Some of my favorite books on antiracism

The first book I’m choosing is How To Be An Antiracist by Ibram Kendi. The reason I’m choosing it is because too few people have spent time constructing a productive definition of racism. Many know extreme examples of bigotry as racism, but struggle when things becomes more grey. Kendi defines racism by an action that has a negative impact on a race or because of race.

This may even seem silly to many of you. This would mean that a disease could be racist, or that a well-intentioned comment could be racist. But this allows us to evaluate the impact of our actions in a meaningful manner. Without this definition it becomes very easy to avoid making important changes. For instance, I hear a lot in schools that when we teach good lessons that all students will learn. But this allows teachers to avoid confronting what they are currently doing that causes Black students to do worse in school.

You can read Kendi’s work at The Atlantic (24.99 for a teacher’s subscription!), and if you want a denser book he also wrote Stamped From the Beginning which is a historical text about the history of racism in America through the lens of racists, antiracists and assimilationists.

The second book I’m choosing is The Souls of Black Folk by W.E.B. Du Bois. The reason I’m choosing this book is because as people begin reading they will begin to feel more comfortable and will overestimate the progress we have made towards racial justice. Yet this book was written 117 years ago and expresses the same ideals then that we continue to fight today. And in those same fights happened 100 years before this book and 100 years before that.

We continue to fight and people to continue to fight back against antiracism. It is important to measure the progress and our current report card is not one to celebrate. Currently we have young Black people and white allies protesting peacefully while being attacked by police riots. Yet the narrative that propagates casts blame on those who seek justice while undermining their cause. Currently our schools are more segregated. Currently more Black people are unemployed. It takes 11.5 Black households to add up to the wealth of the median white household. When Black children are taught poorly in schools we look to children to determine to find solutions.

So an important lesson to keep in mind as you start reading books is that this is not new, it is just new to you. The philosophies of Booker T. Washington, W.E.B. Du Bois, and Frederick Douglass all continue in similar forms today. If you have this book and are a teacher, page 72 is my favorite. Much of the book uses language that’s over my head, but that page I had a strong connection to.

The third book I’m choosing is We Want To Do More Than Survive by Bettina Love.

"When you understand how hard it is to fight for ed. justice, you know that there are no shortcuts and no gimmicks; you know this to be true deep in your soul, which brings both frustration and determination.”

This was a highly motivating book to read. Teachers know that too often students get to a point where the expectations shift to just surviving. Just turning in work, just attending, just staying awake in class, just doing an extra assignment. And these low expectations reach Black students more frequently. Bettina outlines her own personal experiences as a basketball star and helps teachers understand both how difficult it is to help students thrive as well as practical steps to be successful. Of all of the books I read this year, this was the one I bought for my mom to read.

The fourth book I’m choosing is Whistling Vivaldi by Claude M. Steele. This is a book about stereotype threat which very few people know about even though you’ve likely experienced it. Stereotype threat is when performance is diminished due to a negative stereotype threat about your identity that exists. For me as a white male this can easily be accomplished in sports and can also be done in academics. If I take a math test in a room of Asian students and attention is drawn to my race beforehand I will score worse on the test because my cognitive load will be partially occupied by the stereotype that Asian people are better at math.

The title of the book is from Claude’s childhood when he would whistle The Four Seasons by Vivaldi whenever he walked alone so that white people would not feel threatened by him. The book is about the various experiments about stereotype threat, how the experiment was conducted, and what the results were. The methods used are creative and enlightening, in particular for teachers. There is a section about a University of Texas professor who did research on helping Black students do better in calculus and reported intense gains in student achievement. A lot of the book otherwise focuses on the problem of stereotype threat, but the solutions are not always evident or simple. In the current book I’m reading they talk about how growth mindset works in opposition to stereotype threat and how to effectively help students have a growth mindset (it’s not by putting up a poster).

This is a book teachers should read. Stereotype threat is complicated and it should be an annual professional development session. But as far as I know I have never seen it offered in 15 years of teaching. If you read this book please let me know because I want someone to talk about it with.

