There’s no denying that being observed is stressful, no matter how long you’ve been teaching.
The Boston Celtics’ legendary Hall-of-Fame center Bill Russell claims, during his first few years in the NBA, he got so worked up that he threw up before every game. Later, he said, he got his nerves in check and only threw up before playoff games.
Likewise, in my first year or so as a teacher, I’d get so pumped up for a class I’d become almost ill. But by my third year, I only tossed my grits on the days I was observed.
Even now, after a handful of decades, I don’t look forward to it. Why is that? I’m not ashamed of or embarrassed by my teaching. I’m not a bad teacher. I shouldn’t be intimidated if Marzano himself trotted in for a peek. But there’s something unnatural about the whole thing.
People who understand teaching know that what is only a collection of teenagers on the first day evolves into some sort of community after a few weeks, and usually into another kind of community a few weeks after that.
The same sort of thing happens, in microcosm, during each class. There is, in the first minutes, the Great Entrance, a sort of unruly procession of kids shaking off the transitory freedom sandwiched between classes, the conversation bytes as they settle into desks, trading a few last-second greetings or jibes or insults with their friends across the room, the rehashing and reducing – if it’s a quiz day – of a literary masterpiece into hurried simplistic fragments (“Macbeth has Banquo wacked but, but like, his kid gets away and Macbeth totally freaks … ”).
After some order is established, they move into a probationary, wait-and-see period, no one wanting to be the first one to show too much interest. Slowly, a conversation begins and the community, which was alive and well yesterday, rises like a Phoenix from its ashes and class begins in earnest.
What does it take to derail this process? Very little. Once, a first-period student wanted to see how things went in second period, so she dropped by, found a seat and quietly observed. The mood of the class changed. The temperature dropped a degree or two.
An observer, then, is assured of not observing your actual class, especially if she enters once the conversation has begun. This community, this rapport that you’ve spent so many hours building devolves into, to quote Fitzgerald, a “feigned counterfeit ease,” an icy, self-conscious desire (you hope) to please, a collective impulse of (you hope) good intent.
So maybe this is a reason not to be nervous: Your actual class will not be observed. The stuff that has gone badly for you on other days probably won’t today; those spontaneous zingers you’ve fired off with great effect into a sometimes appreciative teenaged audience will be silenced today; if there is laughter, it will be forced or muted or self-conscious, with a look back over the shoulder to see how the observer’s taking this.
Unless you can loosen things up a little, your observer will watch you teach a room full of pod people from Invasion of the Body Snatchers.
And speaking of invasion, this whole process feels something like a weird sort of invasion of privacy.
There are a few things you can do to prepare for this bit of artifice, this teaching theatre, and it doesn’t have to include memorizing the Marzano indicators. After a brief commercial break, I’ll be back with some suggestions.
Sunday, November 27, 2011
Thursday, November 24, 2011
"Indicators" Aren't the Whole Story
Now that the holidays are upon us, it is time for us all to pause and reflect on what is most important to us. And by “most important,” I can only mean attending day-long workshops designed to prepare us for the rigorous new Marzano-based evaluation system which will be used to determine if we can keep our jobs or, if we’re really good, qualify for Merit Pay – the funding of which, by the way, seems awfully doubtful at this point.
Marzano (let’s just say his first name is “Hank”), meanwhile, is probably resting comfortably at home with his family, roasting his chestnuts over an open fire and serenely surveying the material luxuries he has earned by reinventing the ancient Wheel of Pedagogy.
Hank Marzano, of LearningSciencesInternational (all one word with the “i” in “Learning” dotted with a rising sun), has generated, isolated or discovered 60 indicators of, I guess, effective teaching. Many school systems, however, have trimmed those down to, say, 15 or 18 because 60 is – what’s the academic term? – freakin’ insane!
You can imagine my chagrin when I was first introduced to this list at the beginning of my 31st year of teaching, 36th if you include my graduate teaching-assistant years. I was overwhelmed with regret. “If only I had known about these 60 indicators in 1981,” I cried out above the din of my colleagues chatting among themselves during the in-service, “I might’ve amounted to something. I could’ve been a contender! I could’ve been doing this thing right all these years!”
