Laura Burroughs's Blog

I run at a frenetic pace: up by 6:00; drop off daughter at school after driving 35 miles; drive another twenty in Atlanta traffic; work; pick up at 6:00. Then, my commute home, often punctuated with a trip to pick up groceries, an obscure component of an art project, or a stray animal from the clutches of death. Finally, I’m home at 7:00-ish. My to-do list: feed kid; feed dog; explain to kid why I cannot watch the latest episode of Elementary; perform some menial, but necessary, task to organize my life or keep my home from becoming the most infamous address in the neighborhood; read emails, rearrange my schedule, that I just arranged to fit the fact that I may or may not, have an out of town business meeting next week per the email I just read. By 10:00, I’m taking time to meditate while I brush my teeth and address a a modicum of personal hygiene issues before turning into bed. I will let you read between the lines regarding my weekends because if you are still reading this, I know you can sympathize.

I also hope you understand, I am not complaining. I really do choose this. It’s a tough realization to come to, but when I’m at my best, I take full responsibility for the priorities I have set for myself. It keeps me from becoming a victim. Victims don’t have tenable choices; I do. I chose to get up at 5:00 this morning to write this little vignette, I might regret this choice when I am dragging by 2:00 this afternoon, or when I hit “publish” and find the all-too-obvious typo that I didn’t see because I didn’t catch it in my before-coffee creative moment. But, I am aware that I am choosing.

Even now, I am racing to finish this paragraph so that I can feel the sweet rush of accomplishment before I wake the household, and I relinquish my time to their needs. Yes, I am Superwoman with no Lewis Lane to cast his adoring eyes in my direction and marvel at my daily superhuman accomplishments. My payoff? The love and tenderness hiding behind the smug look on my daughter’s face when I ask her to help me find my car keys.

During my years as a science teacher, many colleagues asked me how I got girls so engaged in my classes. My honest answer was, "I don't know." While I kept up with the best practices in teaching, I doubt if I could have articulated with any precision what was so different about my class. My principal even allowed my fellow teachers to observe me, but they had mixed results when they tried to implement my methods in their classrooms.

It wasn't until I became an administrator that I saw what was missing in those classes. As I watched the girls in those science classes, I was transported back to my high school days when I felt bored and invisible. The teachers I observed were teaching the way they had been taught; I taught the way I wanted to learn; I wanted to get deeply personal. I wanted to know how science would impact the people I loved; I wanted a collaborative, supportive place to solve problems; and I wanted something I could use in a practical way. The girls I taught responded to the connection I made between science and the world they cared about. I made it personal.

For most of my boys, the subject matter was enough to keep their interest. For the girls, I constructed questions about how the scientific concept resolved a social problem or created an ethical issue. For instance, I asked students if water conservation is important, given that water is a renewable resource. Just asking the question, without ever answering it, engaged the girls in my class. By relating the science to real world problems that girls care about, I drew them into the subject.

I also created a safe place for them to question, think, and engage with each other. The boys excelled in the labs and often hogged the lab equipment, so I usually reserved at least one lab table for students who wanted a more collaborative environment. While these tables were not necessarily “girls only,” they did create a safe place for girls and boys to explore science with peers who made them feel valued. When I made the work space more comfortable for my less assertive students, I was often rewarded with extraordinarily thoughtful observations and conclusions.

It doesn’t surprise me that, even with all the opportunities, women are not drawn to the sciences in droves. I only need to look at the way science is taught to see why. Big impersonal lecture halls aren’t inviting environments for most women to interact and share ideas. Science teachers often forget that they teach their subject to people who want to engage and interact with other people. By personalizing both the content and the environment in which we teach science, we will invite a significant pool of talent who are not currently drawn to these fields of study. In the meantime, all of our students will have more fun “doing science.”

Cockalorum (KOCK-ah-LOR-ahm)- someone who brags loudly and often, usually without good reason.

Fluffanutter (FLUF-n-NUT-ter)- sandwich made with peanut butter and marshmallow fluff; Anya often substitutes hazelnut spread for the peanut butter.

Gengnosphere (JEN-nos-FEER)- also known as Genny, literally means the environment where knowledge is created; It is a spherical building housing a powerful computer system that creates patterns of the greatest minds throughout history, allowing them to interact with scholars and dons—and each other, to generate new ideas and constantly expand our knowledge base.