The fifth book I’m choosing is The Color of Law by Richard Rothstein. The reason I’m choosing this book is because this was one of the first books that really changed my perspective. As a white person something that wasn’t explicit but was in my head was how I would act if I were Black. This book was really helpful to expose me to the fact that no matter what you do you’re going to fight an uphill battle that you are likely to lose regardless of the choices you make. It wouldn't matter if I did everything right. So many Black people worked so hard, accomplished so much, and then lost everything to white mob violence. The concrete examples helped me understand some, although I continue to feel the same disconnect at times when I listen to Black people talk about their experiences.

If you do not know what redlining was then you should read this book. If you know what redlining is but do not know of anyone that was negatively impacted by it, you should read this book. If you've never heard of Black Bottom, Black Wall Street, the MOVE bombing, etc. you should read this book. I have a copy if anyone wants to borrow it.

The 6th book I’m choosing is Making Black Scientists by Marybeth Gasman and Thai-Huy Nguyen. I had read a lot of books prior to this one in search of how to teach Black students better and I felt pretty stupid by about the second chapter. The premise of this book is that teachers search far and wide to improve their teaching of Black students but never actually go to the source of people who are the most successful at doing so. This book profiles HBCUs, what their staffs do, what their students do, and their philosophies. They also show how HBCUs are far more successful than Primarily White Institutions (PWIs).

An overall theme that emerges is that HBCUs focus on the student first. I know a lot of teachers think they do that, I’m sure our district would say we do that, but we value our systems first. It was enlightening to read what HBCUs do and they are a great measuring tool for teachers to push themselves. This is an extremely informative book that can really help you with how to teach better. I know teachers ask for a checklist sometimes and that just doesn’t exist. It takes hard work to teach better, but this book will help you do that.

The 7th book I’m choosing is Americanah by Chimamanda Ngozie Adichie. As my lunch friends can attest to, I’m not the best at reading fiction. But the narrative in this book is powerful enough that even I can take away a lot.

Ifemelu is the main character and she leaves Nigeria to study in the US at Princeton. She starts to blog about her first experiences with racism. In Nigeria she was just a person, but in the US she experiences being a Black person for the first time.

I also read The Purple Hibiscus and will likely read the rest of Adichie’s books in the next couple of years. If you’ve never seen her talk about the Dangers of a Single Story it is an amazing counter message to the in group/out group world that we live in.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D9Ihs241zeg

The 8th book I’m choosing is Multiplication is For White People by Lisa Delpit. I’ve actually read Other People’s Children more recently and both are wonderful.

Lisa’s books are a strong combination of a mother’s voice both in her role as a mother and a teacher. But she gracefully mixes in facts to learn with personal anecdotes to supplement. Her balance of personal information as a teacher, parent, and expert on antiracism is highly motivating to read. This is a good book to read in August right before school starts. It’s also helpful if you feel motivated to do better but aren’t sure how to do so.

The 9th book I’m choosing is The Other Side of the River by Alex Kotlowitz. This is the story of an unsolved murder of a Black child that happened between St. Joseph and Benton Harbor, MI.

The mystery is the backdrop to the book, but the focus that emerges is the hostility, history, and healing between the two towns. I think this is something we all deal with. The surrounding areas that people look down on with little knowledge of those places. I know in Plymouth-Canton it is common to hear disparaging comments about Wayne or Westland. Downriver is pretty much one big chain of it. This is a natural tendency to form groups and have in-group and out-group dynamics. It is a toxic tendency.

One of the stories that I remember from the book was that teenagers from St. Joseph would do an activity called bricking. They would drive around and throw bricks at people in Benton Harbor. If you missed then you had to retrieve the brick. I’ll never stop thinking about that and how it encapsulates the dehumanization based on groupings. I saw similar ideals in the documentary America to Me, my high school experience, my teaching experience, and typical social conversation.

The 10th book I’m choosing is Timestamp by Marcus Granderson. Marcus was a student at PCEP who wrote a book that describes his transitions as he moved from a primarily white suburban school to Harvard to his work in New York City.

