Aaron Baker

From Spoon Vision, the blog of Aaron Baker, an 8th grade U.S. History teacher in Oklahoma.

Those Who Can't

Those who can’t,
Teach.

For example,

Those who can’t sit alone at a desk all day,
Whose energy demands movement and interaction,
Teach.

Those who can’t abide platitudes like, “kids these days,”
Who take the time to know every young person,
Teach.

Those who can’t be satisfied with a job or even a career,
Whose everyday work must be filled with passion,
Teach.

Those who can’t look the other way while our schools resegregate,
Who believe the moral arc of the universe bends toward justice,
Teach.

Those who can’t stand by while our public institutions are privatized,
Whose collective conscience sees through the rhetoric of “choice,”
Teach.

Those who can’t ignore the history of organized labor in the U.S.,
Who know that “the union makes us strong,”
Teach.

Those who can’t punch a clock,
Whose passion can’t be confined to 8-4 or to August through May,
Teach.

Those who can’t care only about some children,
Who are committed to the success of every student,
Teach.

Those who can’t avoid conflict,
Whose acumen can diffuse the most hostile situations,
Teach.

Those who can’t be happy climbing the corporate ladder,
Who will master their craft, and stay in the classroom for decades,
Teach.

Those who can’t settle for anything less than constant improvement,
Whose minds are always searching for innovative new methods,
Teach.

Those who can’t quit,
Who will continue to educate more students with less money,
Teach.

But please know.

Those who can’t be fooled by political schemes,
Whose organizing can create a political revolution,
Teach.

Thich Nhat Hanh

When you plant lettuce, if it does not grow well, you don't blame the lettuce. You look for reasons it is not doing well. It may need fertilizer, or more water, or less sun. You never blame the lettuce. Yet if we have problems with our friends or family, we blame the other person. But if we know how to take care of them, they will grow well, like the lettuce. Blaming has no positive effect at all, nor does trying to persuade using reason and argument. That is my experience. No blame, no reasoning, no argument, just understanding. If you understand, and you show that you understand, you can love, and the situation will change. ― Thich Nhat Hanh, Peace is Every Step: The Path of Mindfulness in Everyday Life

Intervening

While writing my last post, on pseudoteaching, I was compelled to change my Teaching Framework a little in response. I was thinking about when and how the learning actually happens in my classroom. According to Frank Noschese's concept, teaching happens when a student's pre-existing conceptions are challenged, and this happens when the student tries to actually do something (see Derek Muller on this point). At the crucial moment of potential failure, the teacher intervenes, and the student learns. I've actually written about this before:

So what is teaching? Well, the teacher does something, and then the student does something and thereby learns. What kind of something? Let's say that the teacher performs a certain action and the student mimics the action. The teacher watches the student, intervenes when necessary, and repeats the action. The student tries again. The process is repeated until the student is capable on his or her own. Teaching by example is probably the most fundamental and natural form of teaching.

But more is going on than meets the eye. A relationship of trust has been built between the teacher and student so that the interaction can work effectively. The teacher's intervention is extraordinarily important, and will depend exactly on what the student has grasped and what he has missed. The teacher directs the student's attention to the work: like this, not like that, here's why, can you see? Mere mimicry is not enough, the student must develop some understanding. The teacher will not always be there, the student must learn to correct himself, must learn how to learn.

What does it mean to intervene? In a classroom, intervention is often the word used to describe what a teacher does to alter a student's behavior. It is the I in PBIS, Positive Behavioral Interventions and Supports, an approach to classroom management that I endorse. Notice that I also used it in the quotation above - "intervenes when necessary" - to describe an act of teaching. I hadn't really thought about intervention meaning the same thing in both cases, but it does. Education is changing a student's behavior as much as it is changing what a student knows, and intervention by the teacher is how it is done.

What does this look like in my classroom? People tend to like my classes - students, parents, other teachers, administrators - because I am energetic and engaging. And let's face it, physics can be a lot of fun. But when does the learning actually take place? Not, it turns out, when I'm doing the fun stuff. Students don't learn from my lectures or explanations, demonstrations, diagrams, simulations, videos, etc. etc. They are happy to take notes, often with great care, draw diagrams, watch demonstrations, and they really think they are learning something. But they are not. Their preconceptions block them, without their even knowing it.

What preconceptions? Have you ever thrown a ball to someone, or dropped a dish and watched it fall and break, or twirled a key on a lanyard, or skidded while driving a car, or burned yourself with a hot skillet? All that is physics, and these experiences taught you something that then became a concept in your mind, and quite possibly an incorrect concept from the point of view of physics. How is it possible to learn physics correctly? It requires the intervention of a teacher, a teacher you trust.

In my classroom the intervention happens when students are asked to do something, or produce something, or perform an action. This work is done in the classroom, what is called seatwork. Students must answer a question, use a vocabulary word correctly, perform a calculation, solve a word problem, write a coherent sentence, take an accurate measurement, build a model. These activities will reveal the flaws in their thinking, the gaps in their understanding, and these failures are the teachable moments that will only result in learning if I am there to intervene when the failure happens. All the other activities, the notes and explanations, diagrams, demonstrations, videos, group questions and discussions, are shared experiences that I and the student can refer to so I can prompt and goad and question until the student finally sees the failure and makes a correction.

