Talking with kids doesn't involve much talking (from adults)

This is post in an occasional series about lessons I've learned from more than a decade of working in middle and high schools. Other posts here, here, and here.

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Every so often someone asks me about switching careers to teaching. My first question is always the same: How do you feel about being around kids all day? 

My next question: No, really. Do you enjoy being around them? 

I find most people haven't thought hard about the sheer amount of time teacher spend with kid. Hell, thirteen years ago, I didn't think about it that way. I'm not sure I would've accepted my Teach for America placement in 2005 if I had. 

It wasn't that I thought I'd be bad at it. I thought I was cool enough (ha!), plus I liked being in front of people. There would be a learning curve, sure, but I'd figure it out. I did, eventually, but for none of the reasons above. 

In order to make it beyond the first year or so, I had to learn how to talk with kids — in my case, teenagers. You know, the developmental stage that combines narcissism, insecurity, ignorance, and emotional volatility. The one that many of us as adults try to forget or repress. 

Like teaching, people erroneously assume those who can built rapport with kids possess a gift and some people can do it effortlessly while others are doomed. There's some truth there, as a lucky few seem to have been born with the requisite combination of empathy, charisma, and wisdom that can elicit the best from the most angsty or angry kid. 

The rest of us have to work at it. 

The good news is that one of the rewards of working with teenagers is the opportunity to help them make better decisions and shape their lives and a more positive direction. (Makes up for the long hours and low pay.)

I'm not an expert and, in fact, I made a ton of mistakes. It's safe to assume that each of the following points came from hard-won experience. I hope I can spare you some of the same.

First, I learned to be a better listener. My conversational habits during my early-twenties were crap because I excelled at making every conversation about me. This doesn't go over well with anyone, but most peers were too polite to call me out. Teenagers weren't (and aren't) burdened by such niceties. There are few things teenagers are less interested in than the thoughts of adults.

Thanks to some wiser folks, I memorized the following phrases and applied as needed.

• “Say more.”
• “What is in your control?”
• “How do you think you should fix it?”
• “Who else will be affected?”
• “What is the ideal result for you?”
• “What have you learned from from this?”
• “If you had to do it again, what would you do differently?”
• “What do you want to change going forward?”
• “If you want to become your best self, what do you think you should do?”

Second, I discovered the subtle difference between affirming and agreeing. Teenagers say all sorts of crazy things, mostly because they are inexperienced at life. This is their first time through a breakup, a failed test, or peer rejection. Therefore, a lot of bad ideas are liable to come out (often alongside some, shall we say, poor linguistic choices.)

I initially would want to immediately correct those ideas, but my well-meaning advice would fall on deaf ears. What I realized is that a kid had to believe I heard them before they would listen to me. This took time and no small amount of smiling and saying phrases like, "I understand that you're upset."

Once they blew off steam, they were usually in a better place to reassess ideas like, "I'm going to repeatedly text (him/her) until they respond," or, "I'm going to punch (him/her) the next time I see (him/her)."

Third, I had to internalize the idea that I wasn't going to help kids by solving problems for them. This is hard to do in practice, primarily because this involves kids experiencing pain. If you have the slightest bit of empathy, you want to do everything possible to alleviate what they're going through. By doing that, though, you can create a dysfunctional cycle. Moreover, you deny a person the wisdom gained from addressing challenges and mistakes.

If anything, we want children to make mistakes while they're still in an environment where they have a support system that is stronger than anything they might have as an adult. They will be faced with tougher decisions when they are adults and the way to get practice making those decisions is by trying, failing, and trying again.

But it is hard to witness.

Finally, a cautionary note: be careful about what you promise. If you work with kids long enough, inevitably one will approach you and, before describing a problem, ask you to keep what he or she says a secret. This is where it's critical to both remember who the adult is and also take seriously the promises one makes to children.

This is how to thread the needle: Say something like, “I will listen to you very seriously. There are some things I cannot keep a secret because I also have to take your safety and the safety of others seriously. I don't want to make promises that I cannot keep. What I can promise to do is help you make the best decision."

The goal is to leave you space to ask for help and/or notify other adults who need to be brought in the loop.

A kid then may not want to tell you at the moment and that's OK. What I've found is that either the kid will eventually tell you or one of his or her friends will. If nothing else, you've left yourself room to go to another adult and say, "I'm worried about _________." School counselors are my go-to people for this. (I've even called the counselors for students who went to a different school than the one where I worked because because another student reported an alarming text message or social media post.)

This may upset a kid in the short term, but more than likely, that same kid will thank you later. What matters above all is their safety.

The rewards of working with kids aren't just the kinds featured in inspirational movie montages. Whether you're a teacher, coach, youth pastor, volunteer, or just a concerned adult, sometimes the best way we mentor is by making the difficult, ethical decision ourselves.

The thing about all kids is that they are always watching us — especially when they need help doing the right thing.

