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Knowledge, Like Water, Will Slip Between Our Fingers Unless.

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When you cup your hands and use them to scoop up a drink of water, how long can you hold the water before it seeps between your fingers and out of your hands? Some can hold onto the water longer than others, but eventually the water slips from everyone’s hands. So, it is with our memory. We hear a name or phone number or read a story and for a bit of time we remember these. However, after a bit of time, that length of time varies with the person, recall of the name and phone number and the details of the story slip from our memory like water between our fingers. Short-term memory is only that, good for a bit of time. If we want to remember things for a longer stretch of time, we need to build long-term memory. We can build memories if we choose to do so.

What do we know?

We consider memory to be a natural phenomenon for keeping track of things. In everyday life, we have hundreds of micro experiences every day. These are things we see, and hear, and do as part of daily living. Yet we remember very few, because they were insignificant and occurred quickly and without reason to become longer memory. Our brains are not intended to remember everything we see, or hear, or do because there are thousands of these minutiae every day. Consider what it would be like inside your head if your brain were constantly trying to make sense of every detail in every second of your life. Happily, no one knows what your head would be like because this does not happen naturally. Instead, our brain sheds the minutiae in short order. Forgetting is as natural as remembering. Unless we actively work to build memory.

Being a student in school may build many memories but schooling itself does a poor job of teaching students how to remember. Our curricular program for every grade level and every course is industrial in nature. A teacher organizes units of instruction and teaches them one after the other. Sadly, schooling is assembly line instruction, and the conveyor belt only stops at graduation. The daisy chain organization of curriculum assumes that some of what a child learns at an earlier age will relate to or be applied in a later age. Certainly, a child’s developing skill sets in phonics-based reading and use of arithmetic skills are used throughout school and later life. However, what the child reads in fourth grade or the math work the child did in sixth grade are stand-alone assignments. 

Case in point – why do children in the United States typically study US history in grades 5, 8, and 10? The casual answer is that by teaching it again in 8th and 10th grade children develop a deeper understanding of their national story. If that were true, why do so many children have trouble on tests of US history? It is the most repeated curriculum in PK-12 yet ask any adult the name of the 8th US President or the relationship between the American Revolution and the War of 1812 or the effect of the Smoot-Hawley Act and you will wait a long time for answers. Are these important to remember? Maybe not, but they are indicative of how we treat this three-peat taught curriculum. Most American adults cannot pass the Immigration Service civics test. We are illiterate about our national story. So much for teaching children how to remember.

Being smart in school by remembering what you learn should not be a secret – help every child to be as smart as they can be. We need to teach children all the “secrets.”

Long ago and before the Internet’s instant access to information, knowledge was power. People who knew things and could do use their knowledge had advantages over people who did not know. Sadly, schools and teaching were a matter of “teachers know and children do not know – and only the smartest children learn what teachers know.” Too many of us experienced this in school.

Today our teachers’ job is to cause all children to learn what teachers know. A first-grade teacher’s job is to cause all first-grade children to learn the first-grade curriculum. A chemistry teacher’s job is to cause chemistry students to learn chemistry. This is teaching with an “I will do everything in my ethical abilities to teach my children what they need to know and do.”

Memory work is not easy, and it is not intuitive for all children. If a child has natural memorization ability, great! For children who need help memorizing, teach them how to remember. This mandate and constantly needs adaptive practice in every PK-12 classroom. We do not teach how to study and remember in elementary school and never again in middle and high school. We teach and practice these abilities in every classroom.

What to do better.

Start by acknowledging the current state of learning and remembering. We do not teach for long term memory. We do not teach children how to build long term memory, and our classroom practices do not build memory for the long-term. We talk about the importance of building, recalling, and using background knowledge but do not teach children how to recall and use what they have been taught.

Be intentional. Building recall does not take as much time and effort as reteaching what children have forgotten. “Children, we are going to learn how to improve our memory.”