Marcus was generous enough to come talk to our teachers about his experiences. I didn’t have him as a student but I knew him slightly through a few others who did. I was also lucky to get to see his graduation speech years ago. His voice is one that will be sought out as teachers are looking for what they should be doing differently. This book details the moments he found impactful and how he perceived those moments. Unlike some of the other books that I’ve posted, this one is quite short if you’re not into long nonfiction reads. I have a copy in my classroom if anyone wants to borrow it, but you’re also welcome to support one of our recent graduates by buying a new copy! A few of us took him out to lunch after his speech and he's a lovely individual.

The 11th book I’m choosing I just finished yesterday and is Culturally Responsive Teaching And The Brain. To me cognitive science is a critical piece of antiracism because without it people are too quick to assign racism as a character trait which prevents them from meaningful change. Instead people should work to understand racist actions using system 1 and system 2 thinking so they can be pragmatic.

This book is the follow up to that learning. It has a lot in it so this is just the tip of the iceberg here. The start works to undermine misconceptions about using culture in learning. Using culture doesn’t mean putting up a poster, wearing a style of clothes, or eating a certain type of food. Culture is about language and communication. Culture is about being able to present information so that students can make connections to that information.

This book also walks through how teachers fail to teach students how to think critically. It goes through what we do, why some students get it, and how to change so that more students are taught better. Learning involves sensory memory being activated, short term memory processing, encoding into long term memory and retrieval. Hammond labels these as ignite, chunk, chew, and review. Igniting and chewing are the two spots where most students get left behind. A large number of solutions are presented for both.

Some other books that I didn’t post but are worthwhile:

Factfulness by Hans Rosling - This book is great for learning about how your perception of the world is wrong and how to change your perception to one based on facts and evidence.

The New Jim Crow by Michelle Alexander - I’m reading this one currently and the personal stories and statistics are gut wrenching. The thing I keep thinking about with this one is how when we watch a white character on tv (like Ryan from The Office) that it’s funny when they do illegal drugs. Yet in real life people’s lives are ruined because of harsh, inconsistent, and racist policies/enforcement. 

The Blood of Emmett Till by Timothy B. Tyson - This one is really odd for me to read because the murderer has the same last name as me. It’s a gross book, but something that’s problematic with many of these books is that it’s easy to see the statistics and get overwhelmed, but here they focus on a single person. And all of those statistics are the same thing. A life ruined, a family destroyed. 

Thinking Fast and Slow by Daniel Kahneman - There is a cognitive piece to racism that too few people understand. When using a brain based system 1 and system 2 model it becomes very easy to understand how racist actions happen and how to correct them. Teachers should be teaching their students about the experimental evidence in this book. 

Behave by Robert Sapolsky - This is what happens in your body and your brain before you do something. This was Thinking Fast and Slow but with twice as much in it. This book is long, but every chapter was intensely fascinating. The evidence provided is perfect for teachers to learn about how they perpetuate racism and what they can do to stop. 

Every Day Antiracism a collection of essays edited by Mica Pollock - This is a good book to read in a group. Too often people think about abstract ideas of antiracism without enough concrete examples. Concrete examples cause many to become uncomfortable and withdrawn. This book allows you to discuss concrete examples with other teachers so you can practice and learn.

Stamped From the Beginning by Ibram Kendi - This book is amazing, but it is a history text. It's a difficult read. The first and last chapters are the best where Kendi frames racism, antiracism, and neutrality in a historical context as racists, antiracists and assimilationists. If you don't want the full history, his book How To Be An Antiracist has those writings in a much lighter read.

The Dawn of Detroit by Tiya Miles - This book was a bit too complicated for me to understand easily. Somewhat similar to Stamped From the Beginning, but this book focuses on slavery in Michigan where I live. A large portion of the enslaved were Native Americans and the names of those slave owners linger today (Macomb, Woodward, etc.).