To my beloved new colleagues whose generous spirits have softly beckoned them into these unfriendly waters – infested not so much with sharks as with ill-tempered ducks – I cannot blame you if you stay up late at night studying and memorizing the Marzano Indicators and practicing as many as possible in front of body-length mirrors.
But as you proceed through Marzano’s “Domains” and “Lesson Segments” and “Design Questions,” doesn’t it feel as if your gold has been turned into straw?
My gold appeared decades ago – possibly before Hank was even born – when a teacher’s deep love for the words imprinted on the wispy, onionskin-thin pages of the Norton Anthology of British Literature inspired me to follow his gaze to those pages and follow my heart to a life of teaching and learning. Then, as I’ve recorded in an earlier post, my journey almost immediately took me into the presence of another mentor who gave me, not 60 indicators, but 1 simple maxim that “You can’t teach’em if you don’t love’m.”
You most likely have a similar story. Don’t abandon it. Repeat it to yourself like a mantra throughout the endless holiday workshops ahead. Don’t let the soullessness of this enforced quantification of a most human gift sour your resolve to do what you love. Stay with what brought you here and you’ll be nurturing and encouraging students long after Marzano’s obnoxious little checklist has been deposited into the dust bin of pedagogical history.
Marzano (let’s just say his first name is “Hank”), meanwhile, is probably resting comfortably at home with his family, roasting his chestnuts over an open fire and serenely surveying the material luxuries he has earned by reinventing the ancient Wheel of Pedagogy.
Hank Marzano, of LearningSciencesInternational (all one word with the “i” in “Learning” dotted with a rising sun), has generated, isolated or discovered 60 indicators of, I guess, effective teaching. Many school systems, however, have trimmed those down to, say, 15 or 18 because 60 is – what’s the academic term? – freakin’ insane!
You can imagine my chagrin when I was first introduced to this list at the beginning of my 31st year of teaching, 36th if you include my graduate teaching-assistant years. I was overwhelmed with regret. “If only I had known about these 60 indicators in 1981,” I cried out above the din of my colleagues chatting among themselves during the in-service, “I might’ve amounted to something. I could’ve been a contender! I could’ve been doing this thing right all these years!”
To my beloved new colleagues whose generous spirits have softly beckoned them into these unfriendly waters – infested not so much with sharks as with ill-tempered ducks – I cannot blame you if you stay up late at night studying and memorizing the Marzano Indicators and practicing as many as possible in front of body-length mirrors.
But as you proceed through Marzano’s “Domains” and “Lesson Segments” and “Design Questions,” doesn’t it feel as if your gold has been turned into straw?
My gold appeared decades ago – possibly before Hank was even born – when a teacher’s deep love for the words imprinted on the wispy, onionskin-thin pages of the Norton Anthology of British Literature inspired me to follow his gaze to those pages and follow my heart to a life of teaching and learning. Then, as I’ve recorded in an earlier post, my journey almost immediately took me into the presence of another mentor who gave me, not 60 indicators, but 1 simple maxim that “You can’t teach’em if you don’t love’m.”
You most likely have a similar story. Don’t abandon it. Repeat it to yourself like a mantra throughout the endless holiday workshops ahead. Don’t let the soullessness of this enforced quantification of a most human gift sour your resolve to do what you love. Stay with what brought you here and you’ll be nurturing and encouraging students long after Marzano’s obnoxious little checklist has been deposited into the dust bin of pedagogical history.
Sunday, October 16, 2011
How Grading Is Like Horseshoes and Hand Grenades
Here’s the short version of how to keep grading from being a disproportionate pain for you, your students and their parents: Have clearly articulated standards, help your students meet those standards, provide enough feedback to explain or justify your grade, be flexible enough to admit when you’ve made a mistake and do all you can to relieve anxiety about grades.
It is unfair, dishonest and misleading to give C- work a B or vice versa. The grade is a flimsy shorthand effort to tell the student where she stands, how near or far she is from mastering the course content. Your comments, written or otherwise, about the grade tell her what she needs to do to achieve that mastery, and they tell you what you need to do to help.
A higher grade than she deserves will boost her self-esteem, make her mom happy and make both of them leave you alone so you can grade the rest of your essays, but now the whole process has become a waste of time, as big a lie as our cynical students already believe it to be. A lower grade than she deserves, on the other hand, can be pretty devastating, especially if she is actually working hard in your class.
