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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1. What does “observe your students closely” look like? Standing on the perimeter? Sitting at your desk?
2. I would love to see you do a walk through of a lesson. How do you start? What kinds of activities would you use to stimulate the imagination? How would you ensure understanding constantly? How would you end a lesson? Specifics would be so helpful!
Hello,
I am a 25 year veteran. I have gotten much better about trying to not help kids as much during independent time, but I still have a ways to go. I feel so guilty when they ask for help if I don’t provide it. It’s easy for me to tell the kids who weren’t paying attention that thye have to watch and learn during lessons, but for the kids who were watching and trying, but still need my help, how do I not help them? It feels wrong. Is there a different strategy that might work in this situation? I have tried offering kids who would like more assitance after they have worked on their own for 10 minutes to come to my small group table, but then I get a bunch of kids who just want to be near me. When I’ve done invites, kids have deliberately not tried becasue they want to get invited to my table. Ideas?
Agree. I view independent time as time to use me as a resource. I mostly teach math so I’ll help with one problem and then let them go at the rest. I don’t see anything wrong w that
I don’t really understand the independence emphasis. I understand not wanting to repeat the directions, but in a class of 30 diverse learners, some students really will need help, either to break down instructions further or to help expand and enrich the experience. As an ELA teacher, I use independent work time to observe and check in with individual students to individualize the learning process. My students on IEPs may need me to model something in a way that would be a waste of time for others, and my skilled students may need me to push them to expand their ideas past grade level. I feel like some of the best learning and relationship building happens during those quick one-on-one check-ins.
As a sub, I still think the majority of students are in school to learn. And the ones who aren’t, classroom management becomes about minimizing distractions for the other students. But as a teacher, you can’t just cede the classroom to the kids who want to derail you at every turn. The train needs to keep on going whether those other kids are on it or not. I think once you understand that, you take it a lot less personally and blame yourself less when a few kids interrupt the class. It often has absolutely nothing to do with you as the teacher. I’ve had students come into the classroom acting all crazy, like they’ve never been in one before. But they don’t do that in every teacher’s class. I remain calm, I don’t engage, and I document everything. I remember it’s not me. It helps.
I think independence and asking for help when really needed are not mutually exclusive. I take “independence” to mean eliminating the comments such as “is this one right?”; “I don’t get it”; “can I put ____ (thus shouting out the answer)?”; and asking questions about things that I just explained/wrote on the board/had the students repeat. If students are paying attention, understand the concept, and are still stuck on one problem or practice exercise, we should encourage them to ask for help because that is a skill they need in real life.