I Put on Clothes for This?

Here I go again, sounding like an old person. . .

Back in the days before the Internet, curious scholars who wanted to learn from a wise expert enrolled in classes to listen to lecturers pontificate about their areas of knowledge. I have fond memories of many of my college professors (and some of my high school teachers) regaling  (mostly) eager students with lectures while we furiously took notes to capture as many brilliant ideas as we could.

In today’s world, we can find lectures in many places. A simple Google search will yield numerous videos, podcasts, and presentations on nearly any topic featuring eminent scholars from around the globe. Students can now receive a better-than-average traditional education for free with only a smartphone and a pair of earbuds.

It would be vain for any of us to believe that our lecturing abilities surpass those of everyone who has ever made a TED Talk or YouTube video, so if we are relying on the one-way transmission of information during our classes as our sole mode of instruction, we are replicating (probably less effectively) an experience students can get elsewhere. Similarly, if we spend class time showing videos or movies, we are asking students to come to school to do something they could do just as effectively at home without having to change out of their jammies.

The advent of learning management systems, such as Google Classroom, and the trend toward 1-to-1 access to technology have made it all too easy for instructors to post an assignment and sit back while the students work quietly on it on their Chromebooks, laptops, or tablets. In many cases, these online assignments are the electronic equivalent of worksheets, with students filling in blanks and boxes as they answer teacher-created questions or complete online charts and tables. Many students come to school and spend most of their day sitting silently in front of screens, providing the information asked for, with little to no interaction with their instructor or peers. It’s really no different than if they had stayed at home taking an online course, except, of course, they had to put on clothes to come to school.   

If physical schools and colleges are going to remain viable in the present and future, they must provide an education that is different and better from what students can receive at home online. Real school has to be different from e-school.* There has to be substantial value in making the effort to get dressed and come to class beyond just hanging out with friends in the halls and cafeteria.

Additionally, if teachers want to remain in actual classrooms with students and to push back on politicians who try to increase class sizes, we have to show that our physical presence in proximity to our learners makes a difference. We can’t follow the example of “Ditto,” the character from the 1984 movie Teachers, whose students are so accustomed to filling in worksheets without any interaction that no one notices the teacher has dropped dead at his desk until  they run out of mimeographed worksheets to complete. We must put into practice the things that distinguish live instruction from e-learning.

One benefit to being a student in a classroom with an actual, living teacher is the opportunity to receive live, in-person, in-the-moment verbal feedback from the instructor. We know that the most effective feedback is the kind that occurs when learners actually need it, at the point when they can improve what they are working on. Telling students what they should have done after the fact doesn’t have the same impact as coaching students along the way. As students are reading, writing, or creating, teachers could hold quick check-in conferences with individuals or small groups to clear up confusion, redirect those who are heading off track, offer suggestions for growth, ask questions to promote self-reflection, or nudge students to the next level.

The teacher isn’t the only source of valuable feedback in a face-to-face classroom. Some of the most transformative feedback comes from peers. When we teach students to give and receive feedback from one another, everyone becomes more skilled and accomplished. Establishing structures and procedures for providing feedback in class on one another’s work is a worthwhile step toward making the most of the learning options available in traditional classroom settings.

Differentiation is another opportunity that is seized more easily in an in-person teaching situation. A savvy teacher figures out where each student is and offers next steps that are responsive to each student’s needs. If we are marching all our students in unison through a one-size-fits-all series of experiences, we are missing out on the opportunity to grow all our students to their fullest capacity. Teachers who make the biggest differences with students have a sequence of clear goals in mind and are able to put each student at the right point on the continuum to move them closer to the target. They also have an idea of how to challenge at a deeper level any student who has reached mastery.

Perhaps the most significant bonus of coming to school and learning in classrooms is the chance to have conversations in real time about what we are learning. The art of verbal discourse is limping along in our emoji-driven society. When the only communication students have with other humans is through Snapchat pics and abbreviated text messages, they don’t get better at speaking. Yet those who can effectively express themselves verbally get what they want in life. What better place is there to practice speaking than in a classroom where there are others with whom to converse and a teacher to offer feedback for improvement? Classroom conversations—whether in informal pair-share situations, structured discussions (such as Socratic Seminars or Philosophical Chairs debates), collaborative study groups, or small work groups—bring the learning to life. Students aren’t just sitting there slack-jawed in front of screens; they are engaged with one another, defending positions, trying out new ideas, clarifying their thinking, and questioning themselves and each other. This is where the learning happens. This is when the effort of coming to class becomes worth it.

As we plan for instruction, it’s not a bad idea to look critically at how we are teaching. If every day of class involves something students could do just as effectively at home in isolation, it’s time to change it up. We need to rethink the role of the teacher and the role of the student in schools. When we see the teacher as a valuable source of feedback, individualized coaching, and inspiration and the students as active participants in a community of learners, school will once again become something worth putting on clothes for.