So if you are going to be your department’s new Ms. or Mr. Hardass, you must provide the stepladder to help students reach your lofty standards. Just telling them to work harder is no more effective than a basketball coach telling his players to play harder while they’re receiving a 78-21 shellacking. You must tell them specifically the areas in which they need to improve. If you’re teaching an honors or AP class, you’ll almost certainly need to tell mom, too, because she or her beloved spouse will be in touch. How much time, during that hectic first year, do you want to spend in parent conferences?
If you are planning on being Ms. or Mr. Easy-A, well, don’t. Some of your students will be driven, highly motivated workaholics in training, and they will have dang well earned that A. They won’t appreciate the goofball sitting next to them getting the same grade for that junk he scrawled on the way to class. To make matters even worse, on rare occasions the goofball will put his heart into an assignment, for once just completely investing himself in it – maybe because you’ve finally assigned something that interests him – and then be so excited to learn that at long last he has earned an A … only to find that pretty much everyone else did, too.
Clearly, you have to get this grading thing somewhat right, but you can’t try to fine tune it too much. As a new teacher, I spent far too much time agonizing over the most accurate grade for an essay. I would actually be grinding my teeth over the distinction between, say, a C and C+. I’d refer back to the rubric, if I had one, compare the essay to others I’d given Cs or C+s to, maybe even ask some of my fellow equally clueless colleagues.
This turns out to be a huge waste of time. You have to acknowledge that evaluating writing is an inexact science; that their other grades in your class will correct the inconsistency in this one; that their future happiness turns out not to be directly related to the grade they received on a particular essay; that if they’re unhappy with the grade, they may be moved to come talk to you about it and therefore learn much more than they would’ve from your comments alone.
It is unfair, dishonest and misleading to give C- work a B or vice versa. The grade is a flimsy shorthand effort to tell the student where she stands, how near or far she is from mastering the course content. Your comments, written or otherwise, about the grade tell her what she needs to do to achieve that mastery, and they tell you what you need to do to help.
A higher grade than she deserves will boost her self-esteem, make her mom happy and make both of them leave you alone so you can grade the rest of your essays, but now the whole process has become a waste of time, as big a lie as our cynical students already believe it to be. A lower grade than she deserves, on the other hand, can be pretty devastating, especially if she is actually working hard in your class.
So if you are going to be your department’s new Ms. or Mr. Hardass, you must provide the stepladder to help students reach your lofty standards. Just telling them to work harder is no more effective than a basketball coach telling his players to play harder while they’re receiving a 78-21 shellacking. You must tell them specifically the areas in which they need to improve. If you’re teaching an honors or AP class, you’ll almost certainly need to tell mom, too, because she or her beloved spouse will be in touch. How much time, during that hectic first year, do you want to spend in parent conferences?
If you are planning on being Ms. or Mr. Easy-A, well, don’t. Some of your students will be driven, highly motivated workaholics in training, and they will have dang well earned that A. They won’t appreciate the goofball sitting next to them getting the same grade for that junk he scrawled on the way to class. To make matters even worse, on rare occasions the goofball will put his heart into an assignment, for once just completely investing himself in it – maybe because you’ve finally assigned something that interests him – and then be so excited to learn that at long last he has earned an A … only to find that pretty much everyone else did, too.
Clearly, you have to get this grading thing somewhat right, but you can’t try to fine tune it too much. As a new teacher, I spent far too much time agonizing over the most accurate grade for an essay. I would actually be grinding my teeth over the distinction between, say, a C and C+. I’d refer back to the rubric, if I had one, compare the essay to others I’d given Cs or C+s to, maybe even ask some of my fellow equally clueless colleagues.
This turns out to be a huge waste of time. You have to acknowledge that evaluating writing is an inexact science; that their other grades in your class will correct the inconsistency in this one; that their future happiness turns out not to be directly related to the grade they received on a particular essay; that if they’re unhappy with the grade, they may be moved to come talk to you about it and therefore learn much more than they would’ve from your comments alone.
Sunday, October 2, 2011
Memories Are Made of This
Dear New Teacher,
It must’ve occurred to you by now that you are locked into a curriculum designed by lawmakers elected by the wise citizens of the state, lawmakers who know far more about pedagogy than the human beings who have devoted their entire adult lives to its study and practice.