Academic Honesty Council

Many years ago I used to grade while students took a test. But over the past few years I had to stop doing so because the only effective method of preventing cheating has been to watch students test for the majority of the exam. If students use watches, phones, their neighbor’s paper, or any other means I can tell when I watch them. It is a tiring game of cat and mouse and I dislike it very much. One thing that has worn on me recently as a teacher is the mounting pressures for students to find a way to get admitted into a University. That pressure is often an unhealthy one that stems from a variety of sources. And that pressure translates to the teacher. It becomes our job to be perfect, and sometimes better than perfect, or else did we really truly care about the student? If we let them down, we are a bad teacher and a bad person. 

If I didn’t say something often enough, or if I didn’t round a grade, or if I was absent too many times, or a million other things can all be the blame for why a student didn’t get a grade that’s going to keep them out of the college of their dreams. This hyperbole is infrequent relative to the number of students, but consistently present these days. And it’s exhausting. Along with that pressure on the teacher, there is another consequence. Students are being pushed to achieve these goals as a primary objective, not as a secondary. They aren’t trying to be good enough to get admission into a University, they are just trying to get the admission. This is a shame because I see too many students that are brilliant, but they get the idea that the only measure of importance is something that sometimes they end up discarding later in life. I’ve seen students stress so hard about going to the University of Michigan only to end up being admitted and choosing another path that worked better for them. This toxicity pervades the schools now. And it devalues learning and ethics. Cheating is a frequent result. 

Students cheat in a variety of forms. They seek out information about exams and quizzes. They do not consider this cheating, but rather strategic. They are taught that completion of assignments takes precedence over learning. They are taught that learning takes place outside of the classroom. So when they get to a test and struggle, it is easier for them to find a reason to cheat. I don’t have the solution to this problem. I’m against it, I will work against it, I wish more people would push back against it, but I don’t know that it can be eradicated. But we did something to share the burden on individual teachers and it is worth sharing. 

Academic Honesty Council

We formed an academic honesty council. When students are suspected or caught doing something that violates our terms of academic honesty they can be summoned to meet in front of a group of teachers. I was able to serve on our initial council. It was wonderful. The teacher who is directly involved was prohibited from the council. We took on part of their burden for them. When students cheat there is a mix of feelings for a teacher. There is a guilt that stems from the discussion above and there is also a feeling of hurt. On some level it is not possible to not take cheating personally. We put so much of ourselves into our teaching that when someone tries to circumvent the system it hurts. 

The council avoided both of these. It allowed us to examine what took place, listen to evidence, and have discussions with multiple teachers. From there we were able to work impartially to assign consequences that were fair, consistent and were productive. Because of the novelty of the council we had met previously with administration to seek advice on what to do in terms of enforcement, potential consequences, and seek general advice. This allowed us to work with students to learn from what happened and it avoided the isolation of being the only teacher involved. 

This can also help preserve the relationship between the teacher and student. A student caught cheating is having the investigation, verdict and punishment all coming from a teacher. And even teachers that try hard to be fair can be perceived as being inconsistent from a student’s perspective. Hard feelings toward that teacher can develop that can interfere with the student’s ability to learn in the future. 

The time that a teacher must dedicate to dealing with consequences is intensive. There are contacts to make, forms to fill, conferences to have and potentially even more. By having a council we absorbed some of that requirement. It allows the teacher to share the pertinent information that they have and the burden from there is split into multiple parties. 

Student Follow up

After our initial academic honesty council, we held a follow up meeting with the entire group of students in our cohort. Students shared a variety of thoughts that were noteworthy. Many felt resentment from their peers for cheating and sometimes just for being overly competitive. In my opinion, many students had diverging opinions on what is and isn’t cheating amongst themselves and relative to expectations of their teachers. Some students had honest questions about how teachers perceive cheating. Teaching can be overwhelming and sometimes it becomes necessary to seek out someone else to change things for the better. But I felt that this council as a good step in the right direction for a group of teachers to help improve things in a situation that could use more consistency and attention.

Five Good Reasons To Go Into Teaching

When I ask students I am surprised at how thoroughly students would be able to explain to me why teaching was not an option for them. It is not a decision that they have made lightly. They know the projections of pay, the direction of legislation and the costs that they would need to input. But there are also good reasons to go into teaching that they are not aware of. 