Injil- Arabic term for the original Gospels of Jesus.

Lickspittle- (LIK-SPI-tl) derogatory term indicating someone is insignificant, like spit licked from the lips.

NEROC (NEE-ROK)- Negative Refraction Optical Camouflage; technology using super fine metamaterial fabric to bend light around a person to make them nearly invisible to others.

Pudfud (PUD-FUD)- Particularly-Unpleasant-Dissimenator-of-Fear-Unhappiness-and-Doubt.

Quinn Gin - machine that separates an individual’s quintessential energy from its body and holds that body in suspended animation.

Quintessential Energy- the force that holds our bodies together and contains consciousness.

Skiptripping- bodiless “travel” through dimensions of the multiverse; none of the travelers know if or when they go “back in time” because they can never be sure that they haven’t gone to a parallel universe or to a construct of their own mind.

Synbi (SIN-bee)- Synthesized Biological Entities; the synthesis of robots and biologic beings; more versatile than robots, they have both circuitry, neurons, biologic systems that self-repair, hardware and cloned organs encased in a metal alloy “skin.”

Zero Point Field (also known as a vacuum state)- lowest possible energy of a quantum mechanical physical system; contains electromagnetic waves and particles that pop into and out of existence; in some theories, ZPF is a wave field that excites all systems present in the vacuum and creates their minimum energy.

Teachers dream of students who diligently do their homework and do not have to be told to do something five times before they initiate a task. It sends us over the moon when students follow the standard operating procedures we have worked tirelessly to put in place. They make us feel competent and provide evidence that we are meeting the needs of all of our students. But are we? According to current research on the adolescent brain--sometimes, not so much.

It turns out laziness and rebellion are not the only causes of the "difficulties" we experience with our students. You know the kids I'm talking about-the ones who won't start working unless we're standing over them, who lose anything we send home to get signed, who never seem to be able to find their notes and always have a reason for why they didn't understand that the assignment was due even though it has been written on the board in the same place due dates are always written on the board. We "know" they can do the work and they are simply making poor choices. In the past, it's been our job to give them consequences and let them learn from their mistakes. That worked out well for teachers because those students just left high school and learned a trade--or not. Today, the diversity in abilities and temperaments of high school graduates is staggering; we must teach to a heterogeneous student-body that demands far more than industrial-age teaching. Therefore, we must educate ourselves about the three pound, twenty-watt enigma known as the teenage brain.

One aspect of the teenage brain that bothers teachers is that it learns best in social context. Teachers cringe at all the unnecessary nonacademic behavior that occurs when students do group work. But, if students learn best from each other, the teacher must become a facilitator, grouping students and generating provocative arenas of investigation, so that students are motivated by the content and each other. This arrangement shouldn't preclude teachers from assigning individual work and individual grades, but it should create opportunities for students to exchange ideas.

While teaching is as much art as science, the insights gathered in neuroscience should inform and influence how we teach. For instance, we know that the adolescent brain (meaning brain of a 12-20-year-old) is more responsive to reward than it is to punishment and more responsive to immediate feedback--positive or negative--than it is to deferred feedback. Why then, do educators continue to assign long-term projects without giving students specific, formative, usable, assessments that redirect and refine their project before it is complete? Few high school science and history teachers know how to teach the myriad meta-cognitive skills involved in the process of writing a thesis statement for the 5-10 page papers they assign. Without mastery of this step, a student has no hope of generating a strong paper. While teachers assume students can apply their literature lessons to other subjects, the teenage brain doesn't necessarily make that leap. Students often lack the requisite knowledge and organization to generate the all important thesis statement. Why then does it even happen that a student is allowed to write a paper before they have presented a draft version of their thesis statement to their teacher? It's because our specialist in history or science doesn't always understand the complexity of the task they are assigning. If we could see the neural activity taking place in the the adolescent brain when we assign such a task, we'd quickly realize we just created a literal brainstorm for a significant percent of our students. If we hope to teach the students we have and not just the ones we wish we had, it's critical for us to understand what goes on inside the most amazing organ in our students' bodies.

