What is power?

For some people it is control of a situation. Control of others. Or both. It is an outcome or something to get and aspire to. Some teachers define themselves by the amount of power that they yield. Some students do too. When this kind of power collides it creates a tension that can hijack authentic learning. The wrong kind of power, as we all know, can be a bad thing.

Actually, I don’t know why I ever thought I was in charge.

My schedule was determined by someone else.

My content was determined by someone else.

If a kid freaked out in class I bent to that reality too. Sure, I could make them leave, dole out a detention, or sit down and slog through 7 million ways of differentiation that might alter that the next time they decided to take control of our classroom. In reality it was their timeline and their personal agenda and I was in charge of a big, fat nothing except to decide whether or not I would spend hours of my outside of school time trying to manage a behavioural problem that may or may not have a single thing to do with me or our classroom.

I bought into the fact that total control of my classroom was a large part of the measure of my success as a teacher and that managing and micro-managing my classroom was where it was at.

I was confusing power with control.

The day I realized and accepted that power slipping through my fingers was a good thing, was the day that everything started to change. In fact, the thing that took the longest to unlearn from my teacher training was the role of power in my classroom.

The Role of Power in the Classroom

Really, for me, its role is shared between two things.

One. Power is a tool most effectively used in tandem with process. It’s not an outcome unto itself and if you can harness it to its very best potential, it’s something to be given away. To a kid, power translates to choice. So together we should create focused choices within the learning process.

Two. To use power properly, consider the potential in its fluidity. I needed to practice giving it away and the kids needed to practice having it. Sometimes the other way around. We both needed to learn different stuff about the same thing.

Once I figured this out I took a long look at what I was doing in my classroom.

For all the right reasons, I had created such an imbalance of power that I became addicted to it, it helped me create safe, predictable lessons and this was so manageable, so rote, so “surface wonderful,” that the preparation of teaching material became easier and easier as each semester went by. I became a well oiled machine at the top of my game. I got protective of this and it was hard to let go of it because in the environment of authority, it is easy to keep this status quo going.  But classroom behaviour did not flourish in this new regime, though it was easy to blame the kids and their general lack of respect since I was so prepared for classes that I had lots of time on my hands to figure out all the stuff that they were doing wrong.

But, this is what was wrong: my students did not have any control of how they learned and so some of them became actively complacent.

Some became bored. Others became frustrated. Then some of them became quite good at the sport of antagonism, which  I took personally, and with no equality granted to the opposition, the backlash was quickly determined to be behavioural, not environmental, and quashed with rules.You can see how this can spiral.  I never had to explain myself, justify myself or check-in that I still believed my own lesson plan and its relevance to my students. So we went round and round. Those students, by the way, changed every year, unlike my lessons, and in hindsight I wonder why I ever thought I could simply reteach through the same process over and over and over.

And that’s the thing.

I could teach the same big idea or lesson every year, that was solid, but where the fluidity came into play was in that process part. We didn’t become equals in the management of this, but rather, we became equal stakeholders.

What We Changed

I changed how we were going to learn the lesson by not planning how we were going to learn the lesson. At least, not plan it by myself. My preparation shifted, I became very clear on the purpose for a lesson, just not necessarily on how we would arrive there.  I read more, I researched other classroom processes and methods and I offered these up as examples and options for choice and adaptation. I gave up safeness and having lots of time to mark while they worked on handouts at their desk. That was hard. But I also gave up behavioural clamor. I’m not saying we don’t have it, but it is definitely reduced.

Most of the kids gave up complacency and their natural affinity for disengagement. They offer ideas if the environment is there and if there is something in it for them. Just like every other person in the world.

The hardest part of the change  was the practice of sharing power and in figuring out how to do it without sacrifice massive amounts of class time. But I can tell you that the time we saved navigating through unnecessary behaviour issues everyday because we became equal stakeholders afforded us the time to customize the learning process.

This is not a prescription, but here are the main things that helped us to do it better.

 

How to Share/Give/Get Power

1. Tell your students which skills or outcomes you are targeting with the lesson.

A common goal creates sense of belonging and community. Community is a powerful force.

 

2. Ask them what the lesson has to do with their real life.  Practice brainstorming if it is hard for them to figure it out, or model it. They’ll get better. Engagement. Building towards a better real life is an ally. 

Relevance is powerful.

 

3. After you teach your lesson, model doing it. Then ask them what they could do to show you that they “got it.”  Encourage the idea that there are different ways to show this.  Acceptance of different pathways to the same ends fuels tolerance, creativity and persistence which leads to innovation and lifelong learning.

