Shocked teacher discovers power of praise

Watching The Wire (isn’t everybody?- except I’m up to Season 3 yar!) last week, I was electrified (wire- get it?) to hear this piece of advice from a world-wise social worker to an ex con, would-be boxing coach. This guy was trying to work with some kids, who used to be drug seller lookouts, but who had become unemployed because…well you’ll have to watch it.. the point is.. they weren’t the easiest kids to teach stuff to. The social worker dude had this small gem to offer, ‘Never let them fail. It messes with their heads.’
It’s been messing with my head ever since.

When I started as a teacher I thought a good part of my job was showing students just where they hadn’t met the mark. Thirty years later, that doesn’t feature quite so much. Encouraging them to get there, showing them the bar, coaching them to aim high, cheering while they make a run up… that’s more my style. And no, I am not a phys ed teacher… hehehe .. that’s a quiet chuckle I am having to myself since PE was the only class I ever absconded from. Sorry Miss P.

Anyway, it put me in mind of small social experiment I conducted in a Year 8 class once. Teachers, do NOT try this at school; I’m telling you about it here so you can learn from my mistakes! I can at least plead innocence. Well, maybe naivety. Well, ok blind ignorance.
For the purposes of helping the learners understand discrimination I decided to try a short version of the Blue Eyes Brown Eyes program. That’s the one where a group is divided on the basis of eye colour and treated in two distinct ways according to that.(Link below) I divided my group by hair type, straight and curly as they came in the door. They didn’t know what the basis was but it meant they weren’t sitting in their usual spots.
Then I went on with the class, all the time praising one side of the room, and comparing them favourably with the students sitting on the other who didn’t seem able to ‘keep up’ or ‘understand as quickly’ or ‘keep on task’.
Gentle reader you can probably guess the result, and it is one that has haunted me ever since. Within twenty minutes, students who normally sat through the lesson in a kind of surly resignation were offering suggestions, sitting up, taking notice, bright eyed with interest.
On the other side of the room, top students accustomed to coming within the glow of teacher’s eye slumped in their seats, resentful and bewildered.
IN TWENTY MINUTES!!!

That’s where I stopped. And, in a sense, that’s where I started. My reasoning told me that if praising students, and by the way this wasn’t manufactured praise, (there is always something positive to find, it can be hard work to look but it is always there to find) worked like this, I should do more of it.
I set myself a goal, to give one piece of positive feedback to one student each day. (Note to self: Always set achievable goals).
Shock number two. This was really hard to do. Hard for me. It turned out I was the blaming, critical, fault-finding pain-in-the-neck kind of person I’d always disliked. That was hard to know. But not impossible to change.
The eventual payoff from turning this around was immense. Not just to students and my relationship with them, but to my sense of satisfaction with the job I was doing. And every teacher needs more of that!
Kids will fail. Kids will make mistakes. We all do. What they need from us, I reckon, is a way of finding the learning in the error and a direction for the next try.
Give it a go.
Mess with their heads by showing them what success looks like.
Tell me what happens.

Oh, and watch The Wire.
http://www.hbo.com/thewire/

Blue Eyes Brown Eyes
http://www.janeelliott.com/

What does learning look like?

Q. How do you know that the students have actually learned something in class?
Question from E, secondary teacher
A. Fantastic question E and one that goes to the heart of: What am I doing here? Do I make a difference? How can I tell?
Only on about three occasions in a very long teaching life, has a student come up to me at the end of the class and actually said, ‘I learned something today!” Mind you, the astonishment and amazement of the tone in which they made this pronouncement kind of undercut its value!
I guess to answer your question I have to ask you some questions; like, what are you looking for?
The question you ask presupposes a ‘some thing’ that needs to be learned. What is this thing? Is it a fact, information or a skill?
Facts, knowledge, information are generally measured by a test. If the student can regurgitate the information, then some ‘thing’ has been learned. Or has it? Are we not actually measuring whether the learner can retrieve certain information from their short-term memory bank? And what use is the information anyway? Curriculum statements around the country are decreasing its importance. I guess I am thinking of Victoria and Queensland in particular where the ‘knowledge’ or subject based content is only one strand of the whole. Learning to learn is higher on the agenda at a time when information comes not in waves but as as a tsunami.
If it is a skill how will we know it is learned? The evidence of this would be its demonstration and application in the ‘real’ world, and we as teachers are not likely to be there to see it happen.
My interpretation of the question looks deeper and supposes it is none of these things. To reframe the question, maybe what is it asking is:
How can I tell if learning is happening? And to answer that we need to know what learning looks like, sounds like, feels like to you E. Then you will know what you are looking for.
To some teachers it sounds like loud, rambunctious discussion, or an inspired question (my all time favourite- what is a poetic license and what does it let you do?) to others it sounds like reflective, thinking silence. Maybe both of these in the same class at different times.
It looks like groups of learners intent and focused on a task, a room full of displayed work, pleasure on about 70% of their faces when they come into the room (hey you can’t please all the people all the time, and most of these people have lives beyond your institution that radically affects their mood and readiness to learn).
It feels easy and it feels like fun.
But these are just some of my measurements of how I look to see whether learning is happening. What do others look for?

Or is the question really about.. how can I know I am an effective teacher? How can I know I am doing my job? How can I get satisfaction? Where is my recognition?
Ahhh well that, my dear E, is another question for another post….

First chirp

a linnet by Clara (Melbourne street artist) copyright BCBG(Vic)P/L

A chirp is more prolonged than a twitter, but not as long as a song. And what do I have to chirp and sing about?

I am Linnet. A linnet is a bird. It chirps and twitters, warbles and sings. And so do I.

I also have my contemplative moments, and in those moments I wonder about the mystery of learning.

This blog is an invitation to all those engaged in that mystery, who also wonder.

Most specifically, learning teachers, beginning teachers, pre-service teachers at any level- pre-school to TAFE.

Sometimes it can be a bit lonely or bewildering out there… you are the one on the interface of learning… you are the one on the edge. No-one else really knows what goes on in that space inside you while you are teaching.

Funny things happen. Frightening things happen. They happen to all of us! Need a linnet to chirp to?

Ask a question.. pose a problem..I don’t have all the answers but I care about the conversation, and a conversation is a good place to start opening up that space. Look forward to hearing your thoughts.

Next post… what does learning look like?