As we approach the end of this section on delight, let's jump back into the classroom for a moment. Let's imagine that we're joining a class that has been deeply engrossing, filled with inquiry and joy, a smorgasbord of intrinsically motivated participation punctuated by laughter and those aha moments that make learning so personally rewarding. (You might try to envision the last time you were in a classroom like that and place us there.) In short, we're nearing the end of that really good class, we've experienced sustained delight…and now what?

Work toward Good Homework

The best teachers know that the learning effects of a class, even if that class felt like a success for both its students and its teacher, will begin to fade as soon as the class is dismissed. That's why great teachers end, and extend, their lessons well.

Near the end of our hypothetical great class, our hypothetical great teacher would intentionally shift to synthesis, rehearsal, and extension. She might ask students to make personal meaning out of what they learned. She might ask them to apply it to their hoped‐for career. She might ask them to fill out a quick survey to both ingrain what they had just learned and share back assessment data, which she could then use to identify gaps in learning and plan future classes. She might hand students an index card, ask them to use it to answer a question, and have them hand in the card before they left the classroom. This last move is called providing a “ticket to leave,” and the best teachers use varieties of it all day long – to sharpen focus and effort right before their classes are dismissed.

There might be one more move, of course, before students physically leave the classroom, and that's the announcing of homework. Increasingly, this task is handled digitally, since many teachers post homework online, but just as many teachers offer a quick oral reminder to students as they are heading out the door. It can't hurt, though homework itself often can and frequently does.

As such, homework is something that many adults remember with a mix of dread and resentment. After going to school all day, maybe playing a sport or performing on a stage, many students in America head home with a pile of homework. Some of it is effective; some of it simply robs them of sleep, and therefore has invidious long‐term effects on their learning.

School is rarely perfect, but the best teachers know that effective homework flows from a few simple principles.

Homework “must have a purpose” and students should know what it is (Checkley, 2003). Second, homework, to be effective, can be used to make sure that students understood something. This goes back to the black box concept we discussed in the Authenticity section. Homework, planned well, helps teachers to know what's happening inside the black boxes of their students' understanding. Last, for our purposes, homework can be used for practice.

To sharpen that last point about practice: homework that asks students to practice should be “assigned for ‘perfect’ practice” (Robbins, Gregory, & Herndon, 2000). As we know from the math and science teachers we met earlier in this book, “errors practiced are difficult to undo” (Robbins et al., 2000). If you can afford it, never allow anyone to practice something the wrong way.

Also, if you want to raise someone's understanding, you have to find ways to spread the learning over time. You can handle some of that seeding during class and some of it with an effective homework instrument; then, you can return to the understandings that matter in later assignments, later homework. Layer after layer after layer.

Or like baking bread, baking anything, you have to expose the ingredients to heat over a period of time.

For the scholars, here's the same point, said in a different way, at a different point in time:

Cognitive psychologists have pointed out that learning evolves through a coordination of ideas and experiences that requires focus and effort over time. (Fischer & Bidell, 2006; Grannot & Parziale, 2002; NRC, 1999; Siegler, 1998; all as quoted in Schwartz, Sadler, Sonnert, & Hai, 2009)

And again:

The models of cognitive development that these authors have developed and use in educational contexts stress the importance of building and rebuilding ideas in multiple contexts to achieve general principles that can be applied to new problems. (Schwartz et al., 2009)

Layers upon layers often equal deep learning. Providing a synthesis activity in the final stages of a class followed by a homework assignment that helps students to understand its purpose for their learning, demonstrate their understanding of their learning, and practice perfectly whatever most needs practice – this is how a great teacher will extend the delight of a great learning experience in a classroom.

Plan for Retrieval and Personal Relevance: Part 1

While researching this chapter, we both had parallel experiences wherein what could be called “synthesis” and “homework” were used masterfully in the wild by companies with which we had just had delightful experiences with our families. It's quite possible that we found these examples solely because we were looking for them – the opposite of homework, this move is sometimes called priming – but we found them nonetheless.

Steve's experience was with a basketball camp that his son attended for part of a summer. Each Friday, right before pick‐up, Steve would receive an email from the camp that would suggest questions “for the ride home.” Steve's favorites were questions about habits and forward thinking because, to him, these felt like great homework, the kind that “arrests forgetting, strengthens retrieval routes, and is essential for hanging onto the knowledge you want to gain” (Brown, Roediger, & McDaniel, 2014). In these follow‐up conversations, Steve's son often talked about a key principle that he had learned, walking back through the way it was taught to him or why he thought it was interesting. Prompted, he also teased out personal relevance, thinking out loud in particular about how skills or mindsets could be useful to his upcoming season.