  • Use recall events. Tell children “Before the next chapter or unit test, we are going to do things to help you remember what you are learning. These small activities will strengthen your memory of what you are learning before our usual tests.” Every several days have children “Tell me about the story we have been reading? I want to hear what you recall and your thoughts about the main characters, the plot, and where you think this story is going.” At the start, be non-evaluative and over time expect children to develop correct details. Have children tell each other about steps they have been taught to use in checking their multiplication problems. Do not just do the steps but explain why each step is mathematically important. Have children hum the song they are learning or restate the safety rules for using a turning wheel for pottery. Work on recalling the essential things in the current chapter or unit or story or class activity. Then, do it again next week.
  • Use non-graded retesting. Tell children “Frequent review of what you learned and was in a recent test helps you to remember what you learned. So, we will have several follow-up tests of that same information. The follow-up tests will not be graded, because we are taking these tests to build memory of what you already were tested on.”
  • Use flash cards. Have children make their own flash cards. This applies to all K-12 children in all subjects. Cards can be created to build recall for vocabulary and definitions, events with dates and names, series of steps in a process, and to explain significance. The practice of creating flash cards alone builds memory; the use of flash cards builds stronger memory.

No child is too old for flash cards! At age 77 I am relearning French language and flash cards are part of the routine.

  • Use intermittent review. Students tend to cram for tests. Tell children “Better practice is scheduled or intermittent review over time. Do not leave studying for a test until the last night before test day.” The recall events described above practice intermittent study. Use intermittent for end of course and end-of-year tests. Next month do a review of essential content and skills taught the previous month. Run through last month’s flash cards. Three months hence do it again. The reason is this – background knowledge, like water in your cupped hands, eventually will slip away if you do review/refill it.
  • Use memory organizers. Tell children “It is okay to create your own ways of remembering what you don’t want to forget.” Teach them how to draw a concept map linking ideas together as supporting details. Teach them associations to link new learning to what they know. Teach them how to create a rhyming word phrase so that each word reminds them of ideas and strings of ideas they want to remember. Teach them to use a simple sentence where each word reminds them of an idea or string of ideas they want to remember.

The Big Duh!

Return to a variation of Cartesian logic. “If I taught something to children and they did not learn it, did I really teach them anything?” Possibly. Instead posit, “If I taught children and did not teach them how to remember what I taught them, did I really teach anything?” Indeed, not. If you expect children to remember what you taught them, teach them how to remember.

The Art of Breathing and Teaching

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Breathing is an autonomic body function and is essential for human life. A healthy person breathes without thinking about it. When teaching children, knowing when to pause and take another breath to let learning unfold is a conscious act of breath control. Effective teachers know the art of breathing.

What do we know?

As a child, I was told to pinch my nose, jump into the deep end of the pool and swim. “Take a deep breath, hold it, and jump!” “Oh, and do not open your mouth to breath until you must. You will know when!”

As a student teacher, I learned to prepare an objectives-based lesson with a Madeline Hunter lesson design. When all students were seated and I had their attention, I took a deep breath and jumped into the lesson. Once I had connected the day’s lesson to yesterday’s lesson, I taught/swam hard moving through my lesson plan. My college supervised advised, “Once you have children’s attention, do not lose that connection until the lesson is finished. It is easier to keep them with you than it is to regain the attention of children you lost.” That mantra served me well until I looked up and around. Like a swimmer who has held his breath and come up for air, I was teacher in the middle of a lesson without knowing much about the children I was teaching. Their learning was secondary to my teaching.

Experience can teach us, and informed experience teaches us to create better experiences. I learned that I did not need to pinch my nostrils and hold my breath like a balloon under water. Diving headfirst was both more efficient and more exhilarating. I learned shallow racing dives and to hold a for four flutter kicks then to begin my stroke count and breath as planned. Informed practices created better experiences.

So, it is with teaching. Breathing may be autonomic, but effective teachers know how to pause, breathe, and let learning catch up with their teaching.

Intellectual breathing.

Hunter taught us to check for cognitive understanding. Checking is taking a breath from teaching finding the extent to which children are learning from your teaching.

Strategies for intellectual breathing include the following:

  • Cold calling. Do not ask for volunteers, but call in your “bell weather” students, the students who if they understand then most other students also will understand.
  • Think-pair-share. Students write quick responses to your question, share their response with another student, discuss and modify their mutual response, and report orally to the class.
  • Roll a question around. Ask a question requiring more than recall, one that causes a child to connect new learning with prior learning or provide a new context. Then ask another child to either agree, disagree, or add to the response. Continue with five or six students to push their thinking.
  • Quick quiz/ticket. Ask students to respond in writing to name the main points of the lesson so far, or to explain a concept in the first instruction, or formulate questions they have about what they have learned.
  • Use a visual fist to five. This strategy checks each child’s security with what they have learned. A five-finger wave says the child believes she has a high level of understanding, and a fist says, “I am confused.”