Unsettled research

The access teachers have had to cognitive science research and how learning works has been limited until recently. As we continue to improve our understanding of learning, the research connecting that cognitive research to teaching is stuck. Teaching must be complex enough to cause permanent change in the brain structure. Teaching must also be simple enough to not overwhelm the short term memory capacity. Many teachers and researchers embrace one of those ideals but not both. Thus a large conflict prevents us from pushing education research ahead. That will change in the near future and you would be able to be a part of that. Other fields have research that is so advanced and settled. Our knowledge of medicine, economics, philosophy, science and mathematics are advanced to a point where the specifics are so advanced that they contribute little. But education has so much room for growth and improvement. Soon our abilities to teach and learn those other fields will be limited to how quickly we can educate people to the point where they can understand the new research needs of them. 

Autonomy 

The most important factors in a career is not money. Study after study shows that having autonomy in your job is one of the biggest keys to being happy and feeling impactful. Next week I will be teaching about chemical reactions. The number of approaches and methods that I could use to do that is unlimited. I have so much control over what I choose to do. I can experiment and try something new. I can take ideas from other teachers. I can do what I did last time with minor changes. On Tuesday I will be doing a new lesson that I got the idea from a book that I am currently reading. At any given moment when inspiration hits I am able to put that idea into action. What other job has that at this level? 

Ability to learn with an audience to keep you accountable

There was a reading teacher next door to me who would put up posters where she would put the book covers of books she read. I started to do so and quickly found myself reading more and more books. I am currently reading my 54th book this year and I love it. But being a teacher is a huge reason why I love it. I get to share what I read and learn with my students. If I read an interesting book about rust, I am able to use that in a lesson with my class. Everything that I learn about I have an audience to reinforce my own learning as I share it. I’m not convinced that if I went into work and was restricted from sharing my learning that it would not carry the same meaning to me. Whether the topic is history, chemistry, geography, environmental science, cognition or something else; I can always connect those topics to my teaching. It enhances my teaching. 

The most difficult job

Teaching is the most difficult job that exists. The sheer volume of decisions that teachers make during a lesson is enormous. No matter how well you teach something there is always a way to improve your lesson because there are so many different options you have. Having the ability to deal with managing children in a way that optimizes their learning involves decisions about their cognition, their prior knowledge, their emotional health, the physical arrangement of the room and the lesson medium. Because of the overwhelming number of students (150-250) you must have plans for an incredible number of disruptions and adjustments to make. You have to introduce a new idea in a way that maximizes learning, provide practice that maximizes learning and give assessments that measure the learning that took place. All of that must be done to a large group of students with wildly different experiences and prior knowledge. Whether the goal is to maximize learning or to maximize homogeneity in knowledge is inconsistent depending on the objective, course and content piece. Behind all of these pieces is the content itself. I must understand all of the chemistry I am presenting which includes all of the chemistry that students perceive. I must understand and be prepared to respond to every conception that a student brings to the classroom along with what evidence and theory can advance those conceptions to better models. It is an unending journey towards a perfection that doesn’t exist even in theory. No other profession comes close to the combination of skills needed to maximize success. And that challenge is welcome. Teachers seek challenge. They want to be pushed to the limits of human ability. 

Online networks

When I was in high school teachers were isolated. They would seek community in lounges, but the atmosphere was potentially toxic. With social media teachers are able to connect with other teachers. We have access to the best of the best and can use each other to further our own abilities. The sharing and cooperation that results from social media has opened new doors to teachers from mentorship opportunities, to highlighting creativity, to challenging our own conceptions and ideas about teaching. These networks incentivize teachers to push beyond the typical boundaries of teaching that have existed in the past. Teachers can share improved models, dual coding and concrete examples for content. Teachers can share research, new pedagogy and more advanced curriculum. Teachers can learn from others about organization, technology, and creativity in lessons.

Cognitive Science of Energy in Science Education

The cognitive science behind teaching science shows that abstract ideas should be connected to concrete examples to maximize understanding. Energy is an abstract concept, yet little analysis of how to best connect energy to concrete examples exists. The experiences of teaching both chemistry and physics have provided me some insights into what teachers should do to help students understand scenarios that have traditionally been analyzed using energy. 

