“Why did the amoeba cross the microscope? To get to the other slide!! Hey, you’ve been a great class, thanks for coming! I’ll be here all week. Don’t forget to tip the classroom aide. I love you! G’night!!”
Believing that poor classroom behavior indicates of a lack of stimulation, the official British education watchdog organization, Ofsted, is planning a “crackdown on boring teaching” in the mother country, the Guardian reports. Chief inspector of schools Christine Gilbert tells the paper,
“People divorce teaching from behaviour. I think they are really, really linked and I think students behave much better if the teaching is good, they are engaged in what they are doing and it’s appropriate to them. Then they’ve not got lost five minutes into the lessons and therefore started mucking around. Behaviour in our schools is generally very good. But there’s what I would describe as low-level disruption where children are bored and not motivated, so they start to use their abilities for other ends. That then can lead to other children being distracted in lessons and so on.”
The response from teacher’s unions? “With comments like that, the chief inspector fuels the view that every lesson of every day for every minute has got to be packed with excitement,” said Chris Keates, the general secretary of the NASUWT. “Quite frankly, life isn’t like that and education isn’t like that. Comments like this make teachers fair game for everyone, including pupils.” This British teacher, however, seconds the motion:
In schools that serve poorer areas, where many students’ attention spans are decimated by a diet of sugary snacks, video games and 20 channels of fast-edited crud on the cathode ray tube, pupil engagement is not just an issue; it is the issue. The teacher who is not able to induce open mouths expressing awe and wonder within the first 10 minutes of a lesson is likely to witness the jaws of those mouths slacken as one, when class behaviour heads quickly in the direction of “off-task”.
No one will argue that engagement doesn’t matter. It’s a way to get and hold a student’s attention, which is a prerequisite to learning. Still, it’s hard to unravel all that is troubling about this. First, there’s the idea, per Keates, that a day in school is made up of non-stop entertainment. Next there’s the devaluing of seriousness and reflection–plenty engaging for some–a point made in teacher Diana Senechal’s essay yesterday on accountable talk. Then, perhaps most obviously, there’s how exactly to define a “boring lesson.” I can trace my love of history and literature to a pair of middle school teachers, who knew their subject inside and out. But they were strict, demanding, a little intimidating, and most decidely not engaging to many of my classmates. I feared and adored them both. On the other hand, my 9th grade earth science teacher was a laugh riot, but I wouldn’t know an igneous rock if it hit me between the eyes. All three were well-regarded teachers, and rightly so.
One student’s engagement rubric is not another’s. Life is made up of dealing successfully with all kinds of people, and all manner of personalities. Vive le difference!
I adored my history teacher in high school. She was not popular. Students complained that she was very dry. I liked her for that very reason. She did nothing to adorn the subject. I therefore had room to love it. I had a similar response to Latin and my Latin teacher.
As a teacher I have assumed that my students would love the literature, at least some of it. Not all of them loved everything I taught, but their responses surprised even me. One eighth-grade girl who had been distracted all year took strongly to Yeats’ “Song of Wandering Aengus.” “I really like this poem,” she told me. “I really, really like it.”
And what did my students consistently enjoy? Grammar and spelling! Really, we should be more boring sometimes.
I think often entertainment fills gaps in when actual student motivation is lacking. Truly inspiring teachers bring something more to their class than entertainment. And, on the other end of the spectrum, a motivated students don’t put a high priority on entertainment.
This is a question I’ve struggled with my whole teaching career — I just don’t do the entertainment/inspiration side of teaching particularly well — my strengths are clarity and patience.
But the reality is that the “capture students imagination” part of teaching is important. But the real goal needs to be inspiration, not simply entertainment — capturing students’ interest for the long haul, not just for the class period.
I think you nailed it, Rachel. Everyone will agree that student engagement–as opposed to entertainment–is paramount, but how to achieve it is very much an open question.
The real danger, if this idea of holding teachers accountable for “boring” lessons were to gain traction, is that it would become yet another hoop to jump through. I doubt non-teachers appreciate the extent to which a teacher’s life is driven by external “to do” list items — the bulletin board, the collaborative (non-commercially produced) work on chart paper, the displays of students work, the agenda on the board in kid-friendly language, etc. — that are on a supervisors checklist, “indicators” of a child-centered classroom, but which have little to do with hour-by-hour instructional realities. I had an AP that wanted to see every lesson plan differentiated for skill level AND “learning style.” Think about that: six lessons each day X five days a week X seven (or however many there are now) learning styles X how ever many levels my kids were at on whatever we were working on. How many lesson plans is that? What then will the “engaging lesson” rubric look like? Do we need to differentiate our engagement for learning styles?
Not every aspect of teaching can be — or should be — codified.
Robert,
Please bear with me as I have been accused of being a bit overbearing on this topic.
“Every lesson differentiated for skill level AND learning style?” That’s why differentiated instruction is too cumbersome and creates more work than necessary. Carol Tomlinson, et al, has made it onto the dance floor but she’s a long way from the orchestra pit and thus has trouble hearing the music.
Don’t get me wrong. I think her philosophy, her books, etc., have great merit. She should be commended for her efforts in seeking out a more child-centered approach of delivery.
The primary component of instruction in need of being individualized/customized (not differentiated) is the PACE of instruction for each youngster. If all teachers were competent in this methodology many instructional problems in the classroom would disappear.
Kids would not be bored because the teacher was going too slowly while others in the same class would not be overwhelmed because the teacher was proceeding too fast. It creates a Goldilocks standard where the pace of instruction for each youngster is “just right.” What can I tell you? It works. I did it for 33 years.
For many veteran teachers to give an auditory and visual presentation of a lesson is not a major undertaking. In practice, this can be done without great effort. For kids who don’t get it through these two approaches a kinesthetic presentation is sometimes needed, but not often. For teachers to spend time on the BEST learning style for each student – this can cause problems, for the teacher and the student(s). It is simply not the most efficient way to customize instruction in a classroom.
Well of course, Paul. It was a ridiculous requirement — unenforceable and unenforced. When called out on nonsense like that, most administrators will invariably retreat to “well, this is what the district expects to see, so consider yourself warned.”
Tomlinson and differentiation are a great subject for another time. But I would offer differentiation as an example of Pondiscio’s First Law of Pedagogy, which holds that every good idea in teaching becomes a bad idea as soon as it hardens into orthodoxy. That’s because, per above, we lose track of why it’s a good idea and it becomes either a poorly understood and executed facsimile of the good idea, another item on a supervisory checklist, or both.
Robert,
Pondiscio’s First Law of Pedagogy is good advice. A related corollary from the Paul Hoss School of Government: Only teachers so inclined to pursue this alternative pedagogy need attempt it. It is not for everyone.