These are formative strategies that tell a teacher “Success. Keep teaching.” Or “Whoa, you need to reteach, correct, clarify, and reinforce what children know before going on,”

Emotional breathing.

Teaching usually is focused on what children think and know. Take a breath and pause to allow children to consider how they feel about what they have learned. “Aw, this is soft. Feelings do not help students on their statewide assessments.” Wrong!

Unlike the factual nature of checking for cognitive understanding, taking an emotional breath is observational and attitudinal. As children progress through a lesson or unit, their executive skills, social awareness, relationship skills, and ethical well-being are equal to their cognitive understanding.

Can or are all students able to –

  • Initiate and use a new skill independently? Can they self-start or are they dependent on their teacher?
  • Aware of the social context of what they have learned? Do they know that different economic, socio-political, cultural, or linguistic groups have a different take on the topic? Can they accept such diverse thinking? How do they feel about this?
  • Work with all other children in the class to extend their new learning. What groupings will help understanding? What needs to be done to improve child-to-child relationships?
  • See ethical and responsible decision-making issues in what they are learning? Can children self-regulate based on their ethical integrity?

Emotional breath taking relies on a teacher’s observational and perceptional acuity. First, a teacher must be self-aware of each of these. Second, a teacher needs to be aware of indicators of SEL indicators that children give off in their classroom experiences. Third, a teacher needs to be prepared to convert observation into planned instructions. If children are lacking in executive functions, teach them. If students are socially unaware, teach them. If children do not see ethical issues, teach them.

Taking a breath of emotional checking assures that teaching and learning are not mechanical but also humane.

Self-awareness.

Breathe also for yourself. Like the swimmer coming up for air, take a pause to help yourself adjust within the lesson. Stop teaching. Take a sip of water. Look around and breathe. Take time to see where you are in the classroom. As a mentor told me, “Pull your socks back up. You have been going at it strong.” I have seen teachers so “into their teaching” they are not aware that they have walked themselves into a corner of the room where the whiteboard hits the wall. One or two kept on teaching through the passing bell and when they turned around a new class of children was seated in their classroom wondering what they should do.

With experience, most teachers know when lessons are working successfully and when they are not. Perceptive teachers know when a lesson that is faltering lies in their preparation and when it is with them in the moment. They can take a breath and adjust themselves and their teaching.

At the same time, ineffective teachers do know how to breathe. They plow ahead in their ineffective lessons with ineffective practices.

The Big Duh!

Teaching is a human endeavor exercising the art and science of causing children to learn. Because we are human, we need to use our natural instincts to inform our uses of the arts and sciences. Effective teachers know how to stop teaching, take a breath, use the pause to monitor and adjust themselves and their instruction, and with new insights go forward.

Lastly, and most importantly, while you pause for breath look around at children engaged in learning. It is a most wonderful sight. And know that your pause for breath also is instruction and reinforcement to children that they also need to pause and breathe.

If You Do Not Hear A Student, Is The Child Really Present? A Cartesian Problem.

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Today I am writing about children in school who are seen but seldom heard. Each of these conditions, to be seen and to be heard or not, is a personal choice a specific group of children. While most kids clamor for the attention of their peers and their teachers, there are kids who are inclined or consciously choose to be visibly present every day AND to be audibly and participatorily absent. It raises a spin on Cartesian logic. If a shy or introverted child is present in the classroom everyday but never volunteers to speak and shuns large group engagement is the child really here? Is the child successfully learning? Is school supporting and helping shy and introverted children?

A different kind of invisibility.

While learning can be exciting, schooling can be devastating. Universally, our youngest children are social beings when they enter school. As they look at their classmates, they only see other children just like themselves and they instinctively move toward and with their new age-mates. If they cannot be the first in line, they all want to be the second. The group, like a swarm of bees, moves together and any child who wanders off, quickly scurries to rejoin. Their judgements of each other only last a micro-second because the very next moment holds new excitements and things not to be missed. They seldom see differences that may exist between themselves and others.

Early school days are filled with the excitement of new things. Children have large eyes and hands that want to touch everything. There is sensory stimulation galore. Most children are energized by the sounds, sights, and activity of their school environments. In fact, they contribute to the managed chaos. School is a beehive of activity.

