How many “bummers” can a teacher have in a month of lessons and still be considered a quality teacher? A “bummer” is a lesson that does not cause children to learn; it is just a “blah” class period of minimal engagement and no internalizing of knowledge, skills, or dispositions about what is learned. Almost every student, whether a child in school today or an adult long graduated, knows what a “bummer” feels like because they happen. When a lesson is a bummer, children are spectators in the classroom.
If you are or were an athlete, you know your “bummers”; a swing and a miss, a whiff, a missed block or tackle, a dropped ball, a missed shot, getting the ball taken away from you, getting pinned to the mat, knocking the bar of the high jump stand, or being DQ’d for a false start. Most baseball players reach base safely every 2 or 3 times at bat. That means 70-80% of the time they fail. Interestingly, you can be a very successful player if your on base average is greater than 30% of your at bats. Consider any sports statistics and there a lot of bummers. Actually, there are a lot of bummers in life.
When a bummer happens, what is the “so what”? In the micro-look, each bummer is a failed opportunity. We easily say “the next time will be better”. Even with a minimal lens, multiple bummers demonstrate a lack of skill or at least a lack of focus on being successful and we say “pay attention and get it right”. With a larger lens, more problems are observable. Children fall behind in what they need to learn. If you follow the Packers this season, bummer games cause a lack of confidence in the team and fans begin to look for new players.
Bummers in school happen. Statistically, we need to acknowledge they do. Our interest is in limiting and eliminating bummers. Using the micro-lens, each bummer lesson is a missed opportunity to cause children to learn and the minimal lens tells us that multiple bummers cause children to have gaps in their knowledge and skills that effect future learning.
The WI DPI describes quality instruction (no bummers here) as follows: “High quality instruction means curricula, teaching practices, and learning environments are standards-based, evidence-based, engaging, differentiated, culturally responsive, and data-driven”.
https://dpi.wi.gov/rti/resources/high-quality-instruction
In a school with board-approved curriculum, ongoing professional development, attention to student-centered education, and standardized accountability checks, we can unpack most of the DPI definition with an acknowledgement that veteran teachers are prepared to deliver successful lessons on a regular basis. If this is the case, and I think it is, what causes bummer lessons?
We begin to “bum out” when we fail the set the learning “hook”. We fail to spark children to learn by telling or showing them why what they are learning is important to them, how they can use what they learn now and in the future, and how successful learning today will cause future successful learning.
The DPI term “engagement” means more than getting children to do the work of learning. For the non-DPI person, engagement is achieved when children “internalize what they are to learn, get excited about it because it is new and interesting or unique, see self-value in what they will learn, and move beyond just doing the work of learning to seeing value in the learning”. The most frequent cause of a bummer is that we do not hook children; we turn children into spectators in the classroom where the teacher is teaching. Engaged children do not spectate.
A veteran teacher knows her stuff. She has a developed a unit of instruction with scaffolded lessons she has taught before. Perhaps she set the hook very well the first time she taught the lesson, but after teaching it multiple times she assumes children are being hooked because they were hooked in the past. Across time, teachers and everyone else begins to take things for granted. These assumptions cause us to skip over or minimize aspects of our teaching.
Make no assumptions, especially about setting the hook for a lesson. Each lesson taught this year is a new lesson for the children in class; they have not seen or experienced this learning before. Eliminate a bummer in the making by accentuating their engagement. Set the hook hard and deep so that no one is a spectator in their learning.
Limit or avoid bummer lessons and enjoy an escalation in student learning.