* I mean no disparagement to those who are doing important work developing online courses and electronic learning experiences for students. There’s a growing demand for e-school classes, and I’m impressed by the efforts to make online learning increasingly interactive, open-ended, and responsive to student needs. I wonder whether the demand for e-school classes is partly due to the fact that so many traditional schools are still teaching like it’s 1985.  

Dress Rehearsals

My friend Megan is getting married this Saturday. On Friday evening the members of the wedding party will convene for a rehearsal. They’ll run though the wedding service so everyone knows where to stand, where and how to walk, what to say, and how to hand off things like rings and bouquets to other people at appropriate moments in the wedding. Running through  the logistics of a wedding beforehand is standard practice; no one would think twice about having a run-through before the big day. A dress rehearsal helps ensure that the wedding runs smoothly, minimizes anxiety for the bride and groom so they won’t make fretful faces in the wedding photos, and keeps the Man of Honor from embarrassing himself during the ceremony. Practice, as they say, makes the wedding perfect.

Teachers sometimes forget the importance of rehearsing as part of their planning for instruction. We look over a lesson plan and then wing it when the kids show up. Sometimes we can pull that off; other times, our lack of prior practice results in misconstrued instructions, awkward transitions, logistical confusion, and unclear explanations.

All too often, our planning looks like this:  “Okay, so. . . the students will do the opener quickwrite and then move into the Socratic Seminar. After that, they’ll fill out the exit ticket if there’s time.”  

Sketchy “planning” of this nature leaves so many unanswered questions. What are you going to do to hook the students at the beginning of the period? How long should the quickwrite take? Are students going to share or process the quickwrite in any way? How will you transition to the Socratic Seminar, including moving furniture and humans? What kind of instructions will the students need before starting the seminar? What will your role be during the discussion? What happens if the Socratic Seminar runs off track?  How much time will you allow for the discussion so that you have time for the exit ticket? Will you do any kind of debrief on the Socratic Seminar itself to encourage future improvement in student academic conversations? How will you reset the room at the end of the discussion? Will that happen before or after the instructions for the exit ticket? What do you need to say about the exit ticket?  How will students turn in their exit cards? What will you do with the exit cards after you collect them? What kind of preview of tomorrow’s lesson will pique your students’ curiosity?

Leaving these questions to chance means there may be some less-than-stellar moments in what could be an outstanding, highly effective lesson. Talking and walking through the lesson can improve the likelihood that you’ll say and do the right things to achieve the results you desire.

Asking two big dress rehearsal questions when you are planning can set you up for success:  

1.  What will this lesson look like? Asking this question prompts you to consider the many visual and logistical factors that are a part of any well-planned lesson. Before kids come into the room, it’s wise to rehearse—or at least talk through—these things:

• Materials you’ll need and how they’ll be distributed
• Written information your students will see:  learning objectives, learning targets, or focusing questions; daily agenda; handouts; other print materials; audio-visual components
• Room setup
• Student movement and interactions
• Transitions from one activity to the next
• Use of technology and multimedia (The middle of class shouldn’t be the first time you click on a link to see if it works.)
• Approximate times for each component of the lesson
• How students will be grouped
• What successful participation by students will look like

2.  What will this lesson sound like?  Have you ever thought you understood something and only realized the gaps in your understanding when you attempted to explain it to someone else? Rehearsing what you’re going to say decreases the odds that you’re going to flub your explanation. Teachers who consider what their lesson will sound like practice many things:

• Giving instructions
• Explaining concepts or terms
• Building anticipation or buy-in for a lesson
• Telling a story with an instructional purpose
• Asking effective questions
• Promoting student talk
• Providing verbal feedback
• Conferencing with students
• Opening and closing class effectively
• Correcting students
• Responding calmly and consistently to student misbehaviors

When teachers consider what a lesson will sound like, they think through other aspects:

• The desired noise level at various points in the lesson
• The quantity of student talk vs teacher talk
• What student talk should sound like
• Ways to get the desired outcomes for student talk

Effective team planning can involve rehearsing and discussing all these things. We grow better by learning from one another. You will often find that someone else’s idea is better than your own. Hearing colleagues explain a concept, introduce a lesson, or model an effective teacher-student conference can help you prepare for your own instruction, perhaps incorporating elements of their delivery into yours. Teams can troubleshoot  by thinking together about what a lesson that exists on a curriculum document will look like and sound like in an actual classroom. Rather than assuming that every member of the team has the same vision of what the written lesson should look and sound like, making sure everyone is on the same page by rehearsing together increases every teacher’s success, which increases every student’s success.

And speaking of success, Megan, I hope your wedding is all you’ve dreamed it will be. Enjoy your special day (and your rehearsal before that).