Early in their school experiences, children learn that attention swings between the whole and individual students constantly. When their teacher asks a question, many children want to answer at once. Before the question is finished they have their hands in the air waving and saying “Call on me! Call on me!’ At school, taking turns is a learned school behavior. However, with taking turns comes the spotlight of attention. When a child asks the teacher a question or the teacher asks a child a question, the attention of all other students and the teacher is on THE student. How a child responds to being the focus of attention can decide whether the child will choose to be visible or invisible in school.

Elevated levels of sensory stimulation and focused attention abound in school. In fact, schooling promotes these and success in school requires children to adapt to these two conditions. So, what about the child who is shy or introverted?

Yes, the child may be present every day. Yes, the child is present but seems to cower at sudden and loud noises and overly excited and prefers to work alone. Yes, the child has opportunities but declines to speak and never volunteers to speak. Yes, the child can learn successfully if the child can do so independently. And no, schools typically prefer and reward extroverted children and do not help and support shy and introverted children very well.

Choosing to be a non-participant is both an unlearned and learned behavior.

What causes a child to clam up in school? Fear and/or avoidance. Shy children fear or are highly self-conscious about being negatively evaluated by others. Introverted children avoid external stimulation and prefer quiet and solitary environments to process their own thoughts. Fear and avoidance – each is a distinct psychology and emotion and are not the same. They may overlap – shy children can also be introverted. And they may seem contradictory – introverts can seem outgoing, and extroverts can prefer shy environments. However, in school, we tend to lump the shy and introverted together. They are children who seldom volunteer in class or do not like to take part in public and social activities. They avoid being in the spotlight or being singled out. As a result, most teachers “let them ride,” do not call on them, and leave them alone because they do not cause trouble or draw attention to their needs. We let shy and introverted children become invisible in our classrooms.

Shyness is a real behavior and can be the product of a variety of things. Shyness or behavioral inhibition can be genetic. This inherited trait is related to about 15% of children who appear shy. Inherently, some children are cautious, tentative, and sensitive in social settings. They can be shy by nature.

Children can become shy and tentative when their parent(s) is domineering. A mom or dad who is overbearing, overly critical, and loud in directing a child can cause that child to become tentative. If the child were older, we would say they are “brow beaten.” An overly critical parent diminishes a child’s willingness to take risks. Why volunteer for loud, unwanted criticism? Adults around them can cause children to be shy.

Shyness, as in social anxiety, also can be attributed to personal experience. A child builds confidence and social security when she is successful in engaging with others, in raising a hand to volunteer, and giving correct responses when asked questions. Overtime, these successes encourage risk taking. However, the lack or success and a personalization of failed attempts can cause the opposite. It does not take many disappointments in social settings for a child to self-create a fear of any events that could result in public failure.

Social anxiety also can be the result of peer intimidation, ridicule, and harassment. If a classmate(s) makes fun of a child’s failure to answer a question correctly or asking a question another student labels as “stupid,” that child can become inhibited from speaking in class. Student to student bullying is a hot topic in schools today with interest on stopping bullies and helping the bullied. Too often the bullied already face other challenges.

At an extreme level, shyness can be a social phobia and is classified as a mental health issue.

Introversion and extroversion also have a genetic basis. Heredity accounts for 40% to 60% of children characterized as either introverted or extroverted. In their inherited biologies introverts have a higher level of baseline cortical arousal and dopamine sensitivity in their brains. They already are intrinsically stimulated so they avoid extrinsic stimulation. Over stimulation with more dopamine actually drains their energy and makes them emotionally edgy.

At an extreme level, introversion also is classified as a mental health issue.

Classroom anonymity.

Being shy can just be shyness and being introverted can just be introversion. They are are not related to intelligence and are not synonymous with school failure. Many valedictorians, National Honor Society members, accomplished athletes, and school leaders are shy and/or introverted students. They succeed in the classroom fringe and school shadows where they avoid attention or environmental distractions. They find anonymity in taking tests and submitting written assignments and papers. Given the solitude of paper and pencil, now digital schoolwork, these students can quietly earn As and Bs and build strong academic records without raising a hand in class or being in the front of a line. They learn to work independently, whenever possible, and often are the most creative and divergent thinking children in class. If assigned to group work, they make positive contributions, often leading the group in a behind-the-scenes way that does not draw overt attention.