Knowing how to create your own pathway toward a goal empowers us to move forward. 

 

4. Create the assessment criteria together. Every. Time. The assessment should only ever shape the pathway of the learning process for a particular lesson; a check-in or checklist to help guide the learning. Assess is derived from the Latin word assidere, which literally means “to sit beside (the learner).” Therefore, we should use an assessment criteria as a point of reference to ‘virtually’sit beside our students as they progress if we can’t. Educators often confuse assessment with evaluation, which is the place for judgment. Explaining this to students frees them from the fear of marks in the learning phases and reassures them that they have an ally in the assessment criteria that they helped to create. Not all work needs to be evaluated every time.

Freedom from fear is a powerful motivator.

 

5. Determine whether you will evaluate the work and how. Show them what needs to be evaluated and together decide which points will be your focus. Create or provide a list of what they should be able to provide as evidence of learning and in the best scenario, a benchmark for quality expectations. Be honest and forthright with how much has to be accomplished over the course of the semester or year as this will affect focus.

Clarity of expectations allows you to harness the power of focus.

 

6. Create a timeline to finish the work together.  Then post it. Most students do not come to you knowing how to deconstruct a project or make a plan to finish it on time, especially if it is something new. Fewer know how to adapt a timeline if they stumble onto something interesting and have to make up time, they simply default to handing it in late. When you model the work be cognizant of the time it takes to complete the steps and reflect that reality when you create the timeline. The ability to create “living timelines” has been the most valuable thing we have shared ownership of in our classroom.

Understanding realistic expectations between task and time has the power to reshape lives.

 

Thanks for reading.

 

Just click on the article you want to read….

How to Give, Get & Share Power in Your Classroom

Three Things You Need in the Classroom

Welcome to TeachSmart!

In this world of ever-changing education, TeachSmart believes that kids and teachers are what matters most and in this one main point::

the relationship between a student and a teacher, and a classroom and their teacher can change lives.

But how do we do this as educators?

The first thing is this:

The content has to be authentic.

Learning something for the sake of learning is ineffective. The less a teacher believes that the content is worth learning – that it is not absolutely necessary in the development of their students, the less effective the classroom experience will be. While we as teachers most often have no choice in what is being taught, we do have a choice in how it is being taught. It is our responsibility to understand the content.

So. What if I suggested to you that you look at the curriculum from a different perspective? Many teacher look at the curriculum from the perspective of how it would translate into a lesson. But what if you made it a priority to first find authentic content in the prescribed curriculum?  Really look at the core of that curriculum outcome or objective. Can you identify the reason for its inclusion in the curriculum  –  how would you actually need this in your own life, as a person? Because if you cannot find it, your students probably won’t see it and then you WILL not be authentic in your teaching.

In my experience most teachers spend the bulk of their time creating lessons which are great – but these fantastic lessons are will not soar the way that they could have had they been developed with very clear, authentic content at their core. It is not that we are unable to extrapolate the core content from which to build, it is that we often feel that we do not have time.

Still other teachers believe that this is the responsibility of the curriculum writers, boards and ministries to drill down to the simple content objective or outcomes, but really, deep understanding of content is an organic thing, it is living and it changes just as societies do because there is a living relationship between knowledge and application, therefore, content often needs to be interpreted and revisited and that requires the expertise of a professional educator. This is why Google will not replace teachers.

What I am suggesting is that we carve out time and priorize a clear, root purpose for instruction tied to authentic application. This purpose changes. Instead of wondering why your lesson does not work anymore, what you did wrong, come at it from the perspective of what has changed in the application and relevance of this content? You may need to revisit that content and how you interpret and present the relationship between the content and the application. Before investing the time teaching your tried and true, wonderfully creative lessons, do a pulse check on it. If we switch the balance this way it becomes much easier to let go or revisit and adapt our lessons which will lead to greater classroom success. We sometimes hang on to lessons that are falling short because we spent so much time creating them and gathering the resources that we are unwilling to change or abandon them.

I am not saying that there is not irrelevant curriculum content out there, because there certainly is. But where a curriculum has been thoughtfully and elementally considered – there is a universal, albeit ever changing application. It is worth exploring. See if your curriculum does this. Sometimes we are so busy surviving our daily grind, that we do not stop to consider what our core role is.

Lessons have to be relevant.

