Teaching isn’t about managing behavior
theatlantic.com
theatlantic.com
I was a teacher for fifteen years. The writer of this article started about the same time I got into the profession, so has nearly 20 years of experience.
The first thing you need to do with any class is manage behavior. This can be tricky in your first couple of years, but after a while it just becomes part of who you are. You're more confident in the classroom, you have a reputation in the school, you can recognise and shutdown disruptive behavior before any of the other kids have realised something is about to kick off. At that point your classroom changes, and you can practice what the author calls "Reality Pedagogy", or any other type of pedagogy you like.
Believe me, having observed and mentored plenty of student teachers over the years, the first thing you need to tackle is behavior management. Once that is established then you have the opportunity to be the "captain, my captain" teacher, or whatever you like really.
One loud, misbehaving student can ruin the class for the other n-1. Idealists want to dream that there are no bad kids and it's all the fault of the patriarchy, white supremacy or worse. They may be correct, but work won't commence until everyone is sitting still.
Wouldn't it be productive and moral to find ways to help all 31, perhaps by putting misbehaving kids in special classrooms where they can receive specialized help?
If you don’t help that kid, the other 30 will spend their whole lives sharing a society with an adult who didn’t get help. That’s an unfair drain on their life too (increased crime, policing costs, etc).
Putting the disruptive kids in the same place as everyone else means the incentives are right to do something useful to help them.
From what I know of this sort of program, it seems to be a sincere attempt to help kids, not merely brush them off into a corner to forget about them. I don't know how often it's successful, but I think in that school district at least it's well motivated. From what I know of it, it seems like a much better system than allowing those kids to disrupt normal classrooms.
For these students who are deeply troubled, there must be healing before there can really be learning.
As an aside, despite the article's assertions, there is very little evidence that experience improves teaching ability, despite many studies on the matter.
I don't disagree with your implication that the teaching process the author describe might short-change learning the core skills/knowledge being taught in a course. But I would think that depends on the application of the technique and doesn't stem from the nature of the technique itself.
Also lets' not forget that anecdotal knowledge is a legitimate source of knowledge, it is just a different kind than scientifically produced knowledge. They both have their strengths, weaknesses, and limitations, and each should be critically assessed using different criteria (quality of the scientific paper, reputation of the scientists/journal behind it, and for anecdotal knowledge, reputation of the writer, logic of their argument, how it corresponds to our lived experience, etc).
Also I'd like to rephrase what you wrote to read "emotional objective for the student", and "social objective for the student". As the author is arguing these practices help the student's emotional and social development.
I think it does define what the author considers successful teaching.
A definition by providing a counterexample of unsuccessful teaching:
"I taught through violence against Muslim students and used the permission I tacitly received from the school to justify my inaction. I ignored the chaos of the world beyond the classroom because I believed that it was my job to just keep on teaching. Looking back now, I realize I was not actually teaching at all."
What the author believes the goals (outcomes) of teaching should and should not be:
"In 2001, I thought that good teaching meant delivering content knowledge to students who were behaving “appropriately.” In 2020, I know that is not enough. I’ve learned to see my classroom as a platform for empowering students and transforming society, and to use my pedagogy as a form of protest against norms that silence students. Far from sacrificing content knowledge, engaged students, whose voices are heard, are better able to learn it."
A positive definition, which describes the behavior of a successful teacher, and that the desired outcome for the students is creating a certain kind of learning process for them to participate in:
"Reality pedagogy interrupts the notion that teaching is about managing students and their behavior. Instead, I’ve learned to see them as co-teachers, and I create space for dialogue—in small groups outside of class—about how they experience the classroom and the world beyond it. It’s a space for connection, but also for any critiques they have of my teaching. These conversations are generative for everyone involved. Teachers need feedback from their students, who can see what teachers have been trained to ignore in their blind pursuit of a calm, quiet classroom. And students need a sense of agency, which they are often denied.
Co-teaching requires that teachers be humble enough to become students of their students—especially the students who have been most harmed, and will benefit most from a teacher listening to their experiences. In my first years of teaching, I never asked to hear my students’ thoughts about having to sit and learn while the world around them was going crazy. I didn’t make space for my Muslim students to heal from being targeted. But if I had started that dialogue, I would have learned a lot from them about how I could have been a better teacher.