They excel in sports and arts that feature independent, solo performances in more controlled environments. They run and swim, play golf, and chess and e-games, and debate, and build robots. The endure negative aspects of these with a focused commitment on what they can control – their personal achievement.

Warren Buffett and Bill Gates, each stupendously successful in their business lives, were shy and introverted in school. Buffett says he became physically ill in anticipation of public speaking and would do all he could to avoid it. Gates is a classic introvert who focused on academics and showed asocial behaviors of awkward or rude social awareness. Introversion can cause children to miss or not recognize social cues clear to others. Successful introversion breeds continuous introversion.

Though good examples of introversion, Buffett and Gates are outliers. Few shy children will reach their levels of worldly success. The question before us is “What potentiality, like a Buffett or Gates or just a good, solid, and productive person, lies behind the shell of a shy or introverted child in school?”

Insecurity is a hard nut to crack.

Success in school requires a substantial level of risk taking. Children must navigate different environments each having its own challenges. School busses, hallways, cafeterias, restrooms, playgrounds, recesses and before and after school activities, as well as classrooms, are risky places. They also can be places possessed by elevated levels of activity, noise, lights, and chaos. In each of these, we see children walk along the walls, sit alone, appear head down, and talk with no one. They are risk and chaos averse individuals. And they can thrive when their work is evaluated not their persona.

There are self-help routes available to shy people and introverted children. Buffett enrolled in a Dale Carnegie public speaking course and says what he learned changed his life. With determination and strong personal effort, an introvert can become less introverted. The last words are key to Buffett – he became less introverted by learning skills of social engagement, like public speaking. Two things are true – earned billions of dollars and he still is a shy person.

Bill Gates was a loner in school avoiding large group activities and social events. He also is a gifted as a computer programmer and scientist. He has extraordinary strategic vision, critical thinking skills, and intellectual rigor. He overcomes his introversion when speaking about his work passions but prefers solitude when not. Due to his many successes, he can selectively choose when to be less introverted.

As educators, we can be as life changing for shy and introverted children as Dale Carnegie was for Warren Buffett. Our goal should not be to change shy children into attention seekers or introverts into extroverts. We need to teach them less shy and introverted behaviors and mentor them to optimize their personal assets. At the end of the day, shyness and introversion are not bad behaviors, they are behavioral preferences.

We can help and support the shy and the introverted child in your classroom by –

  • Providing opportunities for children to engage in independent and small-group work. Give all children to choice to work autonomously or in a small group (2-3) as often as possible. While some lesson activities are most productive as whole group activities, alternatives support all children.
  • Before whole group or larger group activities, incorporating time for children to process their thinking alone. Private time promotes their thinking and creativity.
  • Having quiet spaces in the classroom – a table and chair, a puff pillow chair, or a rug – where a child who prefers to engage in their lesson privately can do so.
  • In whole group discussions, quietly encouraging a shy child to take part with “I see you have done some good thinking/work. I would like to share it.”
  • Or quietly forewarning the shy child that you will call upon that child to take part. Give the child time to prepare for risk taking.
  • Using digital tools for student participation where a shy child can contribute ideas, written responses, or turn in work without speaking.
  • Expanding your definition of participation if you grade or record each child’s level of participation. Positive engagement in learning is not always extroverted speaking. Substantive participation can be the level of personal note taking, submission of quality work to a group, non-verbal contributions. Participation is not always what is seen and heard.
  • Scaffolding oral participation. Assign lesser time requirements or smaller audiences as beginning points for shy children. Consider the quality of thinking and planning prior to their speaking not just the length of time they speak.
  • Frequently using one-to-one checking with shy and introverted children to assure you, the teacher, that they are on track with their learning. Extroverts give lots of clues.
  • Valuing progress being made by a shy or introverted child as a class participant. Extroverts grab attention but may not improve the quality of their thinking or planning as much as a progressing introverted child.

We need to

  • stop applying negativity to children whose fearful shyness keeps them from raising a hand or volunteering for class activities and introversion avoidance moves them to fringe of classroom excitements. Their preferences are not a statement about our teaching or their classmates but about how they can learn best.
  • Find the academic and performance strengths that shy and introverted students bring to their studies and create curricular pathways for them to achieve our curricular goals using those strengths. When we hold to curricular goals, individual pathways don’t matter.
  • Expand how we communicate and reinforce communication with all children. The private, quiet, and individualized touch with shy and introverted children assures them that our teaching includes them.

