer: Sure you can. If the banana is frozen using liquid nitrogen.

Lesson planning:
Try to hammer a nail with a ripe banana. Make a lot of mess.
Drop another ripe banana into liquid nitrogen for 30 seconds.
Use cryo gloves and crucible tongs to remove the banana. Do not reach into the liquid nitrogen with your gloved hand.
Hold the banana in your gloved hand and hammer the nail successfully.
Do not let the children touch the frozen banana.

Explanation for students: A banana is made up of a lot of water, and water doesn’t make a very good hammer. When frozen, the water molecules slow down and hold tight to one another, creating ice.

Now, wasn’t that a lot more fun than an ordinary science lesson?

That’s what multi-sensory teaching is all about: having fun. Creative Learning and Prashnig Style Solutions advocate multi-sensory teaching as a means of getting students to pay attention, to behave in class and to learn the curriculum.

If you’re a teacher, make things easy for yourself. Depending on the child’s Learning Style, a bored student will most likely act up in class. They may play the fool or refuse to comply with instructions or simply stare out the window and daydream. They will certainly not learn much and they will not make your day.

Determining your students' Learning Style is the first step to a stress-free fun day.
With school science results falling dramatically in many countries, it’s time to resort to tricks such as hammering nails with bananas or soap suds explosion... even if the tricks border on magic. After all, isn’t all science magical? And aren’t magic tricks simply science that we don’t understand yet?