You can't just order people around (Well, you can, but it's surprisingly ineffective)

The Milgram experiments

A few days ago, I listened to Radiolab's podcast "The Bad Show." It explored bad behavior in a couple of different ways. The segment that stuck with me was their take on the famous Milgram experiments on the lengths people will go to follow directions. 

First, the context. An fake experiment on using electric shocks as a motivator for learning is staged. A regular citizen is brought and instructed by an administrator to give increasingly high shocks to a "learner" (actually a voice actor on a recording) if that person incorrectly answers parts of a memorization exercise. The "learner" purposefully starts making mistakes, forcing the regular citizen to decide to administer the shocks.  

The real experiment is to see when the person administering the shocks stops the experiments. That person is forced to hear the "learner" scream in pain and beg to stop. Labels on the "machine" show that the person is administering deadly shocks to the learner. 

The experiments were spurred by examining the idea: "How could so many German citizens be cogs in the Final Solution?" Nowadays, the experiments have been applied to subsequent genocides and also cover territory like: "How could so many Enron employees participate in a massive fraud?" 

The headline of the experiment is that a disturbingly high percentage of people will basically do what they're told by a person in authority -- or even one who looks like she or he is in authority. 

Milgram conducted dozens of variations of the experiment. Did it make a different in what the "administrator" was wearing? What about the age of the person giving instructions? What happens if the administrator gives rationale? What about if the administrator issues an order? What "The Bad Show" discusses are two important, oft-overlooked subtleties in the findings: 

1) What got the highest rates of compliance was when the administrator justified the experiment in terms of contributing the greater good. If the citizens thought they were doing their part to advance the science of learning, around two-thirds of them were willing to shock the learner enough to kill them. 

2) Giving direct orders was the least successful way of gaining compliance in killing people. About two-thirds of all citizens rebelled when giving a direct order to keep sending deadly shocks. 

***

The implications of these results are exciting and horrifying. One could take them in a dozen different directions. For example, I couldn't help but see echoes of them in the Maryland football scandal where a coach inadvertantly ordered a player to exercise himself to death.

For today though, I want to focus on way the experiments' implications could be used in a positive way -- managing people, specifically students. (Writing this blog has a way of quickly exposing the limits of my lived experience.) In a way, me learning how to lead a classroom more or less confirmed Milgram's results.

When I was a rookie teacher, one of the benchmarks that I set for myself was being able to give an behavior instruction with no rationale and get compliance from the students. An order, basically. 

I'm not sure how or why I got in my head that being able to order kids around was a mark of a teacher with a well-managed classroom. Then again, a lot of my ideas back then of what made for a good teaching were 100 percent wrong. I was always able to get a few to comply, but enough would rebel that in short order the lesson would go off the rails.

I never got to the point of being able to consistently, successfully order kids around. This is because as I got better at my job, I realized I didn't need to do it. 

It's sort of similar to the famous photo of cyclists smoking cigarettes while riding in the first few Tour de Frances. Turns out smoking cigarettes is counter-productive if one is riding 100 miles a day! Also counter-productive: barking orders at adolescents. 

Not a successful racing strategy

What I learned from much better teachers is that well-managed classrooms have a rationale -- implicit or explicit -- for everything that happens in executing a lesson. The teacher has set things up so the class doesn't need to rely solely on the authority of an adult for it to function. This creates a virtuous cycle where the teacher can achieve maximum compliance with a light touch. The students trust the teacher's direction, therefore the teacher can do all sorts of other things -- give suggestions, solicit peer feedback, restating rationale, clarifying or simplifying directions  -- instead of issuing a series of orders (with explicit or implicit negative consequences) to achieve the day's goal. 

Great leaders get the behavior they want by investing people in a clear vision, giving simple directions, depending more on persuasion than authority, and setting up strong systems to create a culture where people want to be best their best selves. If you observe one of these classes (or team or working groups), then you'll notice something interesting when there's off-task behavior. The person or people doing the non-compliant behaviors quickly give up because it's exhausting -- like swimming against the tide. 

Thanks to Milgram, we better understand the power -- for good and for ill -- of investing people in a grand vision. The experiments showed that we are hard-wired to follow directions more often than not when we believe we a part of something big and great. It also illustrates the power and perils of being the person in charge. These are morally neutral observations. 

What is up to us is our awareness of what we're asked to do and conversely, what we're asking of others when we lead.

The difference between knowing we humans have a tendency versus treating behavior as fait accompli is what makes a moral choice so hard in the first place.

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.

***

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. 

***

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. 

***

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!

The first thing is seeing what's in front of you

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.

Anatomy of a mediocre lesson

Today was probably my worst day of teaching this year. Here's why:

• I tried to cram too much in one lesson, so it felt disjointed on my end. The students likely didn't retain the most critical information because there was too much of it. This is best illustrated by attempting to slake your thirst by putting 20 oz. of water in a 12 oz. glass.