Motion, position and force are more concrete (less abstract) than energy. Whenever possible energy should be removed from the explanation or discussion and replaced with these. When students use energy with regards to kinetic or gravitational potential energy they have an easier time processing new information. Asking students which has a larger kinetic energy when comparing an object at different speeds is easily transferable between the abstract energy and the concrete speed. The other two forms of energy that are easily visible for students are spring energy and gravitational potential energy. 

Showing students a relaxed spring and a compressed spring allows them to easily identify that the compressed spring has more energy. Holding a marker a meter off the ground and two meters off the ground easily allows them to identify that the two meter mark has more potential energy. The reason why this is easily analyzed by students is that they easily connect to the concrete. The students can see that upon release, more motion results from the compressed spring and the elevated marker. Note that for both instances the concrete image of fast moving objects is easily accessible. In Figure 1 below, it is obvious that when released object B will be moving faster right before it hits the ground than object A.

Figure 1: Two objects where object B is twice the distance from the ground that object A is

When is it not clear?

Energy remains obscure with charged particles and electrical energy. A simple explanation is that charged particles have two competing abstract ideas visible to students. When a proton and electron are close together the students understand that there is a larger force between them than when they have a large separation. But these particles have less energy than particles that are separated. To reconcile these two competing ideas it can be helpful to track the relative speeds. If an electron and proton are separated by a distance and released, they will move towards each other and collide (ignoring quantum physics). If the electron and proton are now separated to twice the distance, they will approach and collide, but at a higher speed than before. When they reach the original separation they will have that kinetic energy gained plus the same potential energy as before. 

Figure 2: Top two charges start separated by a distance d. Middle two charges start separated by a distance 2d. Bottom two charges started at a distance 2d but have moved to a distance of d and are now moving with a relative speed. 

It takes time for students to connect the ideas present in Figure 1 above. Often in chemistry we exacerbate this by labeling the potential energy without specifying whether it is potential or kinetic. The middle set of charges has more energy than the top set of charges. This is difficult for students because they see the forces as being larger for the top set and have experienced the stronger attraction when playing with magnets. 

This is not as problematic with gravitational potential energy because the force of gravity is relatively constant because of the small change in distance relative to the large separation from the center of the earth. Students also have substantially more sensory experience with gravitational interactions then electric. 

Energy by definition should be linked to a force. Energy and work have circular definitions, but the mathematical origins of energy are an integral of a force over a pathway. For example, gravitational potential energy (mgh) is derived from the integration of weight (mg) for the pathway of separation between the two objects. This conflicts with the presentation of energy in science classrooms frequently. Chemical energy, sound energy, “heat” energy and many other forms of energy are not directly linked to a fundamental force. Chemical energy for example is based on electrical forces. “Heat” energy or thermal energy is based on kinetic energies of particles. 

By introducing energy in terms of conservation of these forms that do not have a direct link to a force, we obfuscate the underlying abstract definition of what energy is. This conflict allows students (and teachers) to maintain a wide variety of mental models of what energy is. The current push for developing models of energy in the NGSS is insufficient to undermine and may actually reinforce the problem. 

Figure 3: NGSS that deal with energy, taken from https://www.nextgenscience.org/topic-arrangement/4energy on 1/9/2020

In Figure 3 we see the idea of conservation as fundamental to 4-PS3-2, 4-PS3-4 and 4-ESS3-1. 4-PS3-1 shows some promise but also undercuts that potential by making this a mathematical connection instead of dealing with the conflicts discussed above. None of these set up for students to challenge the underlying struggle of unpacking why electrical energy increases as separation between charges gets larger. 

How should teachers attack this misconception?

An abstract idea is understood better when multiple concrete examples are used. A strategy that I have found helpful for this is to limit energy in education. Every scenario that is explained using energy can also be explained using force, position and motion instead. By eliminating energy from the explanation you require a concrete connection to be the impetus for understanding. This is challenging and often unique. Could you explain how digestion works without using energy in your explanation? Could you talk about how light and electrons interact without using energy? Can we differentiate a nuclear power plant and a coal one without energy? The answer to this is always yes, but it requires practice. 

