Day 318: Exposure (How Much Light to Shine on Each Concept)

There's this moment in teaching where you can see you're losing them. Their eyes glaze, their bodies slump, that universal "I'm done" energy fills the room. For the longest time, I thought this meant I needed to teach harder, explain better, provide more examples. Turns out, I was overdosing them on exposure.

Think about actual exposure in photography. Too little light, you can't see anything. Too much, everything's washed out. Learning works the same way. There's an optimal exposure for every concept, and it's almost never "as much as possible."

I learned this the hard way with metaphors. We were studying them, so I went all in. Metaphors in our morning message, metaphors in math word problems, metaphors in science, metaphors in dismissal instructions. By Wednesday, Tommy said, "Mrs. B, I literally hate metaphors now." (The irony of him using "literally" incorrectly wasn't lost on me.) I'd overexposed them to the point of aversion.

Now I think about exposure like seasoning. You want enough to enhance the flavor, not so much that it's all you taste. When we studied inference last month, I could have made everything about inference. Instead, I gave them concentrated doses—intense, focused exposure—then let it rest. The spaces between exposure let the learning settle.

The pre-exposure principle changed everything. Before officially teaching something, I started planting seeds. Tiny mentions, casual references, just enough to prime the neural pathways. The week before we studied context clues, I'd casually use the phrase. "Oh, the context clues in that sentence help us understand what she means." No explanation, just exposure. By the time we officially learned it, their brains were ready.

But underexposure is just as dangerous. I used to mention concepts once and expect mastery. "We covered that!" I'd protest when kids didn't remember. Yeah, we covered it like a bird covers the ocean—briefly and from a distance. Now I track exposure instances. Important concepts need at least seven meaningful encounters before they stick.

The intensity of exposure matters too. Not all exposures are equal. A casual mention counts different than hands-on practice, which counts different than teaching it to someone else. I started categorizing: passive exposure (they hear/see it), active exposure (they do it), and generative exposure (they create with it). You need all three.

Here's the weird part: sometimes the best exposure is indirect. Instead of teaching summarization directly for a week, I model it constantly without naming it. "So basically, what the author is saying is..." "The main point here is..." "If I had to explain this in one sentence..." They absorb the strategy through exposure before they even know they're learning it.

My favorite exposure technique? The "drip campaign." Major concepts get introduced in September but aren't formally taught until November. They marinate in casual exposure for weeks. "That's foreshadowing, but we'll learn about that later." "Notice how the author used repetition there?" By the time we officially study it, it feels familiar, not foreign.

The post-exposure is crucial too. After intensive teaching, concepts need maintenance exposure. Not reteaching—just little touches. A reference here, a connection there. Like watering a plant after the initial planting. Without this maintenance exposure, even well-learned concepts wither.