“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!