Chemical Reactions 

Energy in chemical reactions can be presented in many formats. One common format is using reaction energy diagrams. A reaction energy diagram is extremely abstract. The abstraction can be reduced using simple diagrams for a reaction. With a very generic reaction energy diagram teachers can communicate simple abstract ideas to students without the student being forced to develop a concrete example. Teachers can highlight that the potential energy of the chemical system has increased as the reaction proceeds in Figure 4. 

Figure 4: A generic endothermic reaction energy diagram.

Figure 5 is an improvement because it allows students to develop the idea that transition states are unstable. This makes some intuitive sense to the student that the more common representation of a bond is stable. But in order to really advance the model for students one must address the underlying potential misconceptions. This is to be done by marking down how the forces, positions and motions all relate to one another.

Figure 5: Particle representations that show the reaction transitional state where bonds have broken but not yet reformed. 

From the initial reactant state to the transition state, B moves away from A. A and B are attracted to each other so the forces are inwards while the motion of A and B is outward. In order for A and B to move apart while forces pull them together, they have to slow down. If you are moving left, and being pulled right, your speed lessens. What we’re describing here is a transition from kinetic to potential energy. When a collision occurs that causes a large relative motion between A and B, A and B can separate. But to do so they slow down. If a small collision occurs, A and B will start to separate but will revert back to their bonded state before completing the separation. 

When C and B approach each other the force is again inwards. But now B and C are approaching each other. Their motion and their forces are aligned and so their speeds increase. As the bond forms their speeds increase and later that increase in motion could be transferred back to the surroundings through collisions (heat). Note how by analyzing this without energy the student is not going to develop the biology misconception that breaking bonds releases energy. Students often see the transition from ATP to ADP as a bond breaking that releases energy and retain this idea in chemistry and physics. When ATP turns into ADP it is not a single bond change that occurs. Here the students can logically process that the particles are going to slow down as bonds break and speed up as bonds form. Now when a reaction is endothermic they can infer that the bonds were harder to break. When a reaction is exothermic the initial bonds were easier to break and the particles sped up more than they slowed down. A video breakdown of this schematic can be found here. 

Digestion

Why do you eat food? Because it gives you energy. How does photosynthesis work? Plants turn light into energy. The questions and answers that surround digestion are filled with abstract hand waving. I am not a biology expert so if my explanations are flawed, please try and focus on the development rather than the specifics. 

When you consume food your body changes that food into smaller pieces and distributes those pieces throughout your body. Much of that food turns into a sugar called glucose. Cells use glucose by burning it. The glucose reacts with oxygen and as this happens the products of the reaction move faster than the initial speeds of the glucose and oxygen. That motion is used to push other chemicals together in a way that forms something called ATP from ADP. The ATP and ADP can be used to cause muscle contraction because the charges of the ATP and ADP cause muscle fibers to grab hold, pull on muscle fibers, release and reset. These actions results from the changes in charge distribution within the ADP and ATP that result from the reactions of the glucose changing. 

If the initial warning wasn’t sufficient, the preceding paragraph makes clear that I have a limited understanding of the cycles used as well as the chemicals involved as intermediates. But in reading this many questions that could undermine my ignorance become clear. How does the burning of glucose in cells differ from the combustion that occurs in air? When the conversion forms an unstable intermediate, how does charge distribution play a role? How does the cell distribute these unstable intermediates without a reversion to a more stable set of chemicals? What in the structure of myosin and actin leads to a binding interaction and how is that interaction disrupted? What about its structure makes ATP so effective at distributing charge that causes other molecules to move? Many of these questions have an underlying theme. Charge is being used to push or pull and motion is being used to initiate those pushes and pulls. A biochemistry expert should be able to detail how the chemicals at each stage of digestion leads to the desired result and they should be able to do so without using energy. 