Principals and administrators can help and support shy and introverted children by recognizing their quieter and less demonstrative successes and contributions to the school and their classmates. There are usually more shy and introverted people “backstage” contributing to the success of the few extroverts “on stage.” Personal recognition by school leaders reinforces the self-esteem of a shy or introverted child who avoids the limelight.

The Big Duh!

Increasingly, we are seeing the whole group of a classroom as a collection of diverse children. Some have special education challenges. Some have cultural and linguistic needs. Some are gifted and talented. And some are shy and introverted. The characteristics we once considered normal are now a small group within the diversity.

Educators need to respect the preferences of shy and introverted children for independent and less stimulating school environments AND provide them with diverse opportunities to express their intelligence and skills as students.

These are four references that can be helpful for the informed educator.

Teaching Is Renewal By Surprises

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If, as Solomon said, there truly is nothing new under the sun, why do we rise with any new anticipations? In its basic forms, classroom teaching can be nothing more than the routine instruction of a routine curriculum. Why aren’t we stuporized by the same old, same old? Do we really expect the children we teach today to be different than those we taught in years past? Will we be surprised?

The answer is yes. Good teachers are constantly renewed and invigorated by the surprises children deliver every day often in expected ways.

What do we know?

Surprise really is the spice of life. Seeing, hearing, and experiencing the unanticipated pleasantries that populate daily life adds sweet, incremental value to our existence. As a spice, a surprise makes the moment it happens different than moments before. And the following moments carry the aftertaste of the surprise.

(In this writing, I will speak only about joyful surprises. Teachers also confront events that are not joyful but are rooted in wrongful and harmful words and behaviors. These indeed are and should be surprising and require an entirely different response.)

First, you must allow yourself to be surprised every day because surprises, just like the proverbial hits, they just keep coming. Being surprisable is a personal quality that we can refine. It is like standing in front of a natural life exhibit with a hole for your hand to fit into. The exhibit will teach you the feel and texture of porcupine, rabbit, and beaver fur. You will feel the fur without seeing which fur you are touching. There always is trepidation about putting your hand into a hole holding remnants of an animal, but in your hand goes, and you smile at the feel of the soft down of rabbit fur. It could have been the porcupine. Surprise is an immediate and unretractable emotion.

I believe that teaching oneself to be ready for surprises is essential. Otherwise, a dull perspective fogs your ability to appreciate surprise when it happens. No matter how long a teacher has been in the classroom, they find joyful surprises in front of them everyday. Expect to be surprised by good things and you are more likely to be so.

Second, surprise brings joy and a teacher’s joy is contagious to children. It is like the saying, “When momma is happy, everybody is happy.” Teachers set the tone for their classroom and when a teacher is joyful, it makes it easier for all children to accept and appreciate their own joys. When a classmate says or does something that is unexpected, many children look to the teacher first to reinforce their response. Is it okay to laugh? Should I be shocked? Let yourself express your surprise and the joy it brings to you, and your students will be instructed by you once again.

Third, surprises in school take many forms. It can be a child who says something innocently or even wickedly funny that brings immediate laughter. Surprises arise when a child is just being a child full of surprises. Be prepared to laugh and smile and enjoy.

Classroom surprises are not magnificently extreme nor tangible. They are more like standing in front of the Old Faithful Geyser knowing that sooner rather than later it will erupt and already knowing what its eruption looks like. But still you are surprised and elated when the waters shoot to the sky.

So it is when a child who struggles with addition or balancing a chemical equation or performing a clear note on the trumpet does so and knows their success, be surprised and elated with that success. Your response will translate into immediate positive reinforcement for the child and promote the continuing struggle that is learning.

Lastly, learning and schooling are not easy for all children. Just being in school every day can be a personal effort. On top of that, reading and writing are not natural acts for humans like speaking and listening are. Mathematics is a foreign language to many. Science can seem unknowable. Making music come out of your mouth is magical. And children learn at differing rates and degrees. For these reasons, surprises always are on the classroom table. The fact that schooling and learning can be difficult makes the timing of its successes unpredictable. Hence, surprising.

