“Nothing, really,” is a chronic response to the legendary parent inquiry “What did you do at school today?” Nothing. Really? Seven-plus hours at school and you did nothing? Parents frown and their child says no more. But what if this response is true. Can a child shrink into an invisibility and skate through the school day without any meaningful involvement? You bet they can. Sadly, invisibility can also be bred into instructional designs albeit unintentionally. Either way, invisible children do not engage in their daily instruction and do not make the educational progress they can make.
Invisibility 101
School can be a wonderfully engaging place for children. Playgrounds, hallways, cafeterias, and gyms invite children to be active and engaged. Classrooms are something else. Most children fall into three classroom categories.
- Visible, “look at me”, and “ask me anything”
- Shy and “I know what you want but please don’t call on me”
- Invisible, “don’t call on me and if you do, I won’t engage”
It is relatively easy for a child to become invisible in a classroom if she follows these four basic tenets to invisibility.
- Never raise your hand.
- Never cause trouble. Troublemakers get a lot of attention.
- Answer every teacher question with “I don’t know.” Wait out the teacher until she asks another student.
- Sit halfway back in the outside rows of desks and chairs. These are the desks least frequently scanned by teachers.
These behaviors have been proven over time to make a child invisible in plain sight.
Institutional Invisibility
Given a class of 25-plus children and a limited number of minutes for teacher-led instruction, statistically only a handful of children will be directly engaged. This is true for elementary and secondary instruction. A lesson design that commits most of the class time for student work begins with a teacher connecting today’s lesson with yesterday’s lesson. This is followed by the teacher providing new information, showing new skills, demonstrating expanded ways of doing what is being learned, and modeling this instruction. The third component of the lesson is focused on the teacher checking to see if children heard, saw, and understood her instruction. The teacher calls on several children to repeat, re-model, re-tell the teacher’s instruction. The teacher does not ask every child to participate in this checking of student understanding, but randomly calls on children. If four out five children make an accurate and positive response, the teacher typically proceeds to the independent student work time of the lesson. If the invisible child is called on, she just says, “I don’t know” and the teacher will call on another student. Voila! Invisibility.
The passage of class time also assists invisibility. An elementary school day is full of math, ELA, social studies, science, specials, and recesses. A secondary class of 45 to 50 minutes always ends with a bell. If a child makes it to the tenth minute of most lessons without being personally engaged, they are most likely to be invisible for the entire lesson.
Making the Invisible Visible
The degree of invisibility a child achieves ultimately rests with the teacher. Two time-tested strategies for engaging children are these: keep a running record of student engagement and never accept an “I don’t know” response.
Sociometrics allows a teacher to chart the number and type of student interactions observed by the teacher. Or, better yet, observations are made by an “observer” or mentor-coach in the classroom. This is a quality strategy for tracking student interaction.
A teacher uses a seating chart and makes notations of interactions. One notation will indicate the children the teacher called on. A second notation indicates that the child volunteered. A third notation indicates that a child asked a question. And a fourth notation indicates that a child responded to another child’s question or comment. Across several days, a notated seating chart describes for a teacher the patterns of child interaction and those children who have not interacted – the invisible children. Knowledge is power and sociometrics points the teacher toward an assured and intentional engagement of all children.
Notations also are efficient cues for indicating how engaged a child is in other class activities and in other modalities. A silent child who engages quickly in a group activity can demonstrate she was paying attention and learning. A silent child may respond with clear understanding in a writing assignment. A shy child may behave like an invisible student but be internally very engaged. Don’t confuse the two.
“I don’t know” is a child response that needs to be eradicated from classrooms because it so seldom is a true statement. All children know something regarding a question asked of them. We need to persist or ask a better question.
When a child says, “I don’t know”, a teacher can follow with “Then tell me what you think about…” or “Tell me how you feel about…” or “Ask me one question that will help you to know.” Whereas a child may not know the correct answer to a question, that child does have a “thought” or a “feeling” about how the question can be answered. Eradicating “I don’t know” requires an immediate follow-up engagement by the teacher. When the child sits in silence to the second inquiry, allowing a smidgeon of wait time is good, but then persist. “You’ve had time to think – now tell us what you think.” If this sounds like bullying, it isn’t. It’s causing behavioral change.
The message to children when teachers track their instructional engagement and do not accept “I don’t know” responses is clear. All children in this classroom will be active learners.
As a final comment, a teacher who tracks child interactions and does not accept “I don’t know” is heavily armed when a parent declares “Every night my child says they didn’t do anything in school today. What’s going on in your classroom?” If that happens, smile and say “here are the facts in my classroom. I engage every child every day and these are the ways your child was engaged today.” Nothing! Really?
Nothing, really” May Not Be A Statement About School
We also know that “Nothing, really” is a child’s way of not wanting to engage with a parent. This supper table response, like “I don’t know” in school, is a child’s way of saying “I don’t want to talk with you.” Many children who voluntarily and actively engage in school instruction use the “Nothing, really” to stiff-arm talking about school with their parent. Consequently, a child who says “Nothing, really” at home may not have been invisible in school. In fact, they may have been stellar students who just don’t want to talk with their parents.