When It's Okay To Teach

As someone who loves the rewards of facilitation and open dialogues, this week quickly taught me that direct teaching can be just as rewarding and at moments, more important than an open dialogue. I spent the first half of the week introducing wow words (or more descriptive language) that students could use in their writing. I had (what I thought!) an exciting interactive mini-unit on the use and practice of these words. While the lessons never failed miserably I was forced to think on my feet and often quickly change my original plans. At the beginning of some of the lessons I would ask open-ended questions to the students, which never seemed to guide the class to the purpose of the lesson. For example, during the first lesson where I had written out my weekend story with some “boring” words, I asked students, “What words do you think I used too much?” The students, eager to participate, replied with a list of words that although I had said them a number of times, were not the words I was focusing on for this lesson. In that moment, I changed my teaching style and said clearly, even underlining, the words that I used too much. By the final lesson I had a handful of sentences written on large poster paper where the class decided how to rewrite/replace the boring word (said, good, bad) in the sentence with a wow word. This was much more direct teaching than I had been previously comfortable with, but the students (and I) felt more organized and clear about the expectations and how to use the skill I was teaching them. I know there are times when a facilitation style of teaching is more useful for students or for the objective on a lesson, but recognizing that direct-teaching is actually an essential part of schooling was an important lesson for me to learn.

Parent-teacher conferences were held during the afternoon for three days. I sat in on a handful of these meetings observing how my teacher addresses parent concerns and maneuvers balancing her concerns with honoring the strengths of the child. Sometimes I wondered why concerns that the teacher has expressed to me throughout the day, were not addressed during the meeting. During the meeting with the parents of one of the ELL students, I wondered what the legal obligations of the school are to have translators for the parents. It was clear how much parents want to know what to do to help their son or daughter be successful when the parents of a student with some behavior and academic challenges had their meeting with the teacher.

When I first learned how teachers recognize (and memorize!) the strengths and weakness of each child, through formal and informal assessment, it quickly became one of the skills I was most afraid I would not be able to “do” as a teacher. Throughout my time in classrooms, it becomes clearer how much teachers can learn about their students. I know what to observe, how to observe, and the usefulness of jotting down a few notes about each child at the end of every few days. I know what questions to ask students when they are struggling with a topic or have quickly finished an assignment to assess their real understanding of the situation or problem. After only 3 or so weeks, I feel comfortable talking about the academic and social issues of each of the students in the classroom.