Consequently, it is your job simply to prepare your students for exams. If they pass these exams, it will show that you are a successful teacher. This means you can keep your job. It doesn’t mean much more than that.
Yawn. And just think: You gave up being a systems analyst for this.
On the other hand, these students will only take this class from you once. The arc of a kid’s life has placed her in your hands, in no one’s classroom but yours. You have one shot at offering this young person something valuable that in some way emanates from the combination of you, the kid, and the course.
Many other teachers could’ve helped little Bobby pass those standardized tests. What is it that you alone can do?
Doc
It must’ve occurred to you by now that you are locked into a curriculum designed by lawmakers elected by the wise citizens of the state, lawmakers who know far more about pedagogy than the human beings who have devoted their entire adult lives to its study and practice.
Consequently, it is your job simply to prepare your students for exams. If they pass these exams, it will show that you are a successful teacher. This means you can keep your job. It doesn’t mean much more than that.
Yawn. And just think: You gave up being a systems analyst for this.
On the other hand, these students will only take this class from you once. The arc of a kid’s life has placed her in your hands, in no one’s classroom but yours. You have one shot at offering this young person something valuable that in some way emanates from the combination of you, the kid, and the course.
Many other teachers could’ve helped little Bobby pass those standardized tests. What is it that you alone can do?
Love and best wishes,
Tuesday, September 27, 2011
Grading Papers When There Are Too Many
In the ideal world with a realistic number of students, you’d assign something to write practically every day, you’d have conferences with all of your students, then they’d turn in first drafts and you’d make insightful comments and return them, and they’d consider your comments and hold workshop sessions with their peers, then crank out another draft and on and on until their essays were publishable.
You, unfortunately, are or soon will be teaching in a system funded by pocket change, so you’ll need to think more about surviving responsibly than actually teaching young people to write. It hurts me to acknowledge that you’ll basically wind up teaching “at” writing as opposed to teaching the thing itself.
Briefly, this is what you’ll need to do: Assign more essays than you can grade, and on those you do grade, find only one, certainly no more than two, areas to improve. More than that, and the student despairs. If there’s copious writing in the margins, the student either will not read it or, if she does, will either be pissed off or discouraged. She’ll go back to saying, “I’m just not a very good writer” or “I’m gonna get a bad grade in this class.” Neither response improves her writing. Be brief and direct and legible in your comments. When possible, let students revise essays based on your comments so that you know they read them, then speed grade the revisions, perhaps just tacking a few points on to the grades of the original.
As I grade a set of essays, instead of writing on several of them “You need to introduce quotes from the text, then briefly show the reader how it supports your thesis,” I jot down a brief note to myself about this issue. When I see other recurring errors or, yes, examples of effective writing, I note those too, and when the pile is complete, I put my notes on Blackboard, go over them in class and, when I feel the need, give quizzes on them. I have also asked them to revise their essays based on my Blackboard comments. I also refer back to this particular Blackboard document when it’s time for them to write another similar essay. This process saves much time and aggravation. (Obviously, it isn’t necessary to use Blackboard for this. It just makes it easy for all students to access this information at any time.)
You can assign a cluster of, say, three essays over a brief period of time, then have them run all three through the rubrics grinder, engage in peer editing if you’re into that scene, then pick the one they want you to grade. This way, they still get the practice, they aren’t penalized for their less successful efforts, and you only have to grade what is, according to them, their best work.
You, unfortunately, are or soon will be teaching in a system funded by pocket change, so you’ll need to think more about surviving responsibly than actually teaching young people to write. It hurts me to acknowledge that you’ll basically wind up teaching “at” writing as opposed to teaching the thing itself.
Briefly, this is what you’ll need to do: Assign more essays than you can grade, and on those you do grade, find only one, certainly no more than two, areas to improve. More than that, and the student despairs. If there’s copious writing in the margins, the student either will not read it or, if she does, will either be pissed off or discouraged. She’ll go back to saying, “I’m just not a very good writer” or “I’m gonna get a bad grade in this class.” Neither response improves her writing. Be brief and direct and legible in your comments. When possible, let students revise essays based on your comments so that you know they read them, then speed grade the revisions, perhaps just tacking a few points on to the grades of the original.