I find few therapies as healing as loving my dog. Josie, my beautiful lab-mix, is my companion and therapy animal. She makes me smile and permeates my world with her serene presence. She's my guide dog out of some of the most dangerous neighborhoods in my head. All I have to do is touch her, or watch her expression when I tell her there's a cow in the backyard, and she pulls toward the light and warmth of her being. She is a miraculous grace in my life. I make no pretense about the fact that I love her more than I love most people. It's not that I'm a misanthrope; I do genuinely love people. Josie is just easier to get along with because she loves everyone unconditionally. I certainly don't love everyone unconditionally, but she makes me want to. Every now and then, she helps me practice unconditional love when I am cleaning up the evidence of her latest foray into the garbage or vacuuming fur tumbleweeds off of the rugs. But usually, Josie just sets an example of graciousness that I try, and often fail to follow.

I must admit that I love my dog for at least one purely selfish reason: she's easy. She'll lay beside me while I work at my computer, requiring little or no attention. Every now and then, I feel a cool nudge on my elbow, reminding me that we both need to get up and move around. She even lets me warm my cold feet under her body without the slightest objection. When I run my hands over her ears or her back, she gets positively ecstatic. Whether I'm gone for a few minutes or hours, she greets me as if I'm the center of her world, even though I'm just one of her pack. Josie is pure joy to be around because she contents herself with the simplest pleasures in life. I won't profess to be that evolved, but I'm working on it.

Harlie and Anya Fox, “The Foxes” of The Foxes of Caminus Series, get their first glimpse at what life and learning might be like at Caminus Academy through a most amazing technological advancement, The Gengnosphere, AKA Genny. Genny is my brainchild, but one of it's gametes was donated by the creative thinking of other talented people. When I started doing research for The Gin Entanglement, I came across the AlloSphere at the University of California, Santa Barbara, a brainchild of Professor JoAnn Kuchera-Morin and architect, Robert Venturi. It creates sensory experiences based on computer models, and it does some of the things I envision Genny doing; it’s quite inspiring.

Once I found this inspiring technological teaching tool, I started playing with how I'd use this technology to teach, then I "what-if"ed about it for a long time. Genny was the result. To get an idea of the scope of her amazing structure, let's follow Anya and Harlie to the end of a long catwalk, as they find themselves in the center of a literal sphere that measures fifty yards in all directions. The space lights up all around them, giving them 360 degrees of world to contemplate. It’s totally overwhelming at first, but in this sphere, they can interact with a holographic world, moving through it as they choose. The choice here is key.

Anya and Harlie get to manipulate their environment and learn what they need to learn to make decisions. Their concerns are different, so they each choose to explore different aspects of the Gengnosphere. They’re both standing in the center of the sphere having totally different experiences. Harlie discovers Caminus Academy’s stadium, eats ice cream in Cibus Hall, and flies to the top of Devil’s Rock in a different country while Anya talks to her prospective dorm advisor, Grace Hayden, and cajoles an English teacher into arranging a meeting with an author who's been dead for many years. The point is, Genny makes information available to each child according to his or her needs, that's a key component of good teaching, making information useful to a student when they determine they need it.

Genny is my ideal. Learning with her is an adventure with the students controlling the pace and direction of the experience, far more inspirational and more rigorous because the kids are pushing themselves to learn, to discover and to make choices using the information at their disposal and gathering information when they don't. Often students will ignore the information that isn't given to them even when it's apparent that it's critical. This skill, the ability to identify what we don't know, is one of many currently missing from curriculum. Genny is my antidote to this problem. Her presence as a gentle guide helps students practice making decisions and models the most likely consequences.

However, the gengnosphere is far more than a means of representing and modeling ideas that are already hypothesized of formed in our minds. It’s an interface between the students and the faculty of the Academy and the quantum computers that store a brain trust: the knowledge and mental habits of the greatest minds of humankind, the collective knowledge past and present (and in a few cases, the future), and the computational working memory to synthesize all this information. The kind of computer that can do this, is far beyond us at the moment, but that's the playful part of the serious work behind creating a future and it is an ingredient that is grossly undervalued in American culture.

