Are Your Students An Audience To or Owners Of The Learning?

Never ask a former student about your instruction.  Or, if you do, be prepared for an unexpected answer. I recently asked one of my second-grade students from decades ago  (a school administrator today) what she remembers most about my second-grade instruction. She met my gaze and burst out laughing. "I’m sorry, but the only thing I can remember about being in your second-grade classroom was when you used the overhead projector to draw funny faces on the wall clock to make us all laugh." We, and others in the room, shared this laugh. Inwardly, I cringed.  I wasn’t surprised. In those years, I did everything possible to transmit my passion and love for teaching to the students -  I drew on the clock, used hand puppets, and took time for a “stubby pencil funeral” when a child attempted to continue writing with an overly-sharpened nub. There was a lot of fun and maybe not as much academic learning as there should have been.

Building on the Wrong Beliefs: At that time, I believed that just because I’d been called to this noble profession, my passion and enthusiasm alone would result in deep learning for every child.  The following years were tough for me when the following fact smacked me: Teaching is less a calling than a highly technical field requiring deep and constant skill development. If laughter was the outcome of education, I was a rising star…in clown school. Humor and fun could stay, but I needed much more to be effective with students.

A series of gifted instructional coaches and leaders compelled me to challenge my beliefs about good teaching practice.  Over time, I came to accept and embrace that sometimes teaching and learning are hard, and sometimes it’s not fun at all…before it is.

I was lucky. My leaders and mentors at that time valued a coaching approach to achieving high-impact instruction. Like all great coaches, they made me own my behavior in the classroom.  They had the patience to ask the right questions to help me highlight the behaviors.  I learned what was landing and not with students. Under their guidance, I practiced the tiniest classroom moves and word combinations that make an enormous difference for learners of any age.

Tiny Moves Lead to Huge Learning: Most importantly, my mentors didn’t just talk about high-impact instruction; they showed it to me. They would teach, and I would emulate.  Once while trying out a lesson I’d just watched them teach, I asked the class, “Who can tell me what is the difference between these two numbers?”  Not a single hand went up.  My coach leaned in and whispered, “rephrase that to “What can you tell me about these two numbers?”  I did.  All the hands in the room went into the air.

Today, I realize the gift these great mentors and coaches gave me was this: the skill to discern, within the immensity of what I might teach, the precise next thing my learners needed to level up within a range of skills. As a passionate lover of learning, I so often wanted to (and still do) share everything about a topic to light the student’s fire.  Like any fire hose, this approach soaked my students in a flood of information and forced them more into the role of audience members than into owners of their learning. One of these mentor teachers even gave me a hilarious gift…with a solemn message. A headband with a wire held a small sign right before my eyes. On the sign, it said: FOCUS.

Expecting teacher passion alone will ensure deep learning is a myth. I've seen too many passionate young teachers working until 7 PM in their classrooms each night, only to burn out when they realize that while their students may love them, they are not learning critical academic skills. They simply don't know what to sort out of the overwhelming scope of things they might do the next day to reach every child.

Shifting from Audience to Owners: What ultimately allowed me to focus was when I started observing my students' behaviors and conducting my own “learning walks.”  I would videotape myself teaching and share these with my coach and another trusted mentor.  We would analyze what the students were doing and saying in response to my instruction.  In time, it became clear that when I thought I was being particularly clear, I wasn’t.  For example, I used a video camera to record the clarity of my feedback when conferring with my little writers in a workshop. In the video, you can hear me using my very best focused “conferring” questions to help a young girl unpack what she was trying to say on her mostly blank paper.  She was highly articulate and was able to answer my questions perfectly.   It wasn’t until I walked away in the video to help another student that it became clear my conferring wasn’t helping her as a writer of complex ideas - she was unable to get anything down on paper because she was still struggling with the pencil, the spelling, and the handwriting.

Today, in the same situation, I would base my planning for that lesson less on where I “wished” my students were and more on where they are.  To establish that type of clarity, I’ve learned that a classroom culture that honors the different levels of development is critical.  When everyone is clear that our learning intention is to “use a freeze and focus moment to describe the details of how I felt,” some children will be working on their word choice, others on their sentence fluency and others on simple production of print.  Wherever you are in that continuum is ok because every time you level up to get closer to achieving the overall learning intention is a huge celebration.

Student’s Always Know Clarity: Over time, I learned to be passionate less about the idea of teaching and more about the technical elements of it.  Some days were hard, others grueling.  In the end, I evolved to ask all students the following questions.  From their answers, I always knew where clarity was for them and, more importantly, where it wasn’t. Today, I encourage all teachers to regularly build a classroom based on questions such as these:

1. What are you getting good at today?
2. What does good look like today?
3. What is your level with this skill?
4. How do you plan to move up a level with this skill today?
   
   
   

I never did get rid of the hand-puppets, pencil funerals, and clock drawing.  But when we did share silliness in the classroom, it was part of the brain-break celebration of everyone’s leveling up to the next defined skill for each of them. Each second grader would pretend to unscrew the top of their head, reach inside, pull out their tired brain, and shake it before putting it back in. That was laughter worth having.

(This blog was inspired by Elizabeth Dampf’s brilliant article in ASCD.  Please check it out here!)

Chris Briggs-Hale, Certified Professional & Instructional Coach, https://waterfalllearning.com/

Chris Briggs-Hale is the CEO of Waterfall Learning, LLC, and a Certified Professional Coach.  He served public schools for 30 years, 15 of which were as a principal.  Chris served as a Senior Consultant for McRel and Marzano and Associates, a site visitor for the National Schools of Character Award (Character.org), and was a Board Member with Eunice Kennedy Shriver for the Community of Caring in Washington, DC. Chris has consulted for schools extensively across the United States. He is the recipient of the 2013 Red Cross Community Hero Award, the 2004 Sally K. Lenhardt Professional Leadership Award from Lesley University, the 2004 Community of Caring National Administrator of the Year, and the 2013 Community Service Hero, American Red Cross, Colorado Springs.