My second major teaching mistake: trying to be the smartest kid in the room

Every teacher sounds like Ben Stein after a few minutes. 

This the second post in an occasional series about what I've learned from teaching and how it intersects with parenting. The first post is here. I'm not an expert in either teaching or parenting, but hopefully, 1) you find something useful below, 2) can laugh at the many mistakes I've made, or 3) both.

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I have a terminal case of "smartest kid in the room" syndrome (hereafter SKR).This is not news to many of you who've known me for years. (In some cases, you were actually in a classroom with me. God bless and I'm sorry.)

The telltale sign is needing to say something about everything. This behavior is merely obnoxious from a student. If it comes from the teacher, it kills learning. When the teacher is the one over-explaining, editorializing, going off on tangents or dominating the conversation, it will choke off all but the most superficial learning. 

The consequence of me endlessly talking is that I did the bulk of the thinking, rather than the students. Moreover, once I started down the path of monologuing, it was tacit permission for students to tune out. When I've observed classroom where this happened, I'd turn my attention to the students' body language. It was akin to seeing people in a hospital waiting room with a TV. There's noise and motion, but almost no one is processing it. 

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As a frequent offender, I use these guidelines to hold myself accountable when leading a class:

1. A tight agenda with short time segments and a visible timer keeps me on track. Even when a segment runs over, it was easier to switch them around because I'd thought through the rest of the class in a purposeful way. (I never truly appreciated the power of this sort of agenda until it was drilled into my head during the first summer I worked at DSST, where it is sacrosanct. DSST just won the Broad Prize. Holding all teachers to solid fundamental pedagogy is a major reason why.) The timer helped discipline me in a lot of ways, the most useful being that after 10 minutes, kids (and adults) need to shift gears. It forced me to distill what I was teaching to its most essential elements. 

2. Include directions on the materials I wrote so I don't have an excuse to monologue when introducing an activity. The temptation to editorialize or over-explain is overwhelming. Moreover, many kids won't overtly signal they're bored because 1) they're  polite and 2) I was the authority figure. A corollary to that is that when I had classes with lots of off-task behavior, over-explaining directions was one of the most common root causes. 

3. Answer a question with a question. This is useful on a couple of levels. If there was genuine confusion, I could quickly ask questions to a couple of students so I could discover if it was a whole-class issue. If it was just a few kids, I'd start with basic questions. ("What does the first question say? Read it to me." "What is it asking you to do?") It's also non-confrontational way to call the bluff of kids who ask endless questions in order to delay starting an assignment. 

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So what does this have to do with parenting a threenager? Wilson, do you post a detailed agenda for your toddler? No, not quite, but I use timers to transition him from playing to bathtime, nap, bedtime, etc. Maybe it's just my kid, but he responds better to seeing timer tick down than he does to me verbally counting.

Giving simple directions is vital, too. More times than I'd like to admit L is confused as to what I want and not just being defiant because he's three.

Finally, responding to L's endless questions: It's great and wonderful and appropriate for three-year-olds to ask a ton of questions. It can also be exhausting to address. (And, even with Google to assist, my ability to truthfully answer many of his questions runs shallow pretty quick.) Therefore, meeting them with some of my own questions is useful. At best, he explains his thinking. At worst, he says, "I don't know," and we move on. 

I will stop now, lest I give in to my love of droning on and on. Hey, after a couple of decades, maybe I'm learning!