Confession: I stink at book promotion. I find self-aggrandizing painfully tedious. I really would rather be writing. Don't get me wrong. I love meeting people and sharing ideas, but yelling "Pick me, pick me." to the faceless masses really makes me queasy. And every #$!% [Insert appropriate expletive here] marketer I meet wants to tell me the only way to sell my book. Hint: They all tell me something different.

So, I'm now on my fifth draft press release and I hope some marketing genius out there can make chicken salad from--well, you get the idea...So, what do you think? I appreciate kind input, but merciless input is appreciated as long as it's constructive.

If Harry Potter had been a muggle, he would have attended Caminus Academy with Harlie and Anya Fox. The Gin Entanglement by Laura Burroughs offers its readers entrée into a beguiling contemporary school, where what we see is not all there is, and where telepathy and time travel coexist with the laws of nature. But the Fox twins learn the hard way, that living in such a place doesn’t protect us from the darker aspects of human nature.

The Gin Entanglement is a smart, multi-faceted read, blending history, science, and philosophy into a mind-blowing exploration of who we are, and how we become what we imagine. Burroughs, a former educator, follows fraternal twins Anya and Harlie Fox as they explore their new lives at Caminus Academy, a secret school for the specially gifted. As they open themselves to the possibilities of their own power, the twins discover that they are heirs to rare talents. When intruders infiltrate their academy, espionage, kidnapping, and murder follow, and the twins are drawn into one of the oldest conflicts in human history. The twins must reckon with their own sense of truth and reach across lines of belief to survive. They and their classmates must rely on each other to safeguard themselves and their collective talents. The novel highlights the creative power of belief, education, and self-discovery as avenues for personal and societal growth.

“Our world is too vast and complex for education to continue to be one-size fits all,” says Burroughs. “We need to reconstruct education to teach people how to solve problems and to develop the individual talents of every student. Humans can create limitless possibility, but we are often poor judges of what is possible. Our beliefs drive our perceptions, our perceptions drive our actions, and our actions drive our lives. To grow we must confront our own misconceptions about what we can and cannot do, as they are the most influential factors in realizing our potential.”

Major themes in the book include:
• The power that each of us holds in unlocking our own potential
• Opening ourselves to previously unthinkable possibilities
• The value of tailored education
• Building a compassionate and respectful community of peers
• The power of faith, history, legend and myth
• Balance between the free practice of religion and the freedom from religion.

As generations face challenges and question their abilities to create their own future, the author hopes The Gin Entanglement inspires them to reach higher, dig deeper into their own untapped potential and celebrate the rewards that come from their own efforts.

Well, how did I do?

Take Two: The Foxes of Caminus has just been revised and republished as The Gin Entanglement. The process has been painstaking, but rewarding--and, I hope--monetarily worth it. If not, I'm thrilled with the lessons I've learned as a writer. The first lesson I've learned is that sometimes we have to kill our baby to have it reborn. In this case, I've just changed its name. I've retained The Foxes of Caminus as the series title, but the new name is a better fit for the rising action of the first book. After some painful arguments with myself regarding the name-change of my firstborn, I decided to use The Gin Entanglement because it encapsulates the setting and the drama of the novel's climax. The "gin," a contraption that separates a person's quintessential energy from his or her body, makes multi-dimensional travel possible; hence, "The Gin." It's here, where time and space collapse into a realm of existence so incomprehensible, it's surreal. "Entanglement" is, as Cornell physicist David Mermin puts it, "the closest thing we have to magic." It's when two particles act in total synchronicity even though they are not close to each other. The term as it's used in the title, is a double entendre, which I leave to my capable readers to discover.

The title isn't the only change. As a novice writer, I understood point-of view from a reader's perspective. I didn't know how to craft the point-of-view in a deft, engaging manner. I got professional help from Brooke Warner, a wonderful editor. In retrospect, she was gentle with me though it didn't feel like it at the time. She taught me course-loads in the craft of writing, and she helped understand that developmental editing is a long, messy process and that it takes more time than I thought I could afford. Truthfully, I couldn't afford not to; I just didn't know it then. I've written a tighter book that's easier for my readers to follow.