As I grade a set of essays, instead of writing on several of them “You need to introduce quotes from the text, then briefly show the reader how it supports your thesis,” I jot down a brief note to myself about this issue. When I see other recurring errors or, yes, examples of effective writing, I note those too, and when the pile is complete, I put my notes on Blackboard, go over them in class and, when I feel the need, give quizzes on them. I have also asked them to revise their essays based on my Blackboard comments. I also refer back to this particular Blackboard document when it’s time for them to write another similar essay. This process saves much time and aggravation. (Obviously, it isn’t necessary to use Blackboard for this. It just makes it easy for all students to access this information at any time.)
You can assign a cluster of, say, three essays over a brief period of time, then have them run all three through the rubrics grinder, engage in peer editing if you’re into that scene, then pick the one they want you to grade. This way, they still get the practice, they aren’t penalized for their less successful efforts, and you only have to grade what is, according to them, their best work.
Sunday, September 25, 2011
Two Don'ts
Here are a couple of Thou Shalt Nots, the first probably more for old-timers like me than for you. Still, you should cut it out and tape it to your desk or bulletin board or some other place at work so you can see it as the years go rolling by:
Don’t become so cynical and jaded that you forget about the students in your class who can’t wait for the learning to start. They’re excited about what they read last night and about what you’ll say today. They’re excited about what they or other students might say. Once you’ve been at it for a few years, some students will have heard about you from siblings and older friends, and they’ll have anticipated your class since junior high. Seriously. So imagine their response when they hear you talking as if it’s all a joke and none of them care and why are you even wasting your time doing this for a living. Try, try to teach to the ones who care, even if you think you have to imagine them, to pretend they’re out there. Trust me: They’re out there.
Don’t bring your problems into the classroom. If you’re having a bad day, the most you should say about it is, “I’m having a bad day.” So what? One of them is always having a bad day. You’re probably really angry with your significant other, your pets, a new district-wide initiative, the traffic, or Rick Scott. Do NOT make students pay for the sins of others! Fall into your lesson, and soon you’ll all feel better.
Don’t become so cynical and jaded that you forget about the students in your class who can’t wait for the learning to start. They’re excited about what they read last night and about what you’ll say today. They’re excited about what they or other students might say. Once you’ve been at it for a few years, some students will have heard about you from siblings and older friends, and they’ll have anticipated your class since junior high. Seriously. So imagine their response when they hear you talking as if it’s all a joke and none of them care and why are you even wasting your time doing this for a living. Try, try to teach to the ones who care, even if you think you have to imagine them, to pretend they’re out there. Trust me: They’re out there.
Don’t bring your problems into the classroom. If you’re having a bad day, the most you should say about it is, “I’m having a bad day.” So what? One of them is always having a bad day. You’re probably really angry with your significant other, your pets, a new district-wide initiative, the traffic, or Rick Scott. Do NOT make students pay for the sins of others! Fall into your lesson, and soon you’ll all feel better.
Monday, September 12, 2011
You Don't Have Time to Read This
My dear new high-school teachers, especially English teachers, please know that I’m aware of the irony of my writing something to make your professional life easier or more fulfilling or both at a time when you are too busy even to check your e-mail. But if I wait until you do have time – next summer – my advice won’t be helpful.
Well, that’s the way it always goes: Your leaky roof needs repairing most when it’s raining too hard to get up there. With that in mind, I return to the task at hand – offering tips for improving discussion classes — even if my words float harmlessly into an empty universe:
Because you are a human being, it can be very difficult not to load up your responses to student comments with warmth, affection, disdain, contempt, disbelief, etc. But try your best not to do this, not to make your responses personal. For one thing, a student’s comment shouldn’t be weighted with his family history (both his brother and sister were royal pains in the ass when they were your students), the history of his earlier comments (“That’s the fifth time you’ve connected this poem to Harry Potter. Could you perhaps climb up the ol’ literary ladder a bit?”), his lack of earlier comments (“Whoa! Look who decided to join us!”) or your ongoing tense relationship with him (you respond grudgingly through gritted teeth, avoiding eye contact).
