TEACHING ≠ LEARNING

I have had the privilege of observing many teachers in my time in education. This was borne out of necessity because of the fact that I wanted to improve as a teacher but I had no idea what to do! So, I would just go around and observe any and all teachers. Sometimes I would ask permission and sit in on their class during my prep, and other times I would stalk outside their classroom and listen to what was happening and occasionally sneak a peak through the door or window. After conducting so many planned (and unplanned) observations, I have discovered that the ONLY variable that matters when evaluating the efficacy of a teacher is...

what the students are doing. The only thing that separates a bad teacher from a great teacher is determined by what the students are doing. If the students are involved, attentive, responsive, and engaged in learning, then I am witnessing a great teacher. If the students are asleep, passing notes, texting on phones, or drooling on their notes and are disinterested, I am witnessing a bad teacher. For most of my teaching career, I was in the latter category.

You see, it is very simple. I used to think that I needed to figure out what I should do as a teacher. I spent so much time being the one who was involved. I planned the lesson, I gave the notes and I spent almost all of my prep time trying to figure out what I was going to do. Yet my energies were misguided. I over-emphasized planning what I was going to do, but I should have spent more time thinking about what the students were going to do. Too often, my only plan for what the students were going to do was “listen and obey my every command throughout the entire class and copy down whatever I tell them to copy. And take notes the whole time.” I now know why my students used to not learn anything…

I spent way too much time in my first few years of teaching trying to plan out what I was going to be doing, but the great teachers taught me otherwise. The great teachers showed me that it is infinitely more important to consider what the students are doing. As a teacher, I am only a means to an end. I am the director of the symphony, but my students have to play the instrument and make the music.

When you are in the classroom of a great teacher, the students are involved. They are active. They are learning. There might be a few students who are sleeping and a few who look like they would rather be playing their favorite sport than learning about the quadratic equation, but that is fine. Good teaching isn’t about emotion, it is about learning. Excitement is great and it should happen occasionally, but you don’t have to have kids jumping up and down with enthusiasm about factoring a polynomial in order to be a great teacher. They simply need to be learning.

If you want to know whether or not you are being effective as a teacher, just observe what your students are doing. If they are all passed out or texting or writing notes, stop what you are doing, go to your computer and write an email to a great teacher in your building (it doesn’t matter if you are not “teaching” at this point because your students aren’t learning), and ask them to meet you for lunch or after school. I promise this will be more effective than handing out 20 detentions.

The language that you use to describe your classroom can be a strong indicator of where the emphasis lies in your class. A teacher who is too focused on what they are doing will say, "I did such and such in my class today. I taught about this and that in my class yesterday." A teacher who is focused on student learning is more likely to say "My students did such and such in class today. My students learned about this and that in my class yesterday."

The question is: are your students learning, or are you teaching?