Another important lesson I've learned is that sharing myself with the the world, warts and all, is critical to me as a writer. After releasing The Foxes of Caminus, I sent it to Chanticleer for consideration for the Cygnus Award for Science Fiction. I promptly forgot about it in the rush of book promotion. Imagine my surprise, when several months later, the originally titled work is a finalist for the prize. Oh, the irony! Writing the the letter to Chanticleer Reviews to tell them that the book they had selected as a finalist for the 2014 Cygnus Award had been revised and retitled, was in a word, embarrassing.

I'll never be more proud of any book than I was when I published The Foxes of Caminus, but The Gin Entanglement is a better book because I took the time to work on my craft. In writing, it appears there is no substitute for long hours, hard work and humility. For more information about the series go to thefoxesofcaminus.com.

In Divergent, Tris Prior is seen as a freak of nature, a dangerous element in her society because she doesn't purely represent one faction or another. Many educators and scientists run afoul of their colleagues for similar reasons. Educators who explore the nexus between disciplines are often squashed like a bug by dogmatic thinkers from both disciplines. Educators who look for genetic or environmental causes for learning disabilities are ridiculed by "no excuses" educators who often disregard scientific data that calls for a change in teaching methodology or curriculum. Even consulting scientists sometimes treat practicing K-12 educators dismissively and scientists who consult with K-12 educators are similarly dismissed by fellow researchers for trifling with people who lack sufficient understanding of scientific methodology. Just like Tris Prior, educators who look outside their disciplines for answers should ready themselves for the intensified problems with politics, pettiness and territoriality.

Yet, the greatest advancements in our world often come when a problem in one discipline is presented with a tool or perspective from another. Albert Einstein conceptualized General Relativity with the geometry of Georg Riemann. Maria Montessori used her knowledge and skill as a physician to reframe teaching models in early childhood education. Leonardo di Vinci brought the power of anatomy, optics, physical science, and perspective to his art and created realms of possibility any science fiction writer would envy. In Divergent, Tris becomes the embodiment of the synergy created whenever perspectives are challenged.

Purist and interdisciplinary approaches are both critical to the process of discovery. We already have ample evidence that a quality of education can look very different for any two individuals as long as it gives them knowledge, habits and skills to create opportunities for themselves, and an ethical framework to take responsibility for their actions. I get weary of the antagonism between public, private, and home school advocates, as if they’re in a war in which the good guys must triumph over the evil forces. I see a convergence of these platforms as an opportunity to tailor an education that fits individual needs of any child at any given time. Like Tris Prior, I might appear to be a dangerous element to those who earn their reputations by espousing THE WAY, but I know intuitively that there is more than one way. When we empower individuals to direct their own educational paths to the ends they wish to drive toward, we’ll realize the potential of the most underserved individuals among us.

I love my writing career, but sometimes I find myself moving ninety miles a minute and getting nowhere. When I get this feeling, it's a clue that I'm not being honest and fair with myself as a writer.

When I was an educator, everyone knew I was busy and that my schedule was demanding. No one called me asking if I could pick them up at the airport or take them to the doctor. They were even mindful of my early bedtime.

As a writer, I've found some flexibility to my day, but the hours I work as a writer are as long, often longer, than they were when I was teaching. Yet, I have been reluctant to tell my friends and loved ones "no" when it really wasn't convenient for me to interrupt my day. I felt like I was letting them down if I didn't say yes to every request. Like a catcher behind home plate, I felt like I had to catch every ball that was thrown at me. I was stressed, impatient, disorganized, and inefficient as a writer. I really wasn't much fun to be around.

Then it dawned on me that I wouldn't ask a friend or family member to help me if it interfered with their work. I know not all of my loved ones are quite as understanding, but I knew I had to let go of the idea that my priorities as a writer were less important than any other work I've ever done. I finally realize that no one can prioritize my time but me. Since I've never aspired to be a major league catcher, I've given up the practice of catching every ball that's thrown to me.

As I master this self-control, I have more time to write and conduct the business of writing. Most importantly, the writing comes more fluidly. Now when someone pitches a request for help, I find my hand doesn't volunteer reflexively; I have time to consider whether volunteering really works for me. Then the writing demons in my head don't torture me with my own lack of integrity. When I decide to catch the pitch, I don't feel the least bit guilty for taking advantage of the flexibility my career provides and I'm grateful for the time I get to spend with the people I love.