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| First lesson of classroom management: Let 'em think you're always watching. |
One of the underrated parts about being a stay-at-home dad is that infants sleep a lot. Consequently, I've had a fair amount of time to reflect on how a decade-plus of teaching impacted my life. Because this blog is nothing if not self-indulgent, I'll write about it every so often.
Running a classroom forced me to learn skills that I would've never picked up otherwise. Teaching a roomful of adolescents has a way of forcing one to quickly adapt.
What follows is meant as part reflection and part mediation on how skills learned as a teacher can also be useful outside of a classroom. If you're an educator (or just spend a bunch of time around kids) and reading this, you likely know this stuff already.
***
I had to learn to see the class.
There are a lot of tricks and techniques to running a classroom. I first, though, had to develop the skill where kids get the sense that the teacher "has eyes in the back of his head."
I was initially awful at this. You know those people who say they're natural multitaskers? Maybe they joke about having ADHD? I'm the opposite. I can tune out the world in an instant. (N confirms this.) It helps when one is grading papers or wants to finish reading a book. It's kryptonite when one is managing 28 or so adolescents at once.
When I was struggling as a teacher many years ago, my principal observed one of my classes. He listed several misbehaviors that I hadn't addressed. As he was doing so, he looked at me and paused. "You didn't even see any of this, did you?"
I shook my head. No, I wasn't even aware they had occurred.
So began a crash course in something basic, yet taken for granted. Here's what I learned about truly seeing the classroom:
1. Stop talking so much. I couldn't talk and effectively observe at the same time. I learned to give directions in under three minutes and break up directions if they lasted longer than that -- or if I noticed kids getting the glazed look on their faces. (Sometimes the glazed look came on so quickly, especially in a post-lunch class, that I had to get a direction out in under 30 seconds.)
2. Use the corners of the room. This is one of the techniques that seemed obvious in retrospect, but I was like most teachers -- anchored to the front of the room. Standing there meant that I had to cover 180 degrees of sight-lines and there was always a section I couldn't see. The corners allow a person to see the entire classroom with only 90 degrees of head movement.
3. Empty my hands. Don't try to do anything when kids are supposed to be working. Don't write on the whiteboard, check my computer or phone, or grade papers. Organize the class so that everything I needed was out and ready. (This took quite a bit of effort for my naturally disorganized self.)
4. When there's even a minor disruption, observe for a few seconds (at least 10) before intervening. Often the student I thought instigated the disruption was actually responding to someone else.
***
I've learned a bunch of other lessons, too, but everything flowed from first seeing what the children were actually doing in my class. I found it translated to parenting, too. My three-year-old can barely process one direction at a time, so talking to him for any longer than that just wastes time and builds frustration for both of us.
Pausing a few seconds and watching him, even when he's misbehaving, is useful in figuring out the root cause of the behavior. He also has a radar-like ability to know when I'm paying more attention to my phone than to him -- this is when he magically finds something that 1) will break or 2) is sharp or 3) both.
Learning to focus my attention and curtail distractions has probably saved my child several trips to the emergency room. That thought is simultaneously gratifying and frightening. God only knows what would've happened if I had done something else other than teach.
So began a crash course in something basic, yet taken for granted. Here's what I learned about truly seeing the classroom:
1. Stop talking so much. I couldn't talk and effectively observe at the same time. I learned to give directions in under three minutes and break up directions if they lasted longer than that -- or if I noticed kids getting the glazed look on their faces. (Sometimes the glazed look came on so quickly, especially in a post-lunch class, that I had to get a direction out in under 30 seconds.)
2. Use the corners of the room. This is one of the techniques that seemed obvious in retrospect, but I was like most teachers -- anchored to the front of the room. Standing there meant that I had to cover 180 degrees of sight-lines and there was always a section I couldn't see. The corners allow a person to see the entire classroom with only 90 degrees of head movement.
3. Empty my hands. Don't try to do anything when kids are supposed to be working. Don't write on the whiteboard, check my computer or phone, or grade papers. Organize the class so that everything I needed was out and ready. (This took quite a bit of effort for my naturally disorganized self.)
4. When there's even a minor disruption, observe for a few seconds (at least 10) before intervening. Often the student I thought instigated the disruption was actually responding to someone else.
***
I've learned a bunch of other lessons, too, but everything flowed from first seeing what the children were actually doing in my class. I found it translated to parenting, too. My three-year-old can barely process one direction at a time, so talking to him for any longer than that just wastes time and builds frustration for both of us.
Pausing a few seconds and watching him, even when he's misbehaving, is useful in figuring out the root cause of the behavior. He also has a radar-like ability to know when I'm paying more attention to my phone than to him -- this is when he magically finds something that 1) will break or 2) is sharp or 3) both.
Learning to focus my attention and curtail distractions has probably saved my child several trips to the emergency room. That thought is simultaneously gratifying and frightening. God only knows what would've happened if I had done something else other than teach.
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