The Big Duh!

We are given a tremendous gift when we teach children. They are raw talents and bundles of energy and each experiences their schooling and learning independently. A teacher who is ready to be surprised by children and knows how to express the joy of a good surprise not only enhances her own career but uplifts the lives of the children she teaches.

Self-inspect Your Teaching Professionally to Prevent Meh!

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Meh in the classroom is when a teacher does not know how good or bad their teaching is but just keeps teaching the same way day after day. Children know meh when they see it. They know it long before a teacher is aware of stale teaching practices and behaviors. It takes courage and effort for a teacher to inspect her teaching. And inspection requires professional assistance.

What do we know?

Classroom teaching is a black box profession. Teachers deliver hundreds of lessons without much feedback on whether their teaching practices and behaviors really work to cause children to learn. Their principal evaluates their teaching minimally in compliance with state and contractual requirements and provides formal feedback every three years. State assessments purposefully disconnect from statements about instructional quality. We make inferences only about state report cards and daily classroom teaching.

Even then, self-criticism is not easy. The curricular calendar and classroom dynamics work against a teacher’s understanding of the effectiveness of daily teaching. Grade level and subject area teaching assignments have an annual curriculum that always is more than a teacher can teach in a school year. Even with good planning, school life interferes with emergency drills, special observances, and assemblies, and unplanned “we need to talk with kids about this” topics. No teacher teaches a complete unit of planned instruction without school interruptions.

Also, children are complex learners. Teaching always is within the contextual interplay between children’s socio-emotional lives with their ability to focus on what they are being taught. Seldom is a lesson taught without a teacher’s need to consider or respond to extra-learning needs of students. For example, this month, October, traditionally includes homecoming activities in secondary schools. The rich schedule of pep assemblies, school decorations, homecoming dance, and girls’ and boys’ athletic events associated with homecoming create multiple instructional road bumps.

Lastly, even though teachers are colleagues with fellow teachers, they seldom to never see other teachers teach. While all PK-3 teachers are reinforcing their reading instruction with phonics-based strategies, they never see how the teacher next door is doing it. And the 8th grade math teacher trying to bolster flagging student math achievement never sees how the 7th grade math teacher filled in the math scaffold the year before.

Black box classrooms work against the improvement of teaching.

What does effective teaching look like?

The easy answer is that effective teaching causes children to learn what they are taught. There should be a tight correlation between planned teaching and measured learning assessments. But effective teacher practices and behaviors are more than that assumed correlation. I have known teachers who could plan and deliver a well-planned lesson that should have produced strong learning results. However, the teacher’s unawareness of student needs during the lesson or unawareness of her own speech, posture, language, facial expressions, and lack of connection with children in the classroom doomed the possibility that a well-planned lesson would cause good learning. As teachers make a proverbial “1,000 decisions per hour in their classroom, those decisions cover a myriad of practices and behaviors.

If good planning is not a consistent cause of good learning, then what is? Our teacher preparation programs point us back to the state’s approved professional standards for teachers. These standards were embedded in our license preparation courses with the hope that, at the end of a prep program, a licensed teacher would be imbued with these qualities.

In my work, I asked veteran teachers if they could recite the ten Wisconsin Teacher Standards from memory. Or at least talk about the ten standards. These interviews included veteran teachers with long records of their students achieving high scores on standardized tests as well as rookie teachers. Few teachers could recite the WI standards, though most knew some of the concepts of the standards. Fingertip knowledge of professional standards is not necessarily a correlation with effective teaching.

As another measure, I asked veterans and rookies about the preparation standards of their license. For example, the National Council of Teachers of Mathematics and the Council for Exceptional Children offer strong supportive guidance for the preparation and continuing professional development of math and special education teachers. Teachers have vague recall of the standards of that preparation and their connections with national organizations diminish over time.

In the absence of other information, we fall back on the end of chapter quizzes, unit tests, and state report card assessments to provide some data of teaching effect. However, these data may or may not correlate with good teaching. Test results also reflect what a child learned previously from another teacher, what they learned on their own out of school, what they infer but did not clearly learn from your teaching, and a lot of good guessing in their test taking.

Effective teaching is a process of connecting teaching practices and behaviors with desired learning outcomes.