Photosynthesis is very similar but light presents a new struggle. How do we describe light without using energy? Light originates when charged particles change. The exact changes are difficult to describe because charged particles are too small to observe in the same way we view macroscopic objects. We could say that when charged particles change how they move light is produced, but that is probably not completely true and not completely false either. Light originates from a charged particle (electron, nucleus, etc.) and terminates when the light causes a different charged particle to change its state. 

When light hits a chemical, the light can interact with the electrons in that chemical. The resulting changes for the electron that absorbs the light can result in new positions and motions for the electron that change the attractive forces within the molecule. This can lead to attractions being disrupted. The resulting unstable intermediates and transition states can lead to collisions where other molecules are pulled on. Photosynthesis is where light hits a chlorophyll pigment that causes changes to the electronic structure. The changes to the chlorophyll have various pathways that end up using that change to pull particles where the eventual result is combining carbon dioxide and water into sugars. Sometimes the chlorophyll can remove electrons from water molecules that then turn into protons and oxygen. The protons (H+ ions) can build up forming a charge gradient along a wall. Again the details are bit beyond my expertise level but hopefully you can begin to see how an expert would be able to replace the term energy within each of these steps with the result in terms of charge distribution, motion and position. 

Power Plants

When we say that we have an energy crisis, what do we actually mean? What specific things do we mean that we could replace the term energy with? The often mean electricity. We could also be talking about fuels or stuff that burns. 

Nearly all power plants function with the same underlying principles. You have to make a turbine spin fast. When the spinning is connected with a magnet inside a coil of wires you get electricity. The big differences in how the spinning is produced is the primary difference between electricity production. Fossil fuels (coal, oil, methane) are burned underneath a vessel filled with water. As the water turns into steam, the steam particles collide with the blades of a turbine causing it to spin. A nuclear power plant functions in the exact same manner but instead the uranium rods are inserted into the water to heat the water instead of burning fuel. Hydroelectricity uses water to push on turbine blades. Wind turbines are arranged where wind is likely to push more in one direction than another. 

Note how whenever we eliminate the word energy from explanations the details become more concrete. The uranium fuel rods provide energy that heats the water. The uranium particles in the fuel rods split into pieces that move fast. As they fly through the water they drag water particles causing the water to speed up. Fossil fuels provide energy to heat the water. Fossil fuels react with oxygen and after the reaction the products move at higher speeds. When these fast moving particles collide with the vessel containing the water the collisions tend to transfer motion to the water particles. 

Conclusions

Energy allows us a lot of mental and mathematical shortcuts in science that are valuable. Explaining and understanding quantum mechanics without energy is a burden that would exclude many from the field. But there is a cost to using energy. Using energy as an explanation results in less understanding and that cost is too great in science education. Strategies to make energy less abstract include:

1. Explain processes without using the term energy. Use force, motion and position to help guide the explanations.

2. When using energy, it should tie directly to a force (gravity, electric, magnetic, nuclear). Avoid terms like sound energy, heat energy and chemical energy.

3. When something is too complicated to explain without energy, try and split the process into fragments. What do I have at the beginning, middle and end. Can I explain any of these transitions without energy? 

4. Explanations in chemistry must address the misconception that forces and energy are interchangeable for charged particles. Large separations have small forces and high energies.5. Particle level representations can help expose incomplete details.

6. Anticipate having students that ask “How do you know that the energy changes that way?” prior to the lesson and work on answering that question.

7. Be wary of changing forms of energy. Changing forms is useful for calculation simplification but is highly disruptive to student understanding. 

8. When avoiding energy, it is critical to reduce the number of tier 2 and tier 3 vocabulary terms to avoid cognitive overload. Keep everything else simple. 

9. Biology is the hardest subject to do this in. Sometimes though the energy components do not contribute anything of value. ATP changing to ADP allows muscles to contract. Do I need to use energy in that observation? Does it enhance the understanding?

Practice is required to improve at avoiding energy in science education. When teachers feel inadequate to continue they should write down questions they have to see if there is a potential resolution. Teachers should be wary of science education techniques that organize energy into models. This often takes the abstract concept of energy and avoids the ability to make it concrete.