Equally, the questions helped Steve to learn, affirm, and rehearse the camp's lessons in a way that was personally meaningful. What parent wouldn't relish the chance to think about not only his son's development as an athlete, but also his development as a human being.

By co‐opting a car ride that could have been a space for mere zoning out or listening to music or talk radio, the camp added value beyond where it needed to, helping Steve and his son to return consciously to a process (of practice). We knew the thing that pleased us, and these questions reminded us and helped us to seek it again.

Plan for Retrieval and Personal Relevance: Part 2

Meanwhile, Reshan, also with a brain primed for delight, traveled with his wife and daughter to the Rockefeller Center American Girl location (New York City) to celebrate his daughter's seventh birthday.

In the cafe, a critical part of the experience, his server pointed out the new eating placemats for the dolls seated at their table. She then mentioned that, on the back of the placemats, Reshan and his family would find “conversation starters” intended – like the basketball camp example above – to give adults and children something to talk about while waiting to place their orders or waiting for the food to arrive. (Again, this was time and space that could have been used in a suboptimal way by the participants. Coopting it helped American Girl to serve its customers by keeping those customers locked into focus on the experience. In a good spell or story or bread‐baking session or classroom, every minute counts.)

Before departing, the server also mentioned that, previously, these questions were on a centerpiece on the table. But enough people asked about taking them home that the decision was made to include them as “take home” toy items.

Reshan's family had a wonderful time. They used the questions sporadically throughout the meal, keeping themselves focused on the particular play into which they had walked. What intrigued Reshan, though, was the way the play continued…well beyond their meal and their ride home.

After a few weeks, when Reshan realized that his daughter was still using the conversation starters in her own imaginary play at home, he knew that something special had happened…and been delightfully extended. His daughter had been transformed by an experience. She was playing in a brand‐new way. She continued to return to the scene of the original experience.

In the teaching parlance, it's not difficult to explain why she would make this imaginary trek again and again, and how such continual trekking becomes a self‐fulfilling prophecy: “While the brain is not a muscle that gets stronger with exercise, the neural pathways that make up a body of learning do get stronger, when the memory is retrieved and the learning is practiced” (Brown et al., 2014).That kind of retrieval and practice is what you want for your brand, for your experience, especially when you believe that your mission is what is truly best for your customer. That's what you want, and you can attain it, but not by accident.

In an interview with Kamille Adamany, director of Restaurants & Retail Experiences for American Girl, we learned that the table talkers were created – very intentionally – prior to the opening of the first Cafe at American Girl Place Chicago in 1998. They were “part of founder Pleasant Rowland's vision for creating a memorable experience for girls and their families as they spent a special meal together in the Cafe.” They were baked into the original design of the Cafe; they were seen as an extension of mission and meaning, as part of what was hopefully going to be memorable about a family's experience with the brand.

Like a good homework assignment, the placemats had a clear purpose. They were designed to be “doll sized,” “enjoyed again after the dining experience is over,” and to offer “lots of opportunities for at‐home play.” Rehearsal, rehearsal, rehearsal: that's what both a good teacher and a savvy business person would seek in this case. The goal is the same – to run people down the neural pathways that you want them use when recalling what you want them to recall.

What we call delightful practice, American Girl calls “experiential retail,” and they have aimed to lead that market from their inception. Making meaning in the store was job one:

The idea of a large‐format retail store with a full service restaurant and a live theater was unheard of at the time, but bringing to life these girl‐centric, brand‐specific experiences within the retail store was the manifestation of, in the words of Pleasant Rowland, “all we make, all we teach, and all we believe.” Table talkers are but one of the many touch points throughout our stores we've created to help girls make meaningful connections with their families and friends as they engage with our brand. (Adamany, personal statement, 2018)

The table talkers, in their original conception, helped to extend the intentions of the company and its founder. Later, that meaning, that could only be made in person rather than online, was deepened when the table talkers were sent home with families. This decision emerged from an understanding of families' needs and desires.

We know that life is busy for families. We're all about helping girls and their families connect and spend quality time together, whether it's at one of our stores or at home, and the table talker experience is just one way we're doing this.

A great teacher knows a homework assignment truly worked when her students enter the classroom talking about it. In that way, it provides a runway to the next learning experience. The table talkers function in much the same way, building momentum around families' annual pilgrimage – that is, return – to a physical store. As Adamany concludes:

We have a lot of people who return to the Café every year, especially around the holidays. Those guests remember the table talkers and look forward to playing [with them]. I had one mom tell me it was her favorite part of their annual trip because she liked hearing how her daughter's answers changed over the years. (Personal statement, 2018)

That's pure delight: adding value where, previously, there was little or none, pushing past mere novelty and toward something more meaningful and lasting.