Effective teaching is not a mystery. We know what it is when we see it. Effective teaching also is not an accident. We know how to produce the practices and behaviors of effectiveness. If not a mystery or an accident, then effective teaching is a qualitative state of our professional work we can focus on and improve. Also, the state of our professional work is not a constant quality but a variable that ebbs and flows across a career. Most teachers self-recognize when their teaching is superb, and they feel wonderful about it. They may also feel it when it is meh. However, when it is meh, they usually are unsure about how to change it. This is when professional inspection is needed.

Self-criticism, that is a teacher taking steps to inspect, criticize, and improve her own teaching, got much easier with technology. It starts with recording one’s own teaching and all it takes is courage and a smartphone.

  • Begin by telling all students you are going to make audio and visual recordings of yourself while you teach. They will be heard and seen in your recordings, but you will not use the recordings to grade or evaluate them. Also, tell them that you will ask other teachers to listen to and watch the recordings for the purpose of improving your teaching. Your recording is not about students. Not surprisingly, students will quickly forget the presence of your smartphone.
  • Focus on segments of teaching practices and behaviors. Consider the first ten minutes of a class period. How do you greet students each day? How do you connect this day of learning with prior days – how do you introduce and give context for the lesson? What are your speech patterns? How do you stand – does your posture promote positive enthusiasm? What facial expressions express your interest in their learning this day’s lesson? How do you respond to the initial class period needs of all students?
  • Record your explicit instruction. This is the heart of your lesson plan and where lesson planning and lesson teaching connect. Do you connect new learning with prior learning? Do you pre-teach new vocabulary, conceptual terms, and new skill sets? Do you model correct understanding and performance of what students are to learn? Do you check for student understanding during not just after your instruction? How do you respond to student questions? How do you address wandering or distracting student behaviors?
  • There are so many aspects of classroom teaching you can focus on for self-inspection. Recording an entire class period us necessary occasionally, but only for a global view. Instead, focus on discrete episodes in your classroom work.
  • Listen to and watch your recordings at a suitable time and place when and where you can give your recordings your undivided attention. If you are making the effort to record, also give the effort to view and critique.

Self-criticism is a required professional development disposition. Too often teachers believe that criticism is always negative and defeating. It is not! Self-criticism finds successes and challenges. When you watch Smile and clap hands when in self-approval. Also, take notes -write down – practices and behaviors you want to change.

  • Label your practices and behaviors professionally. Refer to your training and the terms used in lesson planning. I professionally use Madeline Hunter’s Lesson Design and the terms and definitions she used to teach effective instruction. Describe your instructional Purpose. Consider your Objectives in “the learner will …” terms. Be critical of your Explicit Instruction and how it incrementally develops what students are to learn. Replay your Modeling of new instruction to assure fidelity to the Objectives. Replay your Formative Assessments to assure that all students were ready for the next part of the lesson. Labeling across lessons ensures that you are comparing and contrasting practices and behaviors properly.

Be bold. After you have listened to and watched recordings, ask a fellow teacher, a teacher you respect and trust, to listen and watch with you. Explain the purpose and process in your self-inspection and let that professional comment on successes and challenges. Do not be surprised if your colleague has difficulty with labeling and defining as the practice of self-inspection may be new to them as well as to you. Make this a collegial venture.

And do it again. “Again” means

  • Make a second and third recording to find recurring practices and behaviors. Incidentals that do not repeat are hard to change, so do not focus there. Focus on repetitive practices and behaviors.
  • Take enough time to self-inspect, understand the successes and challenges you saw,
  • Plan to change explicit practices and behaviors you saw. Change for improvement is a planned process. Being explicit improves your ability to notice change. Lack of specificity can also be chance.
  • Make follow-up recordings to see the effectiveness of new practices and behaviors.
  • Ask your colleague to view follow-up recordings to confirm your observations.

The Big Duh!

First, a teaching career is supposed to last many years. A successful teaching career is causing all children assigned to you to learn what you taught. The feeling that your teaching is successful helps to sustain a lengthy career. Second, over the years, your teaching practices and behaviors will change given experience and school district priorities. The reality of professional improvement, however, does not change. While a public may criticize education, the educational system only addresses programmatic improvement not classroom teaching improvements. Last, teachers are on their own if they want to improve their professional practices and behaviors. So, pull up your socks and create your own self-inspection. Your career and your students deserve your doing this.