Dance Like Nobody’s Watching

I have found teaching to be so multi-faceted that it is hard for one training session or new idea to have a sizeable impact on my pedagogy. Instead, improvement for me has been the outcome of many different skills being slowly developed over time. Every now and then though, something happens which fundamentally changes my approach to teaching. This piece is about the biggest shift that has happened in my teaching recently, and the thinking that got me there.

The Big Idea

Teach like no one is listening. By that, I mean that no matter how clear I believe my explanation to be, how absolute I believe students’ focus on me is, how accurately I believe I am threading the needle between content that is too challenging and content that is too easy, I assume that not a single student has either understood or even listened to my explanation.

This is not about lowering expectations. I still want all the above things: clear explanations, a calm learning environment, well-pitched content. I just don’t take any of them as being any guarantee that anyone has learned anything. The mantra of “hope for the best, plan for the worst” is useful here and trust me, it changes everything.

This can be a hard shift to believe even needs to happen for many reasons. It is possible to hone both the clarity of your explanations and behaviour management strategies to the point that this seems redundant and almost defeatist. You could have taught something in the past that landed really well. You may be teaching to a room full of people with complete attention aimed at you, a room of 30 students seemingly hanging off your every word. Unfortunately, none of these are guarantees that anyone is learning anything and, if not addressed, you risk students picking up misconceptions, having gaps in knowledge, being confused and generally not learning as well as they could be.

Something interesting happened over lockdown. As classrooms moved from looking like this:

to this:

All of a sudden it became clear I had no idea what was being understood by students. A quick upskilling in how to use polls on Teams and whiteboard.fi fixed this. Back in the classroom though, despite all those smiling, seemingly attentive faces aimed at my teaching, I realised I had just as much guarantee of what was going on in their heads as when they were just dots on a screen. Something needed to change.

The Consequences

Check everything from everyone. It’s as simple as that really. After any period of modelling, getting students to attempt it, bit my bit, and show me, as a class, that they can do it before working independently is vital.

There has been a lot of talk of mini whiteboards recently but I think that talk misses the point. Mini whiteboards are just a tool. When teaching remotely to a someone without a camera, mini whiteboards are useless. What is important, is having the means, somehow, to check everyone’s understanding of everything. It just so happens that a cheap piece of plastic and a whiteboard pen are an invaluable tool when trying to achieve this in a classroom.

As soon as someone finds another way to more simply, quickly and accurately assess the understanding of an entire class all at once then I’ll use that instead. Until then, mini whiteboards are indispensable in acheiving my aim here.

The same applies to checking instructions about how to engage with a task as well. What conditions students should be working in? What classifies as success today? How long have they got? What should they do if they are stuck? All these things need checking or, that information needs storing somewhere permanent like on a sheet or on the board.

The assumption that nothing I have said has been listened to has improved my practice so much. There is no longer anywhere to hide, little chance of starting a task without comprehending the content, and no excuse for not following the behaviour routines expected.

If phases of the lesson don’t include multiple checks of all the key components needed for success from every student in the room then, under this new mantra, I’m assuming something is going to go wrong.

It involves removing ego from the equation. Assuming that, no matter how engaging or how clear I think I may be, I cannot assume that what I am saying is understood or, in truth, that all 30 students even particularly care what I’m talking about on any given day. I think it is essential in delivering a great education for all students that even those who are struggling to engage on any given day still have to do as much work as everyone else.

Mark Twain said “Dance like no one is watching.” I say “Teach like no one is listening”.

I’m always interested in what people make of this so please feel free to comment with thoughts, questions or incomplete musings. Follow this or my Twitter account Teach_Solutions for similar content in the future.