Every student’s input is potentially another brush stroke in the evolving portrait of an idea. It’s all about how that particular comment contributes to the process that’s happening this moment. Your job is to measure the fit, to appreciate the effort, to make clear its connection to what has gone on before or to tactfully show how it is perhaps a brush stroke for another portrait, not the one that’s being painted today.
Do your best to respond thoughtfully, gratefully, and evenly to each comment. Do not respond to the first three with “Okay, good, fine,” and to the fourth one with “THAT’S IT! NOW WE’RE GETTING SOMEWHERE! GREAT POINT, BOBBY!” This shines altogether too much light on the lameness of the first three efforts. You can’t entirely choke back your enthusiasm for the Blue Ribbon insight and still be authentic, but you can be careful with your wording. Some teachers successfully address this issue by simply saying “Thanks” after each comment, unless further elaboration or clarification is needed.
Try to spread the wealth. Don’t keep calling on Irwina, especially if other hands are up, even if Irwina’s comments tend to be especially insightful. If no other hands are up, pause for a second, then solicit other responses: “Okay, let’s hear from somebody else. Irwina can’t be the only one in here with ideas.” If Irwina becomes the sole spokesperson early in the semester, her classmates may happily allow her to carry the ball for the entire game.
Don’t, however, try to force everyone into the discussion. Students can be involved, participating, and actively learning without saying anything. Clearly, it is good to get as many ideas and pieces of ideas in the air as possible, but calling on someone who is pathologically shy may result in a continuity-breaking momentary freeze. The rest of the class will take a timeout from thinking about the topic at hand to share the anxiety of the stammering, quaking, dry-mouthed, coerced responder, while the responder will try to find ways to become invisible for the rest of the semester starting now.
Furthermore, introspective, contemplative, introverted students may sit in silence not due to lack of interest, but because they are busy internally processing and synthesizing their classmates’ observations. In college, I was one of these students, and I would get intensely caught up in a lively discussion only to find that by the time I was ready to step my toe in the river, the relevant water was downstream a ways. I did not want to begin my comment with something like, “Getting back to what Sheila said about Nick Carraway a few minutes ago …”
My best responses weren’t formulated until a few minutes after class, at which point, striding across campus to my next class, I would see the fallacies in comments A and B, the wisdom in C and D, and was now prepared to articulate a coherent contribution of my own.
Not to hold on to a grudge or anything, but I still sting at the memory of a high-school English teacher asking me a question about Emerson’s transcendentalism. I thought hard about her question and I could almost see the answer in the deep recesses of my adolescent mind. “I don’t exactly know,” I said. “You don’t exactly know?” she said. “I’d say you don’t know at all.” Without that snarky rejoinder, and given a bit more time, I believe an answer would’ve eventually made its way to the surface and I could’ve added to that class’s great store of Emersonian wisdom.
While I don’t like the idea of forced participation (or grading participation based on quantity), I also don’t like the idea of some publishable insight, some aphorism of the ages, trapped forever in the mind of a mute inglorious Milton in the third row, two desks from the back.
So I battle my distaste for calling on reluctant or seemingly reluctant students by trying to read their facial expressions. Most teenagers have not yet developed great poker faces, so if they have something to share, even if they’re shy, they’ll look like they’re about ready to jump out of their desk. If not, their face will say “If you call on me, I will either faint or race for the door.”
Sometimes I just ask students after class, “Hey, if I call on you, will you talk?” Or, “Are you one of those students who don’t mind reading aloud in class?” If I can’t catch them after class, I ask them in writing.
(If you’re asking questions to see if they read, of course, it’s tough luck if they’re shy or introspective: be ready or be embarrassed.)
Be sure, of course, to make it clear that students must be recognized before they speak. Otherwise, Irwina will begin sharing her opinion before you’ve finished asking the question, and all the other little ideas in the room will die a silent death.
Well, that’s the way it always goes: Your leaky roof needs repairing most when it’s raining too hard to get up there. With that in mind, I return to the task at hand – offering tips for improving discussion classes — even if my words float harmlessly into an empty universe:
Because you are a human being, it can be very difficult not to load up your responses to student comments with warmth, affection, disdain, contempt, disbelief, etc. But try your best not to do this, not to make your responses personal. For one thing, a student’s comment shouldn’t be weighted with his family history (both his brother and sister were royal pains in the ass when they were your students), the history of his earlier comments (“That’s the fifth time you’ve connected this poem to Harry Potter. Could you perhaps climb up the ol’ literary ladder a bit?”), his lack of earlier comments (“Whoa! Look who decided to join us!”) or your ongoing tense relationship with him (you respond grudgingly through gritted teeth, avoiding eye contact).