When students have this kind of agency, a classroom can start to function like a family—or even a small society. I give all of my students a classroom responsibility that counts toward their grades and involves taking care of the physical classroom and each other. And I institute democratic decision making for all actions taken in the classroom: Students help to decide what assignments we work on, how long we spend on activities, and what to discuss. The classroom can serve as an example of what the world should look like—all students with equal power, regardless of their culture or background—rather than a replication of what it is.
Reality pedagogy involves connecting academic content to events happening in the world that affect students. The curriculum can weave in specific references to the neighborhoods where young people are from, inequities that they and their families are hurt by, and protests in the community. But that doesn’t mean these lessons are always serious. Students can compete to show their knowledge through art, games, and music. I have created projects like the Science Genius competition, where young people write raps about science content and events happening in their lives and compete to be the best scientist, rapper, and storyteller. The classroom—especially for Black youth—should not feel like a place where they are policed or silenced. Black joy can be a part of daily learning."
In these fields, people generally improve with a bit of experience and effort, to the point where they're happy with the results they're getting.
Having a fancy framework might help (by giving them some cognitive "pegs" to hang various observations on), or hurt (by distracting them with meaningless or biased assertions).
It's like the four humours in medicine. Maybe it helped some doctors to spot patterns and offer treatment. Maybe it just gave them a toolkit to dismiss their failures with some silly hand-waves. Maybe it distracts them. Who knows.
A good acid tests is whether teaching in red underpants could also be a good method. When you first start teaching in red underpants, it might seem a bit unusual, but you'll gradually learn to do it more proficiently. You'll have to wash them every day the right way (if you don't, you might experience some trouble in class, but at least you'll know how to fix things next time!). You can also develop some useful cognitive "pegs" to spot problems - maybe you realise at the start of a class that you're potentially "riding high" (whatever that would mean in terms of student behaviour) so you need to adjust your teaching to compensate - what the underpants are doing and how they impact the teaching is irrelevant, but at least you have a word for what you are seeing, right?
This is true of all career fields at all times.
> In 1988, a teacher most commonly had 15 years of experience. Less than three decades later, that number had fallen to just three years leading a classroom.
Many schools are a blame teachers culture.
Turns out ignoring bad behavior doesn’t work.
Of course some of these are 3rd time 2nd graders
They somewhat willingly support a union. (they at least voted to unionize) That union, via stealing from the teacher's paychecks and "donating" to politicians, is a corrupt money pipeline from taxpayers to one political party. That party opposes anything that would enable tossing out the bad students or punishing them. The resulting awful work environment is thus, indirectly, supported by the teachers.
There are in fact many poor-quality teachers. Firing them is difficult, again because of the union that they endorse. I'm seeing hypocrisy lately, with union-protected bad teachers protesting against unions protecting bad cops.
The awful work environment discourages people from entering the profession. Because of this, schools have fewer good candidates to hire. There isn't much point firing a bad teacher if a replacement is unlikely to be any better.
• The students were talking in the class.
• It annoyed the teacher that the students were talking in the class.
After class she learned what had happened and sent an apology email to everyone (and cancelled the next class). My guess is that she had been prepping class all morning and hadn't read any news.
This might not be a bad thing. I remember the late 60's and early 70's being an incredibly innovative time in education: likely when many of the Baby Boomer teachers were stretching their wings.
Experimental schools, "free schools", open classrooms, self-paced learning etc. It was a time when you knew someone that attended a Montessori school, when we were moving to the Metric system...
In short it was a time of optimism and trying out new ideas. If the current crop of teachers can get out from under the yoke of "Common Core" or these other top-down initiatives we might see some innovation in education again.
And frankly school might become fun again as well.
I think the state has to ensure that education is broadly available and not let people fall behind. But you can only administrate so much to ensure good quality of education.
> Once somebody has taught for three years their teaching quality does not change thereafter. The variation is very, very small.
This is a monumental problem.
Indeed, that was what popularized IBM's SPSS tool, originally standing for Statistical Package for the Social Sciences.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XT9VBW87QXw
Note the rigid uniformity, and how students are expected to stand when giving answers. It may also be a good example of the extent to which academically strong students were dragged down by their peers?