By lesson I mean the way that the content is delivered and it is our business as teachers to know how to do this. Of course the lesson has to have some kind of larger meaning in its content, but the tricky bit with lessons is that the significance of this meaning is different for each student  because some students already realize that the lesson is relevant for them, while others are only about to discover it. This creates learning tension in the classroom and how teachers offer these lessons now becomes so incredibly important. A good teacher works at preparing multi-layered ways into the lesson and a master teacher will automatically do that, plus adapt in the moment, every moment. This is living differentiation.

Once you have uncovered the big idea, (and there mostly is one), the authentic piece of learning – when you teach, it is absolutely no different than a doctor professionally diagnosing, then planning an educated course of action and monitoring the results, including collecting data and testing with the intent to alter the prescription on a patient by patient basis until the desired outcome is achieved *.

This is our craft.

This is our job.

We strive to become experts at this.

The art of teaching is the finesse with which you do this. The reality however, would be that you do this with 20 – 40 “patients” at the same time.

This is unfair and bad, right?

No.

I don’t think it is. I DID think so for a very long time, but then I changed my mind. I don’t think this scenario is easy, but I do think that sometimes a student will learn in a way that you didn’t think to prescribe for them just by watching you teach someone else. And THIS is why I think that mutual respect on two levels –  between teacher and student AND between classroom and teacher is necessary.

In order for the lessons to be taught as quickly and effectively as possible, so that the content can be understood for deep meaning you MUST have mutual respect on these two very different levels.

.

The relationship between teacher and student and teacher and classroom has to build and sustain a mutual respect.

Teacher/student = trust. Trust is needed for fluidity of learning. The student needs to trust that you aren’t wasting their time and that you have a point and purpose – basically that you have their best interests at heart, that you are invested and care that they understand.  The teacher needs to trust that the student will say when they understand and more importantly, when they don’t.

Teacher/Classroom = sustainable dynamics.  Sustainable dynamics are needed for multi-level functionality in a diverse classroom. Basically, the kids need to understand that everyone learns differently, at different speeds and the only way we can not totally waste our time everyday is to accept, understand and develop our ability to navigate our day with this in mind.

Kids are successful at this in varying degrees, but this CAN be taught. Kids need to be taught this. You need to tell them why it is important and you need to give them the opportunity to rise to this most applicable core lesson.  Life is filled with all different kinds of family members, co-workers and people; our lives will be filled with them and that is why we need to learn this even more than math (yes, even more than math). If we give others the environment in which to learn, eventually they should and will give it to you. School will make more sense to them. School will become a tool for them to develop into whomever they decide to become.

*One note here – we are not all researchers. We should not, nor should we be asked to be data collectors for the sake of data collecting. As professional educators we should administer tests when we deem them necessary for the development of our students, not as a comparative tool between students or fellow educators. Data for program evaluation and resource assessment purposes is different and that data should be collected and assessed by professionals who are trained and unbiased.

Thanks for reading.

What you will find at this website is:

1. Easy to use, creative resources to help teachers in their classrooms that keep both the teacher and the student engaged. I am tired of busy work. I’m sure you are too.
2. Relevant commentary on current teaching practices for both educators and parents. We should be thinking about what and how we teach kids. It’s the most important thing we do as a society.
3. A place for parents to get real feedback and insights about the education of their kids.  Because they deserve every bit of help and partnership they can get.

Welcome to TeachSmart!

In this world of ever-changing education, TeachSmart believes that kids and teachers are what matters most and in this one main point::

the relationship between a student and a teacher, and a classroom and their teacher can change lives.

But how do we do this as educators?

The first thing is this:

The content has to be authentic.

Learning something for the sake of learning is ineffective. The less a teacher believes that the content is worth learning – that it is not absolutely necessary in the development of their students, the less effective the classroom experience will be. While we as teachers most often have no choice in what is being taught, we do have a choice in how it is being taught. It is our responsibility to understand the content.

So. What if I suggested to you that you look at the curriculum from a different perspective? Many teacher look at the curriculum from the perspective of how it would translate into a lesson. But what if you made it a priority to first find authentic content in the prescribed curriculum?  Really look at the core of that curriculum outcome or objective. Can you identify the reason for its inclusion in the curriculum  –  how would you actually need this in your own life, as a person? Because if you cannot find it, your students probably won’t see it and then you WILL not be authentic in your teaching.

In my experience most teachers spend the bulk of their time creating lessons which are great – but these fantastic lessons are will not soar the way that they could have had they been developed with very clear, authentic content at their core. It is not that we are unable to extrapolate the core content from which to build, it is that we often feel that we do not have time.