Every student’s input is potentially another brush stroke in the evolving portrait of an idea. It’s all about how that particular comment contributes to the process that’s happening this moment. Your job is to measure the fit, to appreciate the effort, to make clear its connection to what has gone on before or to tactfully show how it is perhaps a brush stroke for another portrait, not the one that’s being painted today.
Do your best to respond thoughtfully, gratefully, and evenly to each comment. Do not respond to the first three with “Okay, good, fine,” and to the fourth one with “THAT’S IT! NOW WE’RE GETTING SOMEWHERE! GREAT POINT, BOBBY!” This shines altogether too much light on the lameness of the first three efforts. You can’t entirely choke back your enthusiasm for the Blue Ribbon insight and still be authentic, but you can be careful with your wording. Some teachers successfully address this issue by simply saying “Thanks” after each comment, unless further elaboration or clarification is needed.
Try to spread the wealth. Don’t keep calling on Irwina, especially if other hands are up, even if Irwina’s comments tend to be especially insightful. If no other hands are up, pause for a second, then solicit other responses: “Okay, let’s hear from somebody else. Irwina can’t be the only one in here with ideas.” If Irwina becomes the sole spokesperson early in the semester, her classmates may happily allow her to carry the ball for the entire game.
Don’t, however, try to force everyone into the discussion. Students can be involved, participating, and actively learning without saying anything. Clearly, it is good to get as many ideas and pieces of ideas in the air as possible, but calling on someone who is pathologically shy may result in a continuity-breaking momentary freeze. The rest of the class will take a timeout from thinking about the topic at hand to share the anxiety of the stammering, quaking, dry-mouthed, coerced responder, while the responder will try to find ways to become invisible for the rest of the semester starting now.
Furthermore, introspective, contemplative, introverted students may sit in silence not due to lack of interest, but because they are busy internally processing and synthesizing their classmates’ observations. In college, I was one of these students, and I would get intensely caught up in a lively discussion only to find that by the time I was ready to step my toe in the river, the relevant water was downstream a ways. I did not want to begin my comment with something like, “Getting back to what Sheila said about Nick Carraway a few minutes ago …”
My best responses weren’t formulated until a few minutes after class, at which point, striding across campus to my next class, I would see the fallacies in comments A and B, the wisdom in C and D, and was now prepared to articulate a coherent contribution of my own.
Not to hold on to a grudge or anything, but I still sting at the memory of a high-school English teacher asking me a question about Emerson’s transcendentalism. I thought hard about her question and I could almost see the answer in the deep recesses of my adolescent mind. “I don’t exactly know,” I said. “You don’t exactly know?” she said. “I’d say you don’t know at all.” Without that snarky rejoinder, and given a bit more time, I believe an answer would’ve eventually made its way to the surface and I could’ve added to that class’s great store of Emersonian wisdom.
While I don’t like the idea of forced participation (or grading participation based on quantity), I also don’t like the idea of some publishable insight, some aphorism of the ages, trapped forever in the mind of a mute inglorious Milton in the third row, two desks from the back.
So I battle my distaste for calling on reluctant or seemingly reluctant students by trying to read their facial expressions. Most teenagers have not yet developed great poker faces, so if they have something to share, even if they’re shy, they’ll look like they’re about ready to jump out of their desk. If not, their face will say “If you call on me, I will either faint or race for the door.”
Sometimes I just ask students after class, “Hey, if I call on you, will you talk?” Or, “Are you one of those students who don’t mind reading aloud in class?” If I can’t catch them after class, I ask them in writing.
(If you’re asking questions to see if they read, of course, it’s tough luck if they’re shy or introspective: be ready or be embarrassed.)
Be sure, of course, to make it clear that students must be recognized before they speak. Otherwise, Irwina will begin sharing her opinion before you’ve finished asking the question, and all the other little ideas in the room will die a silent death.
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