• I didn't consider the entire lesson from a student's perspective. Specifically, I didn't fully think through how they would process the information. Therefore, sometimes the students were put in a position of listening for too long a period without a chance to speak and write. This also hindered me knowing what they learned because the questions I did have them write about weren't the most critical to understanding the lesson. In short -- I focused on what would be doing at the expense of being clear regarding what I wanted them to do.

• I failed to order the information so it was clear which were the foundation pieces of knowledge, then how various pieces connected. The connections that were there were haphazard so it's likely most students' first impression were formed in very different ways. This is similar to having a poor foundation to a house. The only way to really fix is just go back and do it again. 

***

When these days (inevitably) happen, I think back to early in my career. When a lesson went sideways then, it meant that student behavior would be so off that I'd usually need to call in another teacher or assistant principal. On those days, I would leave school emotionally drained. I'd procrastinate on planning because I'd still be angry. I'd go to bed feeling a pit in my stomach, knowing that I'd set myself up to have the same problems the next day. 

Teaching is better now. My worst day now far surpasses my best day then. 

Now, I'm mostly just annoyed when I don't do that great of a job. I hate it when I see kids who are trying to learn, just not quite getting there, and it's my responsibility.

I understand this is a part of the job -- of any job, really. Just thought it's worth marking the days in the classroom that aren't typically captured in an exemplar teaching clip or make it to YouTube because kids are chucking chairs at each other.

I won't be nominated to be profiled in Teach Like A Champion anytime soon, but you shouldn't see my class on Vine either. (If you do, let me know, so I can confiscate the phone tomorrow)

Onward and upward! 

Highly paid teaching position available in Nashville!

The Tennessee Titans fired their wide receivers and assistant wide receivers coaches today. 

I find this interesting and not just because I follow the Titans to a degree that would surprise even most people who know me. 

Anyway, NFL position coaches are one of the rare places in high profile sports where the job is mostly about teaching. While most folks don't know who these guys are (sadly and unfairly, most of them are guys), they are likely some of the most highly paid and heavily scrutinized teachers in the country.

(How much of an impact can they have? One of the reasons given for the New England Patriots' successful season is the return of their offensive line coach from retirement. The Patriots offensive line, with pretty much the same players, went from being one of the worst in the league last year to one of the best.) 

Their job is mostly focused on people development. There's an aspect of evaluation, too, though actual decisions about which players make up the team more heavily influenced by the scouting staff and general manager (and head coach in some cases). Unlike college coaches, NFL position coaches don't recruit players to a program. Their job is take the players they have and develop their skill set according to the larger vision of the head coach or coordinator. 

So, they teach. 

This firing raises those questions because the Titans' head coach has been friends with the more senior coach he fired today. The guy actually came out of retirement to coach the wide receivers. It doesn't seem personal. This seems like the head coach had an issue with how he was teaching.

I'm curious as to what actual instruction looks like at an NFL level. How do coaches develop their craft? How do they teach complicated game plans that can change significantly even in-game? How are position coaches evaluated at the end of the year?

I'm pretty sure "Hard Knocks" or any number of "NFL Insider" segments aren't representative of the teaching position coaches do. I would also bet that the people who coach at this level conduct themselves differently from the stereotypical screaming high school football coach. 

A few weeks ago, San Antonio Spurs coach Gregg Popovich hinted at the approach one takes with adult, professional athletes.

Gregg Popovich with a great response when asked it was his fault his players weren't motivated to play tonight pic.twitter.com/jdIUHB34Eh

— gifdsports (@gifdsports) December 9, 2016

"No Knute Rockne speeches." (Since I read more sports media than is healthy, I take special pleasure when future Hall of Fame coaches knock down sports cliches.)

While I really don't have an idea what teaching looks like at an NFL or NBA level, it's worth noting that U.S. Soccer hired Teach Like a Champion author Doug Lemov to consult. He's been working high-level coaches across the country to improve how advanced soccer players practice. He reflected in a recent post:

Had a pretty amazing day in Chicago on Wednesday, talking teaching with a group of (mostly) MLS professional soccer coaches who are enrolled in US Soccer’s new Pro License course. The group includes guys who I admire as coaches and who I followed as players. I was a little bit starstruck… but I got over that fast because the conversation was so rich. 

Interestingly, we didn’t watch any footage of soccer training. We watched classroom footage and applied the principles to teaching during training.The closest we got to watching “practice” was an amazing video of music teacher John Burmeister (who I’ve written about before) wokring with an upstate New York youth orchestra. His session is a master class on having a clear and specific goal and breaking the session up into rounds of progressive challenge, each with a single piece of feedback to focus on and execute.

The rest of the post is worth reading for its discussion of how to actually run a highly successful practice. One of the things I appreciate about Lemov is how he's evolved his focus to the intricacies of practice, then looked across disciplines -- teaching, music, soccer -- to apply it. (Hell, he wrote a book about it.)

Great teachers run great practices. I wish I could observe more high-level coaches when they're planning and running practice. I bet I'd find quite a few things to apply in my classroom.