Great teachers teach lessons differently than their colleagues.
It’s why their students are more engaged, productive, studious, and academically competent. Yes, there is a classroom management component to their success.
Great teachers are experts in this area too.
But lessons form the backbone of their everyday work. Lessons are what dominate their thinking because they never forget that educating students is the point.
What follows are their secrets.
- They are content knowledge experts.
- They teach to one objective.
- They cut out the fluff and the unhelpful.
- They eschew most teacher guidebooks and resources.
- They story-tell, playact, and contextualize.
- They simplify what is complex.
- They paint vivid mental pictures.
- They stimulate the imagination rather than show-and-tell.
- They go deep rather than wide.
- They model the nitty-gritty details.
- They involve students physically in the lesson.
- They allow students to conceptualize the big picture.
- They check obsessively for understanding.
- They set students up for total independence.
- They accept nothing less than 100% student success for every lesson.
- They shift responsibility to do the work in full to students.
- They create a culture of hard work through remarkably high expectations.
- They are extremely reluctant to help students during independent work.
- They raise the bar each day on more and better quality production.
- They give students lots of time to practice and groove their learning.
- They observe students closely but from a distance during independent work.
- They seek to make each lesson better than the last.
You may have many questions since this approach is different than what you were taught. It is certainly radical in comparison to the current culture of education.
You may also be thinking . . .
“Well, that may work in the suburbs.”
“What about students who are lazy?
“My students don’t pay attention.”
“My students talk during lessons.”
“This is unrealistic.”
And so on.
I want to challenge you by saying that this approach and is being done in schools from Portland to the Potomac. It works everywhere and it changes lives.
The idea isn’t to implement everything or try to understand how to do it all perfectly right now.
It’s to upend your assumptions. It’s to throw a wrench into the lie that students at your school, classroom, or neighborhood can’t listen, learn, and behave.
It just isn’t true.
It does take a new way of looking at things. It takes knowledge and the development of certain teaching and classroom management skills. But any teacher can do it. In the coming weeks, I’ll dive deeper into these topics.
In the meantime, challenge yourself. Throw away the excuses. Try each bullet point just a little. Get better each day. In time, you’ll get there and won’t believe what’s possible.
PS – Check out this week’s YouTube videos:
1. The Biggest Classroom Management Lie
2. The Hidden Cost of Helping Students
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