In Defense of Turn and Talk

Several weeks ago at a literacy conference in Waco, I heard an impressive set of speakers talk for three days about reading and writing. If you follow me on Twitter, you may have noticed a barrage of tweets detailing many of my takeaways from this rich learning experience. My tweets and retweets were digital-age “Amens” as these literacy gurus preached about the importance of student choice in reading, providing authentic reading and writing experiences, ways teachers can support and promote reading, and growing students to become more literate, discerning citizens.

One thing I didn’t tweet was an offhand comment made by one of the presenters. Just before he asked us to turn and talk with a neighbor about a question he posed, the speaker said, “Don’t you think we’ve kind of overdone ‘Turn and Talk’ in schools?” He said it as if the pair-share were some sort of plague spreading maliciously though classrooms, killing learning by forcing students to interact with one another. According to him, America’s teachers are Turn-and-Talking their students to death. Turn and Talk, he seemed to believe, is as passé as bottle flipping and fidget spinners.

As an educator who spends hours each week in classrooms, I have to respectfully disagree with the notion that we are asking students to talk with a neighbor too frequently or that the strategy is losing its power. The undisputed truth about classroom talk is that in most classrooms, teachers still do the majority of the talking. Full-class discussions usually involve only a fraction of the students and don’t give every kid the chance to work through the ideas on their own. The idea that we are asking our students to share too frequently seems absurd to me, but, having spent several days listening and agreeing with this particular literacy expert, I am trying to figure out where his opinion is coming from.

I’ve identified several ways Turn and Talk might go bad; let’s call them Turn and Talk Traps. Perhaps this student talk naysayer has experienced these pitfalls and is objecting based on his observations.

Making Turn and Talk a Thing: There’s a danger when using any learning strategy that the strategy itself may become something bigger than it ought to be. We make it a “thing” rather than just providing a topic, question, or prompt and asking our kids to talk with one another about it. When this happens, we risk the danger of making our strategies bigger than the learning they are supposed to facilitate. We turn them into elaborate productions.  We say things like, “Okay, kids, we are about to do a Turn and Talk,” as if we are saying, “Now it’s time to do a triple axel followed by a double lutz and a quadruple salchow.” Students don’t necessarily need to know the terminology behind every teacher move we make. Turning to a neighbor and talking about your learning can (and probably should) be a seamless part of our daily lessons, a habit we get into because we know that all our students—not just a few—deserve the opportunity to talk through and test out their ideas so they can develop complex understandings of their own and the learning will stick. Instead of “doing a Turn and Talk,” simply ask students to turn to a neighbor and talk. It’s really simple and effective.      

Nebulous Talk:  Another misstep is asking students to turn and talk without giving them direction or parameters for their discussion. This leaves them with uncertainty: What am I supposed to talk about? How long? When am I supposed to talk, and when am I supposed to listen? Who talks first? I’ve been guilty of stopping my lesson at what seems to be an appropriate spot and asking my students to discuss the content with their table neighbor. A handful of students talk while the others visit about their weekend or simply stare at one another, unsure of exactly what they are expected to say. Sometimes I’ve provided way too much time for my nebulous classroom talk so there is no sense of urgency about getting to the discussion. Student talk should be focused, succinct, and accompanied by clear expectations. Carefully planned questions can provide a spark for meaningful talk. Sentence frames and stems offer some structure and help students develop more sophisticated academic language. Talk can be timed; roles of each partner can be clarified. When the teacher has a clear plan for what is supposed to happen during this talk time, students don’t see this as an arduous add-on to their day.    

Turn and Talk Without a Follow Up: Paired student talk probably shouldn’t be an end in itself, but it can be meaningful as a lead-in to something else. For instance, posing a question to the entire class and allowing students to discuss it with a partner before opening it up to the full class gives students confidence to respond because they’ve tried their ideas out on a partner. Turn and Talk can precede student writing, aid students in summarizing and clarifying information in the midst of a lecture or video, serve as closure to a lesson (followed by a share-out of key takeaways), allow students to refine their own notes through comparison with another student’s, assist students in figuring out how to approach a problem, or help students set a personal goal or objective for the day. The way to make student talk worthwhile is to show students that it’s an integral part to their learning process and will improve their chances of success in our classrooms.

I’m sticking to my original stance. We haven’t done Turn and Talk to death. Perhaps we’ve done it poorly from time to time. When it’s done well—which isn’t that difficult to pull off with a little planning—paired student talk can be one of the most powerful tools for empowering students to make their learning meaningful, grow in their understanding, and clarify and reinforce their thinking. We could do a whole lot worse than making Turn and Talk our go-to strategy in the classroom.

What are your thoughts about incorporating student talk in your classroom? Turn to someone nearby and discuss that question for a minute. Afterwards, you can put some of these ideas into practice.