(The whole movie is subversive in certain ways. I understand soviet children were indoctrinated to be helpful to adults, but in the movie Julia's grandmother —who may have had some experience herself with the value of keeping one's mouth shut— helps them buck the system.)
On sexism in the soviet union:
Today, little Johnny's class has a pair[1] of teaching observers. After waiting a moment with no hands raised, the teacher calls on Johnny, asking him what inspired Pushkin to write To the Beauty. Johnny answers, "she has such fine legs. I bet her ass — exquisite." "Citizen John!" exclaims the teacher, "go straight to Principal, and tell him what you said!"
On his way out the door, Johnny angrily denounces the teaching observers: "next time you prompt, Comrades, please ensure you know correct answer."
[1] one who can read, and one who can write. Their job is to keep a watchful eye on the intellectuals teaching the classes.
Of course I'd recommend watching the whole thing (or even the Alisa cartoon), for good examples of non-western juvenile SF, but in this case I was deliberately trying to show an example of non-western classroom behaviour management.
It may not have been entirely realistic, but judging from the nostalgic comments I've seen, it was not so unrealistic that students at the time it was aired found it ludicrous.
(counterargument: Friends — has many fans, but just how did NY baristas afford apartments like those?)
(I got most of my political jokes from VK. To be fair, most of them, especially the Brezhnev-era, can be used in the current US with only a few name changes.)
[1] Humour usually involves quickly switching between possible interpretations. Action movies tend to be much less ambiguous.
As for “helpful to adults”, it’s not exactly Soviet thing. All cultures/nations that were forced under Soviet rule had that mentality. And still have to big extent. Although there’s less and less automatic respect to adults/elders in last decade or two, it’s still there.
I hope not.
I think teachers should teach to the status quo and let students when they are older or their parents make the decision about what they are going to protest, and what changes they are going to push for.
In general, I think students, especially young students, should be shrieked from the ugliness of life as much as possible so they can focus on learning the educational and social skills that will help them in life. Teach to give them the tools so that they can make their own decision when they get older.
Otherwise, if teachers are really using their pedagogy as protest, expect to see even more erosion of support for the public education system, and even more fracturing of the social bonds as schools are chosen , not for their ability to educate, but whether what they indoctrinate matches up with their parents’ wishes.
This pattern of people leveraging their professional position as a platform for activism is questionable, but debatable, in general. But being entrusted to teach children requires exactly that, trust. If school systems lose the trust of parents, and eventually their larger communities, they're done.
If schools can be reasonably viewed as attempting to indoctrinate children, there will be a massive backlash. People will put up with a lot, but their children are generally off limits.
1. What is the teacher's take on students making errors - Do they immediately correct them? Do they give the student the time to come to a contradiction themselves, but possibly confuse them and other students? Something else?
2. What is the teacher's take on mathematical knowledge - is it there to be discovered, or to be created? How much of math is already known by academics and how much is still in the future? Do they teach concepts as fully given, or as challenges for the students?
Each of these and many other aspects of teaching could influence the student's view of authority and their own agency.
There are still people today in the US who consider teaching evolution a step too far. In the US one of the major parties considers modern climate science off limits because they disagreed with its conclusions.
Then you get into history and literature and it’s almost impossible for politics to not influence what should be taught and how it should be taught. Yes, the teachers should still primarily be trying to impart kids with the tools to analyze things and seek knowledge themselves, but some topics are just too human to believe that they can be taught from a completely apolitical perspective.
Maybe it just means that we need to ensure politically proportionate representation when it comes to teachers, and have the conversations flow naturally with a balance. Maybe it means that we have to specifically put down rules for teachers to no delve into any political/ideological topics/opinions and to only teach the subject matter. That one would be a good start, and it's not immediately obvious that it would be indoctrination of children.
>The best teachers don’t just keep teaching. Instead, they use their pedagogy as protest: They disrupt teaching norms that harm vulnerable students. In my years in the classroom since 2001, I’ve learned something about how to do this. I call it reality pedagogy, because it’s about reaching students where they really are, making sure that their lives and backgrounds are reflected in the curriculum and in classroom conversations.
Basically this comes down to teaching to your audience, not blandly regurgitating content. It's recognizing that changes in that curriculum and school materials can move too slow to reflect research and reality.