I have altered my Teaching Framework so that, under Instruction, a collection of activities is now labeled Intervention. Under Attention & Focus I have gathered some of the activities and added more to a category also called Intervention. This strengthens the intervention parallel between behavioral learning and academic knowledge, and fills out the Attention & Focus section so it encompasses classroom management more obviously.

Defining Teaching

Here's an outline I've been constructing around the task of defining teaching:

The Task: To describe (and possibly define) what teaching is.

What teachers talk to each other about is the craft or practice of teaching, the employment of techniques and the solution to problems, but not what teaching itself actually is. Asking a teacher what teaching is is akin to asking a fish what swimming is - "I don't know, I just do it." It's actually more like asking a doctor what "doctoring" is. There's a lot to it, but it can be easier to describe the collection of daily tasks, the little tricks and moves, the tools and techniques, than it can be to articulate a definition of what "doctoring" is.

How would a teacher describe teaching to a lay person? How do teachers describe (and justify) what they are doing to each other, to administrators, supervisors, and bureaucrats? Should teachers try, among themselves, to define teaching, even as an exercise? Or should "experts" do the defining while the teachers get on with their work?

Why define teaching? Because if teachers don't define it, others will, and possibly to the detriment of teachers. Which brings us to The Problem.

The Problem: The "wrong" definition of teaching will harm and interfere with a teacher's ability to teach.

Here are some "wrong" descriptions of teaching:

• babysitting
• coaching
• guiding
• facilitating
• managing
• delivering curriculum
• the inverse of learning

Why are these descriptions wrong? Because they are an oversimplification of what is actually happening. Because the focus is entirely on a single dimension of teaching which can be described as effectiveness, and not at all on an equally important but often unseen dimension which can be described as engagement.

There are two current difficulties that tend to hide the engagement dimension:

• 1. Effective teaching includes designing instructional materials and designing tests. Both of these activities can be done on a corporate, academic, or bureaucratic level by experts, with an eye toward monopolizing and/or automating such activity. It benefits corporate, academic, and bureaucratic agents to define teaching as simply delivering or implementing their products.
• 2. For teachers, much of what should be thought of as engagement is instead thought of as classroom management, and often results in moralistic approaches to control and discipline. Psychological approaches to behavior modification are an improvement, but best would be pedagogical approaches to teaching behavior, directly and indirectly, in the classroom. Engagement needs to be clarified as being part of the actual teaching of the curriculum rather than as a separate side project of classroom control and discipline.

The Solution: Understand the engagement part of teaching.

A key to this is understanding the role of behavioral techniques, especially stagecraft, in engaging students with the instructional materials. In other words, the behavioral techniques, the stagecraft, are an integral part of teaching. Without engagement, you are not teaching - you really are just delivering instructional materials to students who have been "managed" into doing work.

Remember - teaching happens when a teacher engages the student. Instructional materials do not teach themselves. Without a teacher, a student is simply self-taught.

Geneen Roth

For some reason, we are truly convinced that if we criticize ourselves, the criticism will lead to change. If we are harsh, we believe we will end up being kind. If we shame ourselves, we believe we end up loving ourselves. It has never been true, not for a moment, that shame leads to love. Only love leads to love.
- Geneen Roth

This is true with teaching, too - we think criticism is the same as teaching, that shaming is an excellent and effective motivator. You can't force an end using an unsuitable means. Only love leads to love.

Thomas Merton

The beginning of love is the will to let those we love be perfectly themselves, the resolution not to twist them to fit our own image. If in loving them we do not love what they are, but only their potential likeness to ourselves, then we do not love them: we only love the reflection of ourselves we find in them.

-Thomas Merton, No Man Is an Island

Ass in Chair

Here's the correct way to advise somebody: Love them. Respect them. Know them. Read their stuff, understand where they're coming from. If they're your students, talk to them in class and during your office hours. Ask them how it feels when they can't finish something. Ask them how it feels when they can. Help them get at their obsessions. It's possible that they aren't really trying very hard, and in an undergraduate workshop, this is sometimes the case. Writing really isn't for everybody, and we have a reputation for giving out easy A's. But usually they are trying, sometimes far harder than you have ever had to try to do anything. Sometimes they are crying at their desks at night. Sometimes they would rather die than have to finish their poem or short story. If you are not like that, it isn't because you are better. It's because you are different. Your own experience isn't worthless, but if you think something that works for you might work for a student or friend, put it in terms that acknowledge that you are different. “Here's something that works for me, why don't you try it.” What would you do if you were like them? Suggest that. Offer your student or friend some exercises that might allow them to find the thread themselves. You're not going to find it for them, especially not by implying that they don't work hard enough.

The Ass-In-the-Chair Canard, from J Robert Lennon's blog

Read the whole thing - it's good! He has a lot of cool things to say about teaching.