Still other teachers believe that this is the responsibility of the curriculum writers, boards and ministries to drill down to the simple content objective or outcomes, but really, deep understanding of content is an organic thing, it is living and it changes just as societies do because there is a living relationship between knowledge and application, therefore, content often needs to be interpreted and revisited and that requires the expertise of a professional educator. This is why Google will not replace teachers.

What I am suggesting is that we carve out time and priorize a clear, root purpose for instruction tied to authentic application. This purpose changes. Instead of wondering why your lesson does not work anymore, what you did wrong, come at it from the perspective of what has changed in the application and relevance of this content? You may need to revisit that content and how you interpret and present the relationship between the content and the application. Before investing the time teaching your tried and true, wonderfully creative lessons, do a pulse check on it. If we switch the balance this way it becomes much easier to let go or revisit and adapt our lessons which will lead to greater classroom success. We sometimes hang on to lessons that are falling short because we spent so much time creating them and gathering the resources that we are unwilling to change or abandon them.

I am not saying that there is not irrelevant curriculum content out there, because there certainly is. But where a curriculum has been thoughtfully and elementally considered – there is a universal, albeit ever changing application. It is worth exploring. See if your curriculum does this. Sometimes we are so busy surviving our daily grind, that we do not stop to consider what our core role is.

Lessons have to be relevant.

By lesson I mean the way that the content is delivered and it is our business as teachers to know how to do this. Of course the lesson has to have some kind of larger meaning in its content, but the tricky bit with lessons is that the significance of this meaning is different for each student  because some students already realize that the lesson is relevant for them, while others are only about to discover it. This creates learning tension in the classroom and how teachers offer these lessons now becomes so incredibly important. A good teacher works at preparing multi-layered ways into the lesson and a master teacher will automatically do that, plus adapt in the moment, every moment. This is living differentiation.

Once you have uncovered the big idea, (and there mostly is one), the authentic piece of learning – when you teach, it is absolutely no different than a doctor professionally diagnosing, then planning an educated course of action and monitoring the results, including collecting data and testing with the intent to alter the prescription on a patient by patient basis until the desired outcome is achieved *.

This is our craft.

This is our job.

We strive to become experts at this.

The art of teaching is the finesse with which you do this. The reality however, would be that you do this with 20 – 40 “patients” at the same time.

This is unfair and bad, right?

No.

I don’t think it is. I DID think so for a very long time, but then I changed my mind. I don’t think this scenario is easy, but I do think that sometimes a student will learn in a way that you didn’t think to prescribe for them just by watching you teach someone else. And THIS is why I think that mutual respect on two levels –  between teacher and student AND between classroom and teacher is necessary.

In order for the lessons to be taught as quickly and effectively as possible, so that the content can be understood for deep meaning you MUST have mutual respect on these two very different levels.

.

The relationship between teacher and student and teacher and classroom has to build and sustain a mutual respect.

Teacher/student = trust. Trust is needed for fluidity of learning. The student needs to trust that you aren’t wasting their time and that you have a point and purpose – basically that you have their best interests at heart, that you are invested and care that they understand.  The teacher needs to trust that the student will say when they understand and more importantly, when they don’t.

Teacher/Classroom = sustainable dynamics.  Sustainable dynamics are needed for multi-level functionality in a diverse classroom. Basically, the kids need to understand that everyone learns differently, at different speeds and the only way we can not totally waste our time everyday is to accept, understand and develop our ability to navigate our day with this in mind.

Kids are successful at this in varying degrees, but this CAN be taught. Kids need to be taught this. You need to tell them why it is important and you need to give them the opportunity to rise to this most applicable core lesson.  Life is filled with all different kinds of family members, co-workers and people; our lives will be filled with them and that is why we need to learn this even more than math (yes, even more than math). If we give others the environment in which to learn, eventually they should and will give it to you. School will make more sense to them. School will become a tool for them to develop into whomever they decide to become.

*One note here – we are not all researchers. We should not, nor should we be asked to be data collectors for the sake of data collecting. As professional educators we should administer tests when we deem them necessary for the development of our students, not as a comparative tool between students or fellow educators. Data for program evaluation and resource assessment purposes is different and that data should be collected and assessed by professionals who are trained and unbiased.

Thanks for reading.

What you will find at this website is:

1. Easy to use, creative resources to help teachers in their classrooms that keep both the teacher and the student engaged. I am tired of busy work. I’m sure you are too.
2. Relevant commentary on current teaching practices for both educators and parents. We should be thinking about what and how we teach kids. It’s the most important thing we do as a society.
3. A place for parents to get real feedback and insights about the education of their kids.  Because they deserve every bit of help and partnership they can get.