Three Lessons from Management Guys

The Algorithm shows me a lot of stuff about management, and I encourage it because I'm fascinated by the issues surrounding management because 1) I think so many problems in this country are caused by plain old bad management and 2) the overlap of management stuff and classroom teacher stuff is fairly large and useful.

This clip gets better the longer it goes. It's Ben Askins, one management stuff guy, reacting to another management stuff guy clip, and they go through three things I want to touch on.

Asking questions.

This has the most limited use in a classroom. I am not a 100% inquiry learning guy-- many times it is quicker and simpler to just go ahead and explain the concept that you're trying to teach than forcing students to stumble around in the dark. Even  if you want to be the Guide on the Side rather than the Sage on the Stage, well-- do some guiding. If you are not in a classroom to share greater knowledge and understanding of the content, why are you there?

That said, if you simply hand students every answer every step of the way, they get mentally flabby and don't retain as much as you'd like. So the questioning approach has value.

Non-punitive accountability

Part of getting students to own their screw-ups (both academically and behaviorally) is to expect that accountability but at the same time not beat them up over it. That wrong answer they just offered does not have to prompt an expression or tone that suggests the student is a dope. Decoupling academic performance from their intellectual ability or worth as a human being avoids a world of hurt and trouble. And really, it's just basic respect for their humanity. Bonus points if you demand they show the same grace to each other. It's fundamental to making a classroom a safe place (I'm pretty sure it's the solution to the Great Cold Call Debate-- cold calls in a safe and respectful classroom aren't a big deal). 

A safe classroom doesn't mean a classroom in which a wrong answer is as good as a right answer, but it does mean a classroom where the students who gave those different answers are treated with the same respect. It's okay to be explicit; my response to wrong answers was sometimes, "No, that's wrong. But you are still ok, and you will still go on to lead a full and happy life." 

Same principle holds true for behavior issues. I have often told my Miss Gause story. She was my elementary music teacher, and one day she caught me in the back of the room mocking her conducting arm flapping. She called me up to the front of the room and paddled the flap right out of me (it was 1968). But what stuck with me was not the paddling, but the aftermath-- there was none. She didn't go on to treat me like some Bad Kid who would forever live in the shadow of that bad behavior. To put another way, the immediate consequence was the only consequence; too often teacher "consequence" for misbehavior is a lingering disrespect for the guilty student.

Fostering creativity and expression

Finally the point that if you tell your people you want them to "think outside the box" but you are "bellowing at them by 9:15 because of some tiny mistake" you will get zero creativity or innovation.  Same for the classroom. If there is only one right answer, and it is your answer, and all others will be shot down mercilessly, then your classroom will not be about exploring ideas or finding ways to express them-- it will be about trying to divine and reproduce the teacher's preferred answer.

This is doubly deadly in an ELA classroom. If you want students to express themselves freely, if you want them to practice forming and developing ideas and interpretations, then you have to support them in their attempts, no matter how far into the weeds they get. For students, every attempt to complete an assignment, respond to a question, participate in a discussion--that's taking a risk, and as the teacher, you get to manage how much of a risk that might be. If you want students to take risks, you have to make trying and coming up short an unintimidating prospect. 

This is so important in a classroom, where students are not just learning how to spit out the Right Answer, but